Order con­fir­ma­tions: Write them perfectly with a template

If a customer accepts your offer (partially or com­plete­ly), then he or she gives you the order to provide the offered service or to deliver the goods. To be sure, it’s not required by law, but it’s useful for several reasons to respond to such an order with a written order con­fir­ma­tion. Such a letter may summarize details discussed on the phone or show any changes made to the actual offer. An order con­fir­ma­tion is also suitable for an explicit reference to the general terms and con­di­tions.

The order con­fir­ma­tion provides the customer with a service overview and offers them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to clarify any mis­un­der­stand­ings in a timely manner. But as a con­trac­tor, you are con­firm­ing to provide the agreed service at the fixed terms. For this reason, it’s very important that the order con­fir­ma­tion is ad­e­quate­ly and legally designed, and contains all in­for­ma­tion relevant to the order. Order con­fir­ma­tion templates are a simple and pre­dom­i­nant­ly free tool, and are typically just ordinary Word or Excel documents.

The written con­fir­ma­tion of an order should be a staple for every con­trac­tor, and not only for the reasons above. Another advantage of an order con­fir­ma­tion is this: If a document is drafted correctly, it can also be used in court cases. You don’t even need a specific software or law degree to create one. The common word pro­cess­ing and spread­sheet programs, like Word and Excel, already offer all the tools and functions necessary for creating a con­fir­ma­tion, and either printing it or sending it as a PDF once you’re finished.

To avoid having to write a con­fir­ma­tion com­plete­ly from scratch for each order, it’s common to use Word or Excel to create templates for order con­fir­ma­tions – or to simply access pre-made versions. In the latter, all el­e­men­tary com­po­nents are already inserted, and the place­hold­er data can be replaced at any time. For a new contract, you just need to customize the template and don’t have to create one from scratch. This saves a lot of time. If you use your template for all order con­fir­ma­tions, then your documents au­to­mat­i­cal­ly have a uniform design.

Thanks to the wide selection of branch-specific order con­fir­ma­tion templates for Word and Excel, you can find suitable versions for whatever industry you’re working in. These differ slightly in terms of layout and content elements, and so are ideally suited for actual customer approach. With the right template, your letters are not only correct and complete, but also ap­pro­pri­ate for the industry and most common order types. If you want to adapt the document to your needs, you just have to make a few changes to the template and then save it, hassle-free.

After you’ve decided on one of the order con­fir­ma­tion templates and down­loaded it, open it with a double-click, just as you would any other Word or Excel document. The following changes are now required before you can send the con­fir­ma­tion letter to your customers:

• In the upper left-hand corner, find the place for your company address, and then the recipient address data un­der­neath it.

• On the right-hand side, you have a slightly larger area for the pre­sen­ta­tion of your data. In addition to entering the company address again, you can also enter a telephone number and/or an e-mail address for the customer to use.

• The following subject line is used to tell the recipient what type of letter it is. As an al­ter­na­tive to the “Order Con­fir­ma­tion” subject selected in the template, you can formulate a more detailed title, such as “Order con­fir­ma­tion for your order / Your order from 05-10-2017”

• Under the subject line, the template provides three values: The number of accepted offers included as the reason for the con­fir­ma­tion letter, the customer number (if available), and the date that the document was issued.

• After you’ve clarified the recipient and the order, the text for the order con­fir­ma­tion is followed by a text in which you directly address the customer. In one to two sentences, you have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to thank them for the order and refer to the upcoming list of agreed services.

• The agreed services or ordered items are listed in the following table. List different goods or services each on a separate line. It’s standard to include the exact de­scrip­tion, quantity, and single price as well as total price. You can also customize the columns to fit your needs, though, adding or removing as necessary. The same applies to the number of rows, if you need space for ad­di­tion­al items.

• The total price of the items without sales tax, the tax amount due, and the final invoice amount are listed sep­a­rate­ly under the table before you move on to another text area ad­dress­ing the customer. Include all important ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion (title retention, delivery con­di­tions, reference to Terms and Con­di­tions, special offers, etc.) before you finish off the letter with your signature.

• The real con­clu­sion of the template, though, is in the footer, where you enter your contact in­for­ma­tion again. You can also enter your website or other crucial in­for­ma­tion that you deem necessary.

• As soon as you have made all of the changes, you can save the template and print the letter or export it in PDF format, if you plan to send the contract by e-mail.

Click here for important legal dis­claimers.