Proposals & Invoices · Article 5.8
When the client declines (or the amendment expires)
Two terminal states for an unsigned amendment: the client clicked Decline (with optional reason) or 14 days passed with no action. Either way, the original contract is unchanged — and you can immediately draft a new amendment to try again.
Declines and expiries are designed to be cheap, frictionless dead-ends. They don't void the contract, they don't penalise either party, they don't lock you out of further attempts. The original signed proposal continues exactly as before; the failed amendment becomes a historical artefact in the proposal's amendment list, and you're free to draft a new amendment with adjusted terms whenever you want.
Step by step
Receive the decline / expiry notice.
Decline → email + Timeline event + red badge on the Pending amendment panel. Expiry → no email, just Timeline event + greyed badge.
Read the reason (if any).
From
/proposals/{id}Amendments section, click the declined amendment row to see the reason. Common reasons: pricing, scope ambiguity, timing, "let me think about it".Decide next step.
Three choices: (a) draft a fresh amendment with adjusted terms (most common), (b) talk to the client out-of-band first to understand the objection, then draft, (c) accept that the original contract is what it is and continue work as agreed.
(Optional) Draft a new amendment.
From the Actions panel,
Propose scope change. The new amendment baselines on the current effective scope (latest signed state, or original if no prior signed amendment) — declined / expired amendments do not become the baseline because they never signed.
A red Declined or grey Expired badge on the failed amendment row in the Amendments section. The Pending amendment panel disappears (no longer pending). Documents dropdown is unchanged from before the amendment was sent. If you draft a new amendment, the wizard works exactly as it did the first time.
Why this works this way
Decline: the client clicks the small Decline link below the Sign button on the public amendment page, optionally writes a reason (free-form text, no length limit but truncated in displays at ~500 chars), and confirms. The amendment status flips to declined, declined_at and declined_reason are stored, the post-sign pipeline does NOT run (no document changes happen), the preview FinalInvoice attached to the amendment stays in cancelled status, and a "decline notice" email fires to you with the reason.
Expired: a daily background job at 03:00 UTC flips any amendment in sent or viewed past expires_at (computed at send time as sent_at + 14 days) to expired. No email fires (client has clearly not engaged); a Timeline event records the expiry. Same as decline, no document changes happen.
In both cases, the preview FinalInvoice (created during the wizard with status=cancelled so it doesn't conflict with the existing active invoice) stays cancelled. It's never deleted — it's a record that this amendment attempt happened, with the proposed numbers visible in the audit trail.
Troubleshooting
Keep reading
Proposals & Invoices
Creating an amendment (the 4-step wizard)
The amendment wizard at `/proposals/{id}/amend` walks you through line items, reason, preview, and email — in that order. Five minutes for a simple change, ten minutes for a complex one. The client doesn't see anything until you click Send on Step 4.
Proposals & Invoices
Multi-amendment chains: one draft at a time, baseline = current effective
A proposal can have many amendments over its life — but only one open at any given moment, and each new amendment baselines on the most recent signed state, not the original proposal. Here's how the chain holds together.
Proposals & Invoices
Resending the amendment link with a fresh PIN
Client lost the email, hit the PIN-attempt lockout, or just can't find the original message? Resend with a fresh PIN. The old PIN is invalidated, the lockout is cleared, a new email goes out, and the audit log records the re-issuance.