You cannot edit a proposal once it has been sent, and that is deliberate: a sent proposal can be accepted at any moment, and acceptance forms a contract. Editing one out from under a client would make the document meaningless as evidence.
Instead you supersede it. One action archives the original, creates an amended copy, applies your changes, and links the two together — all or nothing, so a failure part-way leaves you exactly where you started.
What actually happens when you supersede
Four things, atomically:
- The original proposal is archived with your stated reason, so the audit trail records why it was replaced.
- A new draft is created with the next proposal number.
- Every line is copied verbatim — price, quantity, cadence, which premises it covers, the client-facing description, inclusions, exclusions, contractor method notes, and the proposal's presentation settings — with your amendments applied on top.
- The original is pointed at the replacement, so the original signing link now serves the new version once it is sent.
That fourth point does more work than it looks like. If you have already texted the client their signing link, or they have it open in a browser tab, it keeps working and resolves to the current version. You are not asking them to hunt for a newer email.
What should I amend versus rebuild?
Supersede for anything the client has responded to: a price change, a changed cadence, a line they no longer want, a correction they have pointed out. Rebuild from scratch only when the engagement itself has changed shape so completely that nothing carries over — which is rarer than it feels.
Superseding is also the right move after a declined proposal. The decline is deliberately preserved rather than deleted, so you can reprice and re-offer on the same thread, with the history intact showing what they turned down and what you offered instead.
The trap: prose does not know the cadence changed
Amendments are structured — a price, a quantity, a cadence. Everything else is copied exactly as it was, and that includes free text.
So if a line description says "visits scheduled for the second week of August and the first week of October" and you amend that line's cadence to a single September visit, the cadence is now correct and the sentence is now a lie. The copy is faithful; it is not clever.
Always re-read the client-facing descriptions on the amended copy before sending. Anything that restates a date, a frequency, or a price in words needs to be edited to match the change you just made structurally.
Rewrite the cover note as well
The amended proposal is a reply to something the client said. Say so. A cover note that acknowledges their correction — what changed, what deliberately did not, and that pricing is otherwise unaffected — turns a re-send into evidence that you listened. It costs one sentence.