My contract, quote and purchase order disagree. What should I clarify?

Your quote includes two revision rounds and payment within 14 days. The client's purchase order says payment within 60 days. The service agreement refers to “all reasonable revisions” and attaches a different specification. Which deal are you being asked to perform?

Start with the conflict you can demonstrate. You do not need to decide the entire legal effect of the paperwork to ask both sides to make the scope and payment arrangement consistent. If work has already started, record the timeline too; do not rewrite the history as though every document arrived before acceptance.

List the documents and their role

Collect the quote, order form, purchase order, main terms, schedules, referenced website terms and agreed amendments. Record dates, versions, acceptance records and the parties named in each.

A purchase order might be an administrative payment reference, an offer on different terms or part of a wider contracting process. Its title alone does not establish which role it plays in your deal. Ask what the parties intend and check the actual wording.

For a concrete UK public-sector example, the government Short Form Contract combines an order form, conditions and annexes, with a cover letter where used. That illustrates why a contract can be a document pack. It is not a priority rule for your private project.

Fill in a conflict table

This example is fictional. Copy the method, not the invented terms.

On a narrow screen, scroll the table sideways to read all columns.

Quote exact wording in your own table and identify the clause or page where available. Keep a missing answer separate from a conflicting one. A blank payment term in the quote is not the same problem as an express 14-day term competing with 60 days.

Do not combine favourable fragments into a deal nobody agreed: your quote's short payment deadline, the client's broad scope and a schedule's different price.

Read the priority and change provisions

Search for “order of precedence,” “inconsistency,” “entire agreement,” “incorporated,” “special conditions” and “amendment.” Check whether the documents in a priority list are actually the versions you received. A priority clause may contain exceptions, such as a specific schedule governing only one topic.

An entire-agreement clause is not automatically a complete document-priority list. A later date is not, by itself, a reliable instruction to discard everything earlier. If competing sets of terms have already been exchanged or work has begun, the acceptance history and applicable law may require a closer assessment.

For the operational decision, ask for the conflict to be resolved explicitly. The linked-terms guide helps when one of the competing documents lives on a website.

Send a short confirmation request

Here is an original message you can adapt:

Before [starting the work/confirming the next milestone], could we reconcile three points? Quote [reference] says [payment term], while PO [reference] says [different term]. The quote includes [revision limit], while clause [number] says [different wording]. The documents also differ on [fee or delivery item]. Please confirm the agreed trigger/deadline, revision scope and [third point], and update the contract pack or follow its amendment process so those answers are consistent. Please also confirm the document order of precedence.

If someone says “the PO is only for our finance system,” ask whether its printed terms are intended to apply and have that clarification recorded through the appropriate process. Keep the final pack rather than only a disconnected reply.

Use the revised-contract worksheet when corrected documents arrive. For missing work items, the quote comparison and editable-file inventory can help make the questions precise.

Keep review claims realistic

Contracts.money reviews one uploaded PDF or DOCX; it does not automatically compare separate uploads or determine which document legally prevails. If you are permitted to share the material and prepare a combined file, label each document and version and state the conflict in the notes. Check the answer against your table and the original pack before acting on it.