Offer Letter

What this document contains

7 clauses every offer letter carries, plus 1 you can add.

1. 01

   Who the letter is from and to

   The head of the letter: the place and date it bears, the employer it issues from, and the person it is addressed to. Both are parties who sign, so both come from the party picker rather than being typed into the letter.

2. 02

   Subject

   The one line the letter is filed and found by. Written by the employer rather than composed from the particulars — those live on other clauses, and a clause cannot read another clause's data.

3. 03

   The offer

   The role being offered, when it would start, and where the work would be done. Stated as a proposal rather than as settled terms — nothing here has been agreed yet, and the appointment letter that follows acceptance is what records what was.

4. 04

   Compensation

   What the candidate would be paid, at the level of detail an offer carries. A summary rather than the itemised wage structure — that belongs in the appointment letter, where the components have consequences under the Code's definition of wages. Nothing here computes a total.

5. 05

   How long the offer stands

   The date by which the candidate must accept. A date the employer states, never one computed from the letter's own date — an offer that quietly expires on a date nobody wrote down is a dispute waiting to happen.

6. 06

   Acceptance

   How the letter closes and what the candidate's signature means. Says plainly that a letter of appointment follows — which is what keeps this document from being mistaken for the statutory one.

7. 07

   Acceptance

   The other side's own words, accepting what the letter offers. Its own clause in an unnumbered section, because it is not a term of the letter and reading as one — indented under the employer's numbered request — is where it was.

Optional clauses

• What the offer depends on

  The things that must happen before the offer becomes an appointment. Optional, because not every offer is conditional — but where one is, saying so at the outset is what allows the offer to be withdrawn later without it looking like bad faith.

  Worth adding when: the offer depends on checks, documents or a release from a current employer

What the law requires

An offer letter is not an appointment letter

The labour codes require a written appointment letter to be issued to every worker, setting out the terms of the engagement. An offer made before acceptance does not discharge that obligation. The two documents are sent at different moments and do different work.

Code on Wages 2019 and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code 2020, in force from 21 November 2025

A proposal may be revoked, but not without consequence

Under the Indian Contract Act a proposal may be revoked at any time before acceptance is complete. Where a candidate has acted on an offer — resigning from an existing job, relocating — an offer withdrawn afterwards has been treated by Indian courts as giving rise to a claim, and conditions stated openly at the outset are what distinguish a lapsed conditional offer from a broken promise.

Indian Contract Act 1872, ss. 4 and 5

Classification is worth stating early

Whether an engagement is permanent, fixed-term, on probation, contractual or gig work affects gratuity entitlement, the procedure for ending it, and which social security schemes apply. A candidate weighing an offer has an interest in knowing which it is before they accept rather than after.

Industrial Relations Code 2020; Code on Social Security 2020

Compensation stated as cost to company is not wages

Cost to company is a commercial figure and not the measure the labour codes use. What provident fund, gratuity and other statutory entitlements are calculated on is wages as the Code on Wages defines it, which depends on how the components are structured. An offer may be made in cost to company; the appointment letter is where the structure is stated.

Code on Wages 2019, s. 2(y)