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Create a Offer Letter
What this document does
An offer of employment made to a candidate, setting out the role, the compensation, anything the offer depends on, and how long it stands. Conditional and provisional: the appointment letter that follows acceptance is what records the agreed terms, and is the document the Code on Wages requires.
Letter
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Offer Letter
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What else is in it — 7 clauses, 1 optional
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
After it is drafted
Giving it to the employee, and keeping the file copy
A letter that stays in the HR system has not been issued. The employee needs their copy for the things other people will ask them to prove — a next employer, a bank, a consulate, a provident fund office — and the employer needs an acknowledged copy on file, because the acknowledgement is what answers a later claim that nothing was ever received. Email with the signed PDF attached does both jobs where the employee has a working address.
Waiting on the acceptance, and dating it
Until it is accepted this is a proposal and nothing more. It can be revoked before then, under ss. 4 and 5 of the Contract Act — but a candidate who has resigned elsewhere on the strength of it is in a different position from one who has not, and that is where withdrawn offers turn into claims. The date acceptance actually arrives is the fact worth recording, since it is what everything after this is measured from.
The appointment letter that follows this one
An offer letter is not an appointment letter, and the labour codes look for a written appointment letter for every worker. The appointment letter is the document that carries the terms of the employment; this one records the proposal that led to it. It is usually issued on or before the joining date rather than left to the first payroll run.