Basic guidelines for writing acknowledgment letters.
Draw an outline:
Businesses write the acknowledgment letter for various reasons. Hence, it is better to draft an outline so that you are right on the target. The outline will also provide you points to be discussed. For example, you need to write for acknowledging receipt of a price list. Keep the documents ready and circle the elements you want a clearer view on. It could be the freight charges, price, delivery, payment terms, etc. Make two columns with headings as 'Accepted' and 'To be Discussed,' and fill them accordingly. Decide on the logical order of the information and organize it accordingly.
Start with a rough letter:
No one can write a perfect letter at one go. There will be some addition and deletion before it is ready for mailing. Hence, draft a rough letter first using the outline you have drawn in the first step. Don't bother about the spelling and grammatical mistakes. Simply, put down your thoughts as they come to you. You can keep the editing for the later stage. Once the letter is complete, read it twice. Mark the mistakes and change the sentence wherever it does not sound professional or is difficult to understand. Try to make the letter concise with only needed contents. The key rule is to start the letter with a positive tone regardless of whether you are accepting or rejecting the offer. In both the scenarios, the letter tone has to polite.
Timely Acknowledgment:
You need to accept, or decline anything you are asked for within 48 hours of receiving the acknowledgment source. This way, the sender will not have to keeping guessing about your response. If there is a genuine reason for the delay in writing, you must apologize it and produce a convincing reason for not acting in time