Template: written response to a CSLB complaint (facts in order, numbered exhibits, an offer)
In one paragraph
The letter you send CSLB in the days after the notice arrives, built for the reader who will decide whether the complaint closes at the notice stage or moves to an investigator: your license and the case number; whether the complaint is within the four-year window; the facts in date order with a numbered exhibit beside each one (contract, change orders, permit and inspection record, photographs, options sheet, invoices, the customer's own messages); a paragraph answering each allegation by pointing at an exhibit; and, where it makes sense, a specific offer with a price, a document and a date, without admitting anything. No adjectives, no history of the customer, nothing you cannot attach. Beside the blank, the letter Camila Reyes sent in the three-years-later case.
The rule
The notice CSLB sends to the contractor exists to encourage resolution of the complaint without further intervention (CSLB, Complaint Process Against Licensed Contractors); a complaint resolved in the contractor's favor is not disclosed on the license (B&P 7124.6(c)(1)). The response is built from the records the license law already required you to make and give: the contract copy before work began (7159(c)(3)), written change orders before the changed work (7159(c)(5)), and the incorporated documents (7159(d)(12)), plus the permit record and dated photographs; any corrective repair you offer outside the original scope is a separate service and repair contract limited to that problem (7159.10(a)).
Why it matters
The first letter to CSLB is the only stage where you control the whole record, and most contractors waste it on a phone call or a paragraph about the customer. Written like this, the response gives the Board a reason to close the file at the notice stage, gives the customer a way out that costs you an hour, and, if the complaint goes forward anyway, is the document the investigator reads first and the arbitrator reads last.