In this guide 6 sections
Follow one rooftop job from survey to service visit, checking that survey notes feed the proposal, the proposal feeds the bill of materials and commissioning serials drive warranty calls. A broken link costs you later. Make every vendor demo walk the whole chain.
Walk one job through every stage before any demo
Take a finished 10 kW rooftop job and list every hand-off from enquiry to service visit, noting where a notebook or WhatsApp photo carried the data. Those gaps are your real requirements. A brochure rarely lists them.
Most installers find one pattern: the survey sits in a notebook, the proposal in a spreadsheet, the purchase list is retyped from it, and panel serials are never recorded.
Write the stages down in order. Bring that list to every vendor and insist that each demo follows your sequence rather than the vendor’s favourite screens, because a feature tour hides your gaps. Watch who skips survey photos and site paperwork. That is where installers lose the most time.
- Site survey with roof type, shading and photos
- Proposal with panel count, inverter size and layout
- Purchase order against the approved bill of materials
- Commissioning and net-metering paperwork
- Warranty, service visits and renewals
Survey and proposal should share one record
A survey captures roof area, azimuth, tilt, shadow readings, main breaker rating and meter type, and the proposal tool should read every field directly instead of asking again. Retyping is how a wrong string size reaches the roof, and nobody sees the typo until the inverter trips on overvoltage during the first cold morning.
Ask whether a revised proposal keeps its older versions, because customers change their minds about panel brand or battery backup halfway through the quote. Record the approved version and the signatory.
Check the printed output too. A clean PDF with an expected generation figure, the layout drawing and the payment terms can save a full working day on every quote. Ask to see one produced from live data, since staged samples hide missing fields such as shading loss or the cable run length.
Procurement and stores decide whether the crew can start
A crew reaches the site and the mounting rails are two short, a stores problem that began days earlier when nobody reserved the bill of materials. Ask how it flags shortages.
See how it counts panels, inverters, DC cable, earthing kits and breakers, because cable sold by the metre and panels sold by the piece behave differently when counted. Mixed units break simple spreadsheets. Inverters often arrive late, so plan for it.
The system should show which jobs wait on which purchase order, so the coordinator can reschedule a crew on Monday instead of discovering the gap on Wednesday morning. Idle crews cost the most.
- Reserve stock per job from the approved bill of materials
- Show shortages before dispatch
- Record goods receipt against each purchase order
- Track damaged panels and returns separately
Commissioning is where the record is made or lost
The crew should log panel serials, the inverter serial, string voltage and a photo of the earthing pit on a phone form that works with weak signal. Paper typed up that evening loses detail.
Check whether commissioning data links to the customer and warranty period, because serials left in a photo gallery turn a late claim into a hunt through old phones. Ask for a serial search.
Subsidy and net-metering files have their own steps and dates, and the tool should track each document so that an application never stalls quietly in somebody’s inbox. Request a demo of a file waiting on the distribution company, with the date it was submitted and the person chasing it.
- Serials captured per panel and per inverter
- String voltage and insulation readings
- Customer sign-off at handover
- Net-metering and subsidy file status
Service, renewals and the questions to put to a vendor
After handover the job becomes a relationship. Panel cleaning, inverter alarms, warranty expiry and maintenance contracts all need dates the office sees at a glance, such as a renewal view of the next ninety days.
Ask who keeps your records if you leave, whether every job exports as CSV, and how long a new site engineer needs to learn the phone app. Crew turnover makes training time real.
Finish with a trial. Run five live jobs through the tool for a month, then sit with the crew and list every point where they reached for paper again. Those points show what the tool missed. Take the list back to the vendor and settle every item in writing before you sign anything that runs for a full year.
Solar vendor question sheet
The sheet has columns for stage, what you need and the vendor’s answer, with rows for survey, proposal, bill of materials, stores, commissioning, net-metering file, warranty and renewals. A last block records the trial result, the CSV export test, the crew’s paper-fallback list and the name of the support contact at the vendor.
Open a blank worksheet to printQuestions owners ask
Should a small solar installer start with one tool for everything?
Start with the stage that loses you the most time, usually survey to proposal or stores, then pick a tool that can grow into commissioning and service.
What should a solar installer ask about data ownership?
Ask whether every job, serial number and document can be exported as CSV or PDF, and what happens to your data if the contract ends.
Does the installation crew need a mobile app?
Yes, because commissioning data is captured on the roof, where the form must work with weak signal, take photos and sync later. Nothing should wait for the evening.
How long should a trial run?
Run live jobs for about a month, long enough to cover one purchase, one installation and one service call, with each job entered only in the tool. Then list what stayed on paper.