Quotation Management for Solar: Proposals That Hold Up After the Site Survey

Customers do not buy kilowatts. They buy a smaller electricity bill and a payback period, and every one of them arrives having been given a savings number by somebody. That number rests on assumptions — irradiation at the location, a performance ratio, a tariff, an export settlement arrangement, a degradation curve — and almost none of those assumptions ever appear on the document that carries the number.

Writing them down changes the sales conversation entirely. An installer whose proposal names its irradiation source and its assumed performance ratio is having a technical discussion. An installer who simply asserts a higher savings figure is having a credibility contest, and credibility contests are won by whoever is willing to be most optimistic. The second kind of installer is also the one who gets the complaint call in year two.

A consumption history tells you what the customer uses. The roof tells you what can actually be installed: usable area after setbacks and access paths, orientation, tilt, parapet heights, water tanks, staircase headroom, existing structures and whatever the family intends to build on the terrace in three years. Sanctioned load and the local utility's rules put a further ceiling on it.

Capturing these on the enquiry record before a number is issued prevents the most common and most damaging failure in residential solar, which is proposing a capacity the roof cannot carry and then reducing it after the customer has already told relatives what they are saving. It is a much easier conversation to open with a constrained size and explain the constraint than to open with an attractive size and retreat from it.

Two proposals for the same capacity, with the same module brand, can differ by a wide margin, and the difference is almost never in the modules. It is in the things a customer cannot see from a summary page.

An installer who itemises these lines can lose a deal honestly and often wins the next one when the customer's neighbour has a problem. An installer who quotes a lump sum is indistinguishable from the cheapest bidder and will be judged as such.

Shading is the variable that decides the layout, and layout decides the cost. A single obstruction across an afternoon can force a different string arrangement, an optimiser or microinverter decision, or a reduction in module count that changes the whole economics of the proposal.

None of that is knowable from a satellite view. Marking the first proposal indicative and treating the survey as the event that produces the real version is not a weakness in the sales process — it is the sales process. A surveyed proposal that shows the revised layout against the original assumption reads as diligence. A silently increased number reads as a bait.

Residential rooftop economics in most markets depend on two things outside the installer's control: whatever capital support scheme the customer may be eligible for, and how the utility settles exported units. Both are policy matters with eligibility conditions, application processes and timelines, and both change.

The discipline is simple. Name the scheme being assumed, state the eligibility conditions the customer must satisfy, and show the figure with and without the assumption. Do the same for the export settlement arrangement. Customers who budget against a net figure and later fail an eligibility test do not blame the policy. They blame the installer who let them assume it, and they are not entirely wrong to.

A rooftop project converts when the customer accepts a specific version, the payment schedule is agreed, the advance is received and the application to the utility is filed. Until those exist there is an enthusiastic conversation, and treating it as a confirmed order is how installers end up holding modules purchased for a job that never came.

Everything after that point belongs in the systems built for it. Procurement, dispatch, installation scheduling, commissioning documentation, warranty registration, subsidy claim filing, tax and your books all continue where they already are. What remains here is the commercial history: the enquiry source, the capacity proposed, the structure and balance of system specified, the assumptions declared, the version accepted, the discount granted and by whose authority, and the honest reason each lost proposal was lost.

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