Proposing & Selling a Project (Docs)

SolarNexus assists your sales staff to easily create customized documents including proposals and contracts, as well as automatically filling in data to PDF forms provided by utilities and other agencies.

This article includes information about:

• Generating Docs
• Proposals
• Contracts
• Other Docs
• Forms (Third-party PDFs)

Generating Docs

All types of documents are created from the "Docs" screen within a job solution. Once an analysis has been completed, you can begin assembling your sales proposal/presentation. Each solution has its own set of documents.

All documents are created from templates. SolarNexus provides free to use document templates, and custom templates can be created for use by your company. See Document Templates to learn how to enable use of SolarNexus templates, or create your own.

In short, the process for creating any document goes like this:

1. Click to create a selected type of document (proposal, contract, other, or form).
2. Pick a specific template of that type.
3. Provide a name for the document (SolarNexus strongly suggests that administrators pre-define a naming format for proposals and contracts using Project Settings, so that names are auto-populated for users).
4. Click generate.

On creation of any of these documents, SolarNexus will populate the given document with all the data for the current solution and show the generated document in a list of documents for this solution.

OPTIONAL Editing. Although SolarNexus generally recommends against allowing users to directly edit generated documents, the administrator can configure a document template to allow editing prior to PDF generation. If this is the case with a document you generate, then SolarNexus will present the populated document within an editor. This editor is good for making changes to text in the document, however, we strongly suggest avoiding ANY types of layout or formatting changes. Once edits are complete, you can Save the document and then click the Generate a PDF button.

All created PDFs are automatically placed into the Job File section of the Management Panel.

You can download PDFs by clicking the PDF icon for each document. You can also see previews of documents from the Files panel by clicking on their names.

Note that once a PDF is created, it is static. PDF's DO NOT CHANGE IF YOU CHANGE THE SOLUTION. So if you make changes to a solution after you've created a document, that document's content will not reflect those changes. SolarNexus will provide prominent warnings on the Docs screen when your solution is changed and docs are older than the changes. You should use the regenerate feature to update docs to ensure that they are in sync.

Proposals

There are no special additional content items for proposal documents. However, there are a couple of options that may be reflected during and after proposal creation:

• Pre-selected proposal template. You may not be given the option to select a template because your administrator may have pre-selected the template for you when defining the Solution Templates.
• Web-enabled. A proposal may be enabled for presentation as a web page. 
• See Web Enabled Proposals.

Contracts

When generating a contract, the following additional content can be included:

• Payment Schedules. If the selected contract template includes the "Payment Schedule" variable, SolarNexus will prompt you to select a Payment Schedule template. The payment schedule template defines a set of payment events and associated payment amounts. These are defined by your administrator. Once you select a payment schedule template, you will see a table icon that can be clicked to view, and edit the generated payment schedule.
• Estimated Project Start and Completion dates. If your administrator has enabled users to input start and completion dates, you will see a pair of input boxes for inputting estimated start and completion dates for the project. Depending on how your administrator has defined the means for defining the dates (see Admin - Company Information), you will either input a number of days relative to the contract date, OR input specific calendar dates.

• Right to Cancel period. You will see this item when creating a contract. Depending on administrative setting (see Admin - Company Information), you will see one of the following cases for the right to cancel box:

  • a value in the box that cannot be edited
  • a value in the box that can be edited
  • a box with no value

  Be sure to input an appropriate value for your situation. 

  NOTE: State of CA implemented a new law stating that as of January 1,  2021, contracts made with senior citizens must provide for a 5-day right to cancel provision, whereas all others must include a 3-day right to cancel provision. This feature allows the user to input the right to cancel based on each individual customer.

Other Docs

Clicking "Create Other Document" will allow you to select from all document templates that are not a "Proposal" or "Contract". Typical examples include change orders, and crew work order reports. There are no special features associated with these other types of documents.

Forms

Typically after the sale of a new project, your team will be charged with completing a variety of administrative paperwork such as utility interconnection agreements and incentive application forms. These are documents provided by third parties. SolarNexus can auto-fill much of these forms, as well as collect e-signatures using DocuSign. Completing PDF forms uses a different kind of template called a "form template."

See Auto-Fill PDF forms for how to enable and use them.

Tracking Proposals and Sales

You must complete the “Propose to Customer” milestone for each solution that you actually present to the customer. Completing the "Proposed" milestone puts the solution into a read-only state so that it cannot be edited. This is to ensure that your solution in SolarNexus doesn't get out of sync with what you've already presented to the customer (prevents you or anybody else on your team from changing the solution from what you presented to the customer). If you need to make a change, you should clone your solution (click clone icon in the solution's heading) to create a copy which you can then edit and create a new proposal for your customer. You may propose multiple solutions, but only ONE may be sold.

You can complete the “Propose to Customer” milestone either before or after you actually present the proposal to the customer, but you should always set the date on which you actually presented the proposal to the customer. Proposed jobs are tracked in the Sales screen.

If you are able to close the sale, you must complete the “Close Sale” milestone by setting its date. For clarity and convenience, SolarNexus creates a new "Solution of Record" section which shows summary information about the sold solution. You can still access the unsold solutions by using the pull-down Solutions menu.

Upon completion of the Sold milestone, the job is moved to from the Installs screen for tracking and management by your operations team. (Operations menu > Installs).

TIP: If the customer cancels the contract after the sale and you want to remove the project from your active jobs, you can complete the "Cancel Project" milestone and set a reason. If the customer rescinds the contract, but still wants to work with you, you can uncomplete the Sold milestone, thereby returning the solution to its Proposed status. The job is then returned to the Sales screen for tracking.

Sales Hand-off to Project Implementation

The project implementation phase is loosely defined as everything that happens between the sale and the completion of construction related activities. It includes creating design drawings, applying for permits and incentives, procuring materials, installing the system, having it inspected, applying for and obtaining a permit to operate from the utility, and commissioning the system. By using SolarNexus through the sales process, the hand-off from the sales to the project implementation team can be seamless.

Also, relevant employees on the implementation side of the business should be set up to receive automated notifications of sold projects. Select Users from the Administration screen and select a user to receive Sold milestone notifications. In the user edit screen, select notifications at the bottom of the screen.

SolarNexus can help choreograph your company through the complex set of project implementation activities by:

• Tracking completion of key milestones
• Notifying relevant users when pertinent milestones are reached
• Providing a centralized location for all project participants to get/put information (files, notes, etc)
• Creating and managing requests for quotes (RFQs) and purchase orders (POs) as needed

TIP: To view the status of multiple projects in the implementation phase, click the Installs link from the Operations menu. You can sort the projects by the last standard milestone completed.