Using SolarNexus When you Work as a Subcontractor

You can use SolarNexus to effectively manage jobs where your company is acting as a sub-contractor to a general contractor or other solar company.

The most important decision to make, is who you consider to be your Customer. You have two options for how you input the Customer:

1. Use the customer fields for the Solar Company who you are installing for (your actual customer)
2. Use customer fields to capture the homeowner information

SolarNexus recommends using the Customer fields for the one who your company would interact with the most - as it makes the contact information a little more accessible. SolarNexus tracks both parties either way.

In most cases, the general contractor or partner solar company will be the one who you interact with the most, so we explain the process below making that assumption. You would add the end customer information in the Other participants section (on the Project screen).

No matter which way you end up using the Customer fields, we recommend creating a list of partner companies as Lead Sources. You can create a lead source category called "Partner Companies" and input a separate lead source for each one.

When partner company gives you a new project to install, the process should go as follows:

1. Add a new lead as follows:
   1. If first time entering a job for this partner company, click New Lead. Select Business as the type and type in the partner solar/general contractor name. Input name and contact info for your contact at the partner company. Select the partner company name as the lead source. Input the job site address into the site address field.
   2. If this is adding a new project for an existing partner contractor, you can just add a new project to the existing partner's record. You can pull up the existing customer by inputting that company's name into the search box, then you'll see that company in the results. Click the "+" icon to add a new project to that solar company customer. In the dialog that opens, you can input the site install address and modify the project name as makes sense for you.
2. Input any additional info on the Project screen and save.
3. Click Add Participant, enter the homeowner's name and contact info, and select "occupant" and "PV System Owner" as the roles. Click Save.
4. Complete the lead qualified milestone
5. Add Solution.
6. Add PV System, skip drawing array areas. Select module you are installing, and then input the arrays to be installed (roof name, azimuth, tilt, and qty of panels).
7. Add inverter(s)
8. Input your sale price
9. Skip the Analysis
10. Docs > probably not needed, but its possible to create a quote or install order, etc for that client solar company.
11. Click Proposed
12. Click Sold
13. Manage rest of process using milestones.

If you decide to go use the Customer fields to hold the end customer's information (i.e. the homeowner in the residential case), the process above is essentially the same, but you add a new customer each time - making the homeowner your customer, using the Lead Source to capture the partner solar/general contractor name, and adding the partner solar/general contractor as the "General Contractor" in the Participants section (as you start typing in the name, it will auto-complete so you just connect that one record to many projects).