About Solution Templates

Solution templates are partially completed solution definitions used as the basis for creating all new solutions. Solution Templates:

• Define pricing method
• Can pre-define service offerings within a solution
• Can auto-populate a solution into a new project/work order

Solution templates provide a powerful means of increasing the speed and accuracy of creating sales proposals, and providing centralized control over pricing. Solution templates work together with service offerings to produce customer solutions for proposing and contracting.

Solution templates are comprised of:

1. Name and optional description
2. Pricing Options
3. Other Options
4. Available Pre-defined Discounts
5. An optional set of Service Offerings

Solution Templates provide an excellent means of pre-defining a branded set of service offerings as a package, for example, "Gold, Silver, or Bronze." Each solution template can include a different set of individual service offerings within it. The solution "Description" and "scope" fields can automatically be output to sales documents.

You must have administrator or resource management permissions to add and edit solution templates.

From the Resources menu, click Solution Templates.

At the top of the Solution Templates screen, you will see a list of already existing solution templates. If your account has "Legacy Templates", they show up in a separate list below the current solution templates.

From the Solution Templates screen you can access the following actions on each template via icons in the Actions column:

• Edit
• Activate / Inactivate toggle
• Delete

Creating a Solution Template

To create a solution template, click the "Add Template" button and complete the form. The following sections describe the properties:

Name and Description

The name and description fields are for internal use by your staff. The user sees the list of available active solution templates when creating a solution. The Description field is shown when the user selects a solution template option. The description can help the user make a selection by including details about its content (e.g. services included).

Pricing Options

All solution templates must specify the pricing method that will be applied to the solutions created from the solution template. SolarNexus provides two distinct methods for pricing solutions:

• Solution Pricing - Gross Price Input Method - Use this option when you are getting started, or already have a pricing model that you want to continue using instead of using SolarNexus' features for pricing.
• Solution Pricing - Cost Item Method - Use this option to centralize and manage all your pricing and reporting within SolarNexus. We strongly advocate customers implement SolarNexus' cost item pricing to become more disciplined in pricing and profitability. This option includes the following additional feature settings:
  • Add Indirect Costs to Price
  • Hide Price Tab in Solution
  • Default Sales Tax
  • Added Profit Margin

NOTE: The actual end customer pricing will come from the service offering definition. Service offerings can contain pricing for either method, or even both. The solution template decides which pricing method will be used for the entire solution.

Other Options

These options assist with controlling the behavior of solutions generated from the template.

• Auto-Set Solution Name Using PV System Equipment - Use this option to simplify solution naming. When checked, SolarNexus will automatically fill the solution's name field with the quantity, manufacturer name, and model name of the PV module and inverter used in the PV system included in the solution.
• Enforce Specification of Inverter - When checked, SolarNexus will require users to specify an inverter for any PV system that the solution includes.
• Use Specified Document Template for Sales Proposals - When checked, SolarNexus will automatically use the document template you specify for any sales proposal generated for the solution. Do not use this option if you want the sales person to have flexibility to select from different sales proposal presentations.

See Document Templates for more information.

Service Offerings

A solution template may include pre-defined Service Offerings (PV, EE Measures, Energy Storage, Other). This simplifies the set of steps required to create a complex scope of work that may have multiple services. Although inclusion of service offerings in a solution template is optional, you should determine what collection of services may go together routinely and create a solution template for that set.

Legacy Solution Templates

Any solution templates created before the December 2018 release of SolarNexus are "Legacy" style. Legacy solution templates work differently and can no longer be created. However they are still supported for use in creating solutions.

NOTE: SolarNexus strongly recommends Migrating Legacy Solution Templates to new service offerings and new solution templates as soon as possible.

The solution template was originally envisioned as a way to support quoting of PV systems only. As such, these legacy solution templates are monolithic and present challenges to accurately defining scopes of work and pricing when selling any other services with PV. 

Legacy Solution Templates also included:

• Name, description
• scope values (optional)
• Pricing Method (required)
  • If method = cost items, included Cost Item Groups and cost items
• Pre-defined PV system (optional, relatively unusual)
• Pre-defined EE Measure (optional, predecessor to today's service offerings)
• Controls for:
  • Auto-set name
  • Enforce specification of Inverter
  • Add indirect costs to solution price
  • Hide cost screen from user
  • Use specified template

Structure of Legacy Solution Templates:

Solution Templates are now broken apart into Service Offerings and a Simplified Structure of New Solution Templates: