Five places solar jobs lose money

Most solar jobs don't lose money on the roof. They lose it when the job passes from one person to the next.

A detail gets dropped along the way. Weeks later, you pay for it with a second trip or with extra work nobody billed.

Here are the five places we watch most closely. For each one, you'll see what goes wrong and how to fix it.

1. From sale to operations

Your sales rep knows things the install crew needs. The main panel is full. The customer wants the conduit run through the garage. The side gate has to stay shut because of the dog.

If those details stay in the rep's head or a notes field, operations finds out on install day.

That costs you in redesigns and second site visits. It also costs you when the customer expects work your price never covered.

How to fix it:

Make key job details required answers on the quote. Roof type, main panel rating, conduit route, and battery location should never be buried in notes.
Build the project from what you sold. The person who schedules the job should see the exact scope the customer signed.
Walk through each signed job with the rep before it moves on. If the rep promised something that isn't written down, write it down then.
Treat every change after signing as a change order, even when it's free. Then your paperwork always matches the work.

2. From signed contract to permit

A signed job with no permit submitted is your most at-risk job. The customer is excited, but nothing seems to be happening.

Each week of waiting gives the customer time for second thoughts. If they cancel now, you lose the site survey and design work you've already paid for.

Jobs usually stall here for ordinary reasons. The plan set is waiting on one roof measurement. The HOA form is sitting on someone's desk. Or a plan reviewer sent back a correction, and nobody owns it.

How to keep it moving:

Give each permit and utility application one owner, and a status the whole office can see.
Log each round of corrections: what the reviewer asked for, and when you sent it back. Your next permit in that area will need fewer changes.
Track how many days each job has waited since signing. You don't need an industry benchmark. You need to see which of your own jobs are getting old.
Tell the customer where the permit stands before they have to ask.

3. From finished install to invoice

The crew finishes on Thursday, and the completion photos are on someone's phone. The office hears about it on Monday. The invoice goes out on Wednesday.

By then, the customer who was thrilled last week has questions about the bill. And every day between finished work and a sent invoice is another day you wait to get paid.

Extras get missed here too. The customer asks for a critter guard on site. The crew makes a second trip for a missing part. If nobody writes these down before the crew leaves, they never get billed.

What to change:

Set payment milestones when you sell the job. Tie each one to a stage of the work. When a stage is done, its invoice is due.
Don't count a visit as done until the completion report is in. That means photos, commissioning readings, and the customer's signature.
Check every day for finished work that hasn't been invoiced. The list stays short when you check it daily. It gets long when you check it monthly.
Take payment on site for service work. A tech who can take a card before leaving saves you a collections call.

4. From invoice to QuickBooks

Many companies keep their books in QuickBooks and run their jobs somewhere else. Trouble starts in the gap between the two.

Invoices get typed twice. A payment gets recorded in one system but not the other. At month end, nobody trusts the aging report.

The worst case is calling a customer about an invoice they already paid. That one call can undo the goodwill you earned over the whole install.

What to set up:

Choose one system for creating invoices, and create them only there.
Before you connect the two systems, match customers by email so you don't create duplicates. Decide up front how you'll set up jobs as sub-customers.
Map your products, services, and income accounts once. Then solar, battery, and service revenue each go to the account your bookkeeper expects.
Reconcile every week. Compare what each system shows as open and paid, and fix differences while they're small.

5. From install to service

After permission to operate (PTO), it's easy to move on to the next job. The customer goes quiet until something breaks.

Then the first sign of trouble is an angry phone call. Or it's another company's truck in the driveway.

This step decides whether a customer is one job or a relationship that lasts for years.

It's also where warranty money goes missing. Without serial numbers and install photos, a warranty claim turns into a trip you pay for.

What to put in place:

Save the system details before the crew leaves: equipment, serial numbers, and photos of the finished work.
Connect monitoring at install. Then you see a problem before the customer calls you about it.
Offer a maintenance plan at the kitchen table, while the customer is already buying.
Give customers one simple way to ask for help. Give each request an owner and a due date.

Start with written rules

None of these fixes needs new software. Each one starts with a written rule. What has to be true before the job moves on? And who owns it next?

Write those rules down first. Then choose tools that help your team follow them every time.

How solarOS helps at each step

We built solarOS while running solar and trades companies, so all five of these steps are built in.

The job details your rep records on the quote carry into the project, so the crew sees exactly what was sold.
A permit step keeps the install on hold until the approval comes back. Corrections and re-inspections are tracked on the project.
When a stage of work is done, solarOS drafts its invoice.
Invoices sync to QuickBooks Online, and payments recorded there sync back.
Each service request gets an owner and a due date. From a monitoring alert, create a quote or a work order.