Create a stunning proposal in Nearmap on OpenSolar
This module is ideal for:
Nearmap on OpenSolar Admins and Team Members
At the end of this module you will:
- Set up a proposal template from scratch.
- Understand how to customise the proposal template.
- Learn how to create other types of templates.
- Get familiar with the lead generation feature.
Give your business the professional edge by creating smart, comprehensive and beautiful proposals and other documents for your customers. In this moduel you'll find out how to set up from scratch a proposal template that you can either send to your customer as an interactive web link or as a pdf.
Let’s dive in!
Energy Yield Report
For those of you who are transitioning from Classic MapBrowser and are looking for a very simple proposal in pdf output, then this section is for you. OpenSolar has provided a template called the Energy Yield Report, which will produce something very similar to the proposal generated from Classic MapBrowser. While this is a good stop gap, we do hope that in time you’ll see just how much more the interactive proposal gives your customers. But for now, let’s take a look at the Energy Yield Report.
- You’ll find the Energy Yield report in Control Zone under Other > Document templates.
- Press CREATE DOCUMENT TEMPLATE. Give your template a name. You can simply call it Energy Yield Report.
- Select Energy Yield Report from the dropdown and press SAVE.
- To generate an energy yield report for a project, head to Projects Zone, bring the project into view, scroll all the way to the bottom and hit GENERATE FILE.
- From the dropdown select Energy Yield Report.
- Press GENERATE. When it’s ready, you’ll be able to click the DOWNLOAD button.
Now your simple report is ready to send to your customer.
Starting the interactive template
If you want an interactive proposal for your customer, we recommend you create one residential proposal template (and one commercial if this is relevant to your business). You'll also find out how you can add useful content into your proposal to showcase your business and give your company the edge over your competitors.
- In Control Zone under Purchase Experience, click Proposal Template.
- Now hit the + CREATE button at the top right or the CREATE PROPOSAL TEMPLATES button that appears if you have no proposal templates set up.
- Enter a title for your template, set it as default and press SAVE.
- Find your new template in the list and click the EDIT button.
- Slide the Is Default toggle to make this your default template.
- Dropdown Proposal Settings and enter your validity days.
- Check the elements and graphs that you want to display in the proposal. If you want to reposition any of this content in the proposal, just click the up or down arrow against the item.
- The case studies included here (by checking the box) are those you create a few steps down… You'll see that a bit further down.
- You can display up to four Featured Figures. If you want to change any you simply click the dropdown arrow and select the one you want. It will replace the original figure you clicked on.
- Press SAVE.
There’s a lot more you can set up here. It’s a good idea to play with this and see how it looks by exporting to pdf. You can consult OpenSolar’s documentation for more detail. Check out the Extra Resources links on this page.
Information you set up outside of the template
Contract template
Go to Purchase Experience and under Contract Template is where you enter the customer terms and conditions. That appears on your proposal pdf or when the customer hits accept and pay proposal on the interactive version.
Check out experience - yes, you can manage payments through OpenSolar!
Let’s not forget the important part – getting paid. Set up how you want your customer to pay you via the Checkout Experience (also under Purchase Experience).
If you want to accept credit card payments through OpenSolar via your interactive proposal, you would need to set up a Stripe account. It's a free account and OpenSolar’s support site has instructions on how to do this. You can find the link on this page.
- Enable the checkout
- Give your acceptance a name.
- Enter your Stripe account details.
- Press SAVE.
Not wanting online credit card payments? No problem, just toggle the Credit Card Stripe option off.
For an offline payment enter your surcharges and your bank details. In the example shown in this screen shot, I've created a table in Word, included all the ways that the customer can pay me: bank details, PayPal, Bpay and pay ID, then just copied and pasted it into the Offline Payment Details box shown below. These details will appear on the proposal.
Case studies
Remember earlier you checked the box in the proposal template to include case studies? Here’s where you can enter that information: you can put in brief testimonials from your customers, link to videos and upload a photo of a successful job that you want the customer to see. Just go to Case Studies under Purchase Experience.
Utility tariffs and incentives
Under Other is OpenSolar’s utility tariff database. You can create your own if you need to.
Back in the project zone is where you add the current tariff and the proposed tariff, to the project record, if you wish (this is touched on in the next module - where you prepare and send the proposal).
Beneath this you can set up incentives and opt to apply any of these automatically to a proposal, for example, if you’re always working in one state you will always apply that state’s incentive.
For example, you can edit STC point of sale discount:
- Click on EDIT, and then change the incentive price.
- Then you can choose if you want to have the incentive paid to the customer or to the installer.
There are five different types of incentives you can choose from. Read more about incentives on OpenSolar's support site. There's a link in the Extra Resources section of this module.
Document templates - tailor a suite of reports for your customers
You might want an energy yield report, an installation job pack, or an owner's manual. You just need to make sure that that document template is here (under Other > Document Templates) and you’ll be able to select it from the Projects Zone with the project in view.
Let’s say you want an owner's manual:
- Click CREATE DOCUMENT TEMPLATE.
- Give it a title and select Owners Manual from the list.
- Press SAVE.
- You can enter a description if you wish.
These little sections shown in the screen shot below are placeholders. OpenSolar uses them to pull information from your account: for example business name will be your company name.
- There’s a fair bit of customisation you can do, and this is a more advanced topic than this session covers. You can find more information on OpenSolar’s support site.
- If you’re happy with that, press SAVE.
Lead generation
Under Lead Capture Forms you’ll find a little form that generates a unique html string that you can embed in your website or Facebook business page. Once deployed, this code will produce an embedded lead capture form that customers can use to get in touch. On the OpenSolar end, any customer feedback you get from this form pops into your projects for you to action or for you to assign to another team member. How cool is that?
Closing
Now you have a beautiful, professional and comprehensive solar proposal, and other cool assets that will wow your customer and give you the edge over your competitors. In the module “Send the Proposal” you’ll learn how you have the flexibility to send your proposal as a pdf or as an interactive web link which your customer can sign online.
While you’re there, you’ll find links to OpenSolar articles and ways to sign up to OpenSolar’s regular newsletter and deep dive webinars.
