The day of the survey is the warmest a customer will ever be. Every day the quote takes after that is spent cooling them down.
Part of the series What a solar quote should contain.
Three weeks from the roof to the inbox
The surveyor comes down the ladder on Tuesday with a head full of the job: thirteen panels, a tight cable run, scaffold on the neighbour's side. Wednesday is an install. On Friday the designer rings to ask which side the consumer unit was on. The design gets done the following Tuesday, on a laptop that is in the van. The price comes from last quarter's spreadsheet, the scaffold line says TBC, and the quote goes out in the third week saying fourteen panels. The customer rings to ask why the drawing shows thirteen. By then another firm has been out, surveyed and quoted.
Nobody in that story was slow. They were rushed off their feet. The quote was late because the work between the survey and the send had no fixed order, no owner for each step, and no clock anyone could see.
Customers compare on price, and plenty decide on it. But a quote that arrives in three days is in the comparison. One that arrives in three weeks is answering a question the customer stopped asking.
Nobody decided to take three weeks. Four things went wrong instead.
- The survey was never written down. It lived in the surveyor's head and a folder of photos. Every fact the designer needed took a phone call, and the calls waited for the surveyor to be off a roof.
- The design lived on one laptop. Only one person could open it, price it or check it, so the job stopped whenever that person did.
- The price came from memory. The price list was a spreadsheet on one computer. The scaffold went out as TBC because the number was not to hand, so the customer had a quote with a hole in it.
- Nobody checked it, and nobody was counting the days. The panel count on the quote and on the drawing were never put side by side. With no number of days for survey to quote, the third week looked no different from the first.
None of these is a skills problem. Each is a missing step or a missing owner.
Four days, in a fixed order
Each day has one job and one owner. Start it on paper the first time round, with a survey sheet and a diary.
Day 0: write the survey up before you go home
The surveyor writes the job up the same day, in fields, not in a paragraph. Roof covering, pitch and orientation. The panel count pencilled on the roof. Supply phase and the state of the consumer unit. Where the inverter and any battery will go. The cable route. Whether scaffold is needed, on which elevation, and what is in the way. A blank field means it was not looked at, and the designer asks now rather than on Friday.
Day 1: the design, from the sheet
The designer works from the sheet, not from a phone call. Panels laid out on the roof, strings sized to the inverter, and the DNO route settled: whether the inverter's output means a G98 notification or a G99 application under the DNO engineering recommendations. The design is stored where the salesperson can open it, because the salesperson needs it next.
Day 2: price from the list, not from memory
Every line comes off a price list with today's price on it: the kit from the design at the design's quantities, labour, the DNO work, the MCS registration. Scaffold on its own line with a number on it: ring the scaffolder that morning, or use your standard price for a standard elevation and say so. Never TBC. VAT set on each line: under HMRC's rules, energy-saving materials and their installation in residential accommodation are zero-rated until 31 March 2027 and carry the reduced rate after, so a domestic PV and battery job is 0% today and an EV charger on the same quote is not. And a valid-until date, so the customer knows the price has a life.
Day 3: check it, send it, book the follow-ups
Someone who did not build the quote spends five minutes with it and the design side by side. Panel count. Inverter model. Scaffold present. VAT right. Then look at it as the customer will see it, and send it. The same day, put two dates in the diary: a call three or four days after sending, and a nudge a few days before the price runs out. The follow-ups are booked when the quote goes, not when someone remembers.
The routine survives a busy week only if each day has a name on it
The day dropped first is Day 0, because the surveyor is tired and the write-up feels like admin. Two things stop that. Make the write-up part of the survey, not a job after it: the survey is not finished until the sheet is. And give each day one owner with a stand-in, so that when the designer is on a roof the quote is somebody else's problem rather than nobody's. Then put the number of days survey to quote is allowed to take where everyone can see it, and look at any job past it that morning.
Installa runs the four days for you
- Stop writing the survey as a paragraph. The survey form on the job has a field for each thing the quote depends on: supply phase and MPAN, loft access, inverter and battery locations with a check against the PAS 63100 battery location rules, cable route, scaffold notes. Completing it moves the job on to its next stage.
- Stop keeping the design on a laptop. The 3D designer is on the job, so whoever prices the quote opens the roof the designer drew. Every change to the panels or the inverter is checked against string voltage and current and the G98 or G99 route.
- Stop pricing from memory. A quote built from the design carries the design's components at the design's quantities, priced from your price list, and a product with no price shows as unpriced, not as zero. Templates add your standard lines in one go. Each line carries its own VAT rate, with the domestic 0% rule applied for you.
- Stop hoping it is right. Before a quote goes, Installa says what stops it (no customer, no lines, a total of nothing) and what is worth a second look (a line with no price, a validity date already passed), and shows the quote exactly as the customer will see it.
- Stop chasing by hand. Sending stamps the validity date. The customer reads the quote online, asks a question on it and accepts it there. You can see when it has been opened, and a quote with no answer after three days is flagged for a call. Switch on quote reminders and the customer is emailed a nudge a set number of days after sending, and again three days before the price runs out.
- Stop counting the days. Each pipeline stage has a target in days, set when the account is created, and a customer sitting past it is flagged.
Survey written up the same day, design the next, price from the list, a five-minute check, then send with a date and book the follow-ups. That is the whole routine, and the quote screens are built around it. See how quoting in Installa works, and check a string before you draw it with the string sizing calculator.