Working with Installa

A solar job is never one company’s job

The panels come from a distributor, the scaffold from a scaffolder, the connection from a network operator, and often the money from a lender. Most of what goes wrong on a job goes wrong at the joins. Installa is built for the installer, and this page is what it can do, and cannot yet do, for the people around them.

Manufacturers

Your range, in the tool installers design with

Send us your datasheets and we carry your products in the reference library for nothing, marked as supplied by you. No paid placement, and no report on what installers fit.

For manufacturers
Distributors and wholesalers

“A photo of a list, written in the van.”

Orders that arrive as a photograph of a handwritten sheet, with the wrong part number for the optimiser and no clamp count, cost your counter staff the time to re-key them and cost the installer a return. Nobody on either side enjoys the phone call that follows.

An Installa quote already lists every product and quantity in the design, down to the cable runs, because the quote is built from the drawing. What installers can do with that today, and what we are building, is on the right.

Today
  • Installers can load your price list into their own product catalogue from a spreadsheet, and update prices in bulk when yours change.
  • Every quote itemises the products and quantities in the design, so what they order is what they drew.
Being built
  • A materials list separate from the quote: part numbers and quantities as a file you can load, with no prices from us, ever.
  • If you would take that list straight into your ordering system, we would like to talk to you before we settle the format.
Scaffolders, electricians, roofers

“Nobody told me the date had moved.”

The scaffold goes up on the original Thursday. The install moved to the following Tuesday. The installer pays for a week of scaffold nobody used, and you have a crew standing in the wrong street.

Installa keeps the installer’s side of that straight: one calendar, the customer emailed when a date moves, and the scaffold and subcontract work costed on the job. What it does not do yet is let you in.

Today
  • Installers record subcontract costs, scaffold included, against each job, so the work you do is priced into the quote rather than absorbed.
  • Access notes, the design and the site photographs are on the job for the installer to send you.
Not yet
  • There is no login for an outside trade, and no automatic notice to a scaffolder or electrician when a date moves. Both are in the plan. If that would change how you work with your installers, tell us, because it decides the order we build things in.
Everyone else around the installer

Trainers, certification bodies, lenders, software

If your business depends on installers doing the job properly and keeping a record of it, we probably want the same things.

Training providers and umbrella schemes

Installa keeps, per job, the MCS and DNO items required for what was installed, with due dates and the certificate attached. If you teach or certify the paperwork, we would like to check that what Installa asks for matches what you require.

Finance and lenders

Installa does not offer or arrange finance and takes no payment. A quote does carry the estimated generation, savings and payback, worked out by the MCS method. If your customers need those figures in a particular form, tell us.

Other software

There is a documented REST API for customers, jobs, tasks, contacts and quotes, with API keys limited to what each may do, and signed webhooks. Accounts packages, job-sheet apps and monitoring platforms can connect that way today. There is no accounts integration built in.

Tell us where the join breaks

The most useful thing you can send us is a description of what goes wrong between you and your installers. It decides what we build next.

Or write to sales@installa.com.