Using the Financial task

Completing the Easy PV Financial task is an important part of designing and selling a PV system. The task has two main areas of focus:

• Create an accurate quotation to give to the customer. You can fully cost the materials and services that will be included as part of the installation and set the relevant tax and apply any grants or discounts. Using the Financial task and the Customer Proposal task, you can configure how you want the quote to be presented in the final customer proposal document.
• Generate estimated financial projections for the installed system over time. This is important as it will help the customer understand if they are making a good investment by showing likely costs and benefits and how long it might take for the system to break even. You can also include loans, running costs and other custom savings and set up payment stages.

Getting started with the financial task

We recommend setting up automatic pricing rules and financial defaults via your account preferences or pro account settings. This will speed up the time it takes for you to generate an accurate quotation and projections for your project. 

You can access the financial task via the 'Tasks' drop-down menu or from the task list to the left on the project overview page. 

When the financial task first opens, you'll be shown a popup that lets you configure the settings you want to use for the quote and projections. It will open on 'Self-consumption' and then you can use the right hand navigation to choose the settings you want to edit:

If you have set defaults via your account preferences, these will be automatically applied here. More information on each of the settings is available below.

When you have finished updating the settings, click Save & Exit. This will then allow you to view and modify the quotation and view the projection.  

Navigating the financial task 

The right hand sidebar contains options to switch between the quotation and the projection view:

You also have the following actions:

Quotation view 

In the quotations view, you can view and edit the quotation under the following headings: 

• Goods: Here you can see the full kit list and add or delete any items. To the right is the option to display or hide the markup and edit the quote view.
• Services: If using automatic pricing, you will see your service totals and can then make any adjustment. If not using automatic pricing, you can add your services costs here.
• Total: Below, you will be able to see the total cost of the system for the customer, including any grants or discounts applied via the financial settings you've applied to the project.

Projections view

For more details on the financial projection and how you can improve it, see Understanding the Financial Projection.

At the top of this page you will see the annual generation, payback period, internal rate of return and net present value. A positive net present value is a good indication that the project is financially worthwhile. You will also see the following details about the projection: 

• Income and savings: This graph shows the projected income from the system over the project lifetime in payments for generated and exported electricity, along with electricity savings.
• Running costs and loan: If a running cost is included or finance option is selected, then these will show up in these graphs.
• Bottom line: This graph will then indicate the cumulative costs and benefits of the system. When these two lines intersect is when the system benefits become equal to the cumulative costs, after this time the customer is projected to gain from their solar system.
• Payment options: On the right-hand side you can view and the payment options on this project. Switch between them to see the impact they have on the financials for this project. 

Configuring the financial settings

The following sections explain all the settings you can configure. Click Financial inputs in the top right of the financial task to open these settings. 

Self consumption

The proportion of electricity generated from a solar array that is used in a property can significantly affect financial returns. Easy PV has multiple methods you can use to calculate self-consumption which you can select from. Read here about the differences between the MCS and Easy PV methods. 

• MCS (UK): this can only be used with flat tariffs, can be used for projects with consumption between 1500-6000kWh, generation below 6000kWh and usable batter capacity below 15.1kWh. 
• Easy PV: this can be used for a project of any size and can be used with variable tariffs. Information on setting up variable tariffs can be found in our tariffs guide. Set up export limits and configure battery charging. 
• Custom percentage: Input a self-consumption fraction directly. This will not model the impacts of a battery and is just calculated based on the total estimated annual generation. 

  When using a custom percentage the Battery Storage section in the Customer Proposal will not generate. If you would like this to generate, select the MCS or Easy PV self-consumption.

Pricing calculation

Here you can select which pricing calculation to use, with the option of selecting between the following:

• Manual pricing: set a default markup on goods and input service costs on each project
• Automatic pricing: set a default markup on goods and automatically configure service costs for each project. Service costs will be calculated according to rules that you set.

  Guidance on how to set up your own automatic pricing settings can be found in the automatic pricing guide. 

Financial settings

See how these settings impact the financial projection. You can set default values for this section in your account or pro financial settings or adjust them on a project by project basis. 

• Projection term: the number of years you wish to make financial projections. This should be approximately the expected lifespan of the equipment. 

• Inflation rate: this is the inflation rate for your financial projection.
  

  This base inflation rate will be applied to all costs and savings, you can set a different inflation rate for tariffs.

• Panel degradation rate: panels gradually reduce in output as they degrade over time. Set the rate at which the output of the panels decreases each year.

• Discount rate: a discount rate is a means of determining the current value of something (like income or savings from a PV system) that you'll receive in the future. Set this to 0 if you would like no mention of discount rate in the proposal. 

Tax settings

You can set default values for this section in your financial settings. Configure the following:

• VAT rate for materials: this will apply to all costs included in the goods section.
• VAT rate for services: this will apply to all costs included in the services section.
• Whether the customer can reclaim VAT: selecting that the tax can be reclaimed will mean VAT is excluded from the loan total (if applicable) and the cost on the front of the proposal, but not the cost used in the financial projection. 

Payment

In this section you can configure how the customer will pay for the system, with the option to either pay in full or with finance. Any discounts or grants are configured in later sections but will be automatically factored in. 

Select from your preset payment options for this project or create new ones. You can set default values for this section in your financial settings, If you'd like to amend an existing one for this project, you can just duplicate to project and edit any details or navigate to your financial settings by clicking the Edit option at the top to edit the default option.

Running costs

Add rows for costs you expect to be incurred in the future. You can choose whether costs are applied on an annual basis (for example a maintenance contract) or as one-off costs (for example an inverter replacement).

Additional savings

Add rows for additional savings, such as from immersion diversion systems or from night charging from batteries. Set the name for the saving, what the saving is (this can be in terms of £, kWh per year or a % of annual generation) and how it should scale with inflation. 

Grant

If the project is eligible for a grant that will pay for some or all of the cost of the system, you can add it here. Set the description, the value and whether this is claimed before or after the installation. 

Discount

If you want to apply a discount to your quote to reduce the cost for your customer, you can do so here. Input a description and choose the type of discount you want to apply. This can be a fixed discount or a percentage of the total cost.

If you have any additional questions about the financial task take a look at our financial FAQs or reach out at help@easy-pv.co.uk or help@easy-pv.ie.