Setting up your account
- Connecting to Midsummer
- Setting financial defaults
- Setting up your Automatic Pricing Calculator
- Performance task defaults
Connecting to Midsummer
This guide applies to the easy-pv.co.uk and easy-pv.ie versions of Easy PV. The information provided here may not be accurate for easy-pv.com.
Connecting your Easy PV account to your Midsummer account will allow Easy PV to set its prices to match your wholesale prices. This means you do not have to make changes to your goods prices in the financial tab except for custom components and you can be confident your jobs are being priced correctly.
To connect your Midsummer account
For Easy PV Pro teams, each member will need to connect their wholesale account for discounts to apply.
Setting financial defaults
This guide applies to the easy-pv.co.uk and easy-pv.ie versions of Easy PV. The information provided here may not be accurate for easy-pv.com.
Financial defaults set here will be automatically applied to your projects so you do not have to input them each time. These defaults can be overridden on a per-project basis.
For standard Easy PV users, you can set up financial defaults in My Account > Preferences > Financial. For Pro teams wishing to set team defaults, these can be found in Pro account settings > Financial. If you are a member of a Pro team, you may not be able to set these defaults as they will be configured by your team owner or admins.
Main settings
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Projection term: The number of years you wish to make financial projections. This should be approximately the expected lifespan of the equipment.
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Inflation rate: this is the Inflation rate for your financial projection.
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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.
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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.
Here you can also select the default value of self-consumption. Self-consumption is the proportion of electricity generated from a solar array that is used in a property can significantly affect financial returns. Easy PV has several different methods you can use:
- (For UK) MCS: this can only be used with flat tariffs and properties with annual consumption between 1500 - 6000 kWh and battery storage below 15.1 kWh.
- 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 the consumption task guide.
- Custom percentage: this contains significantly less information than the above methods. 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.
Tariffs
Here you can set default tariffs for the Easy PV and (for UK) MCS consumption calculations. They can be indexed to inflation, above inflation, fixed or none.
For more detail on how to create and edit these tariffs, have a look at our tariffs guide.
Automatic pricing calculator
This is where you can tailor the financial settings so you do not have to make significant adjustments on each project. You can set up rules based on look-up tables or a set markup and then set costs for the delivery and installation and optionally scaffolding, roofing, electrical, travel costs and any additional services you provide.
A full guide on how to set this up can be found here in the automatic pricing guide.
Manual pricing markup
If you are not using the pricing calculator, you can set a default markup which is applied to the cost of goods.
Tax settings
Here you can set defaults for the tax rate for material and services and select whether the customer will be able to reclaim the tax. Business customers can usually reclaim tax paid on an installation, but domestic customers typically can't reclaim tax. Tax rates may be different for domestic and business customers.
Running cost rules
Add lines 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).
Saving rules
Create savings rules which can be used in the financial task. You can set them to appear on every project or only be applied if a given accessory is present and can add savings based on a percentage of bills, percentage of annual generation, fixed monetary amount or a saving in kWh each year.
Setting up your Automatic Pricing Calculator
This guide applies to the easy-pv.co.uk and easy-pv.ie versions of Easy PV. The information provided here may not be accurate for easy-pv.com.
With Easy PV you can configure pricing rules to automatically calculate project prices. Rather than having to amend and change your service costs on each project, you can spend time setting up your pricing rules so the automatic pricing calculator will do it for you.
Pricing settings can be accessed via Account settings > Financial > Change pricing settings or if you are part of a Pro team, the owner/admin can do this via Pro Account settings > Financial > Change pricing settings.
To turn off automatic pricing click on the use pricing calculator toggle. You can also switch between automatic pricing and manual pricing on a per-project basis via the financial task.
Configuring for your project
You can set material pricing based on the cost of materials plus a markup (best for complex pricing depending on the number of panels, roof dimensions, travel distance, etc.) or based on custom lookup tables (ideal for simpler pricing using only a few panels/inverters combinations).
On top of the cost of materials, you can set up additional charges for the delivery and installation. The installation cost can be further specified with costs for scaffolding, electrical, roof type, and travel to the site.
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Choose if you use a markup or lookup table for calculating the cost of materials.
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Tick the box for each additional cost you want to include in your pricing (information on configuring each of these is below).
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Choose the format in which you want to display the price of goods in the quote.
Lookup tables or markup
Option 1: Lookup tables
When you have chosen lookup tables on the first price settings page, before clicking next you can also choose to use a markup-based pricing for any designs that don’t match one of the lookup tables you have entered.
When you click Next, you can then create your lookup tables for different combinations of solar panels, inverters and batteries. Different costs can be specified within each combination for different numbers of panels.
Lookup tables are most useful if you install just a few different system combinations (i.e always use Trina with Growatt). If you need more than a few lookup tables, it’s probably more efficient to use the ‘markup’ method.
Option 2: Cost of materials plus a markup
When Markup has been chosen on the first pop up screen, clicking Next will bring you through to the following page where you can input levels of markup for different sizes of projects.
You will also notice a section for Consumables and ancillaries. This includes items not included with the PV kit such as zip ties. Throughout this calculator, you will be able to click +Add Row to create rules and changes to your costs depending on project size or travel distance.
Configure required costs
Installation
Here you can add a base installation cost which may cover all of your services (scaffolding, electrical, etc.) or you can set those up separately. You can also choose what text is displayed on the quote for this line item.
Configure optional costs
Scaffolding
In this section, you can set a base scaffolding fee and an extra cost for each additional roof. You can also set parameters for max length and height and have an additional charge or multiplier if those parameters are exceeded.
Roofing
For roofing , you can add a base cost and fee for each additional roof. You can set additional charge per solar panel depending on the roof type. Finally, you can add a cost for per each extra such as in-roof panel, optimiser, etc.
Electrical
Similarly, you can add a base electrical cost, additional fees for the installation of different inverters, and a cost for the installation of a battery.
Travel
You can add costs for travel to site based on the distance (which Easy PV automatically calculates if you have input the project location and your company location!). You can also set up a travel cost multiplier for larger systems.
Configure other costs
If there are costs you want to include on every project that you can't factor into any of the above sections then you can do so by adding a new accessory custom component.
Accessories and extras
Accessories and extras can be added by creating a new component in the Edit Accessories section of Components. When adding an accessory or extra component, you can add an installation charge as well, and configure whether you want the price applied to the extra to be displayed in the quote as a line item, or grouped into the materials costs.
To do this navigate to My components > Accessories and then:
- Create a new accessory, name it with whatever additional service you want to include
- Do not fill in the 'price' box
- If you would like the item or service to be included on all projects, then select the second option 'Include by default' in the rules. If you do not want to include by default you will be able to select it on a per-project basis in the electrical task.
- Then scroll to bottom of 'rules' and check the following options:
- You can also have a look at the other rules available on accessories and decide whether you would like to include or not include the item (for example, only include with specific inverters).
Performance task defaults
This guide applies to the easy-pv.co.uk and easy-pv.ie versions of Easy PV. The information provided here may not be accurate for easy-pv.com.
The Performance task can be streamlined by configuring your settings in My account > Preferences > Performance. Here you have the option to configure whether you want panel allocation and the generation of sunpath diagrams and shading factors to be automated.
Panel allocation
Choose between:
- Automatically allocate panels: use auto-stringing to automatically make a string plan without any input needed from you.
- Suggest allocation: use auto-stringing to make a string plan which it will suggest for you to accept or edit manually.
- Manually allocate panels: manually construct your string plan, with the option to use auto-stringing when you do so.
Sunpaths
With 3D and Magic design mode, by modelling any nearby obstructions, Easy PV can automatically calculate any shading losses. Here you can choose whether you want Easy PV to automatically calculate shading based on the terrain and 3D buildings or whether you want this to be excluded so you can set the shading manually.
UK site only
The following settings are only available on the UK version of Easy PV (easy-pv.co.uk).
Mode: Choose between MCS and NREL methods to calculate the total annual generation of the system.
MCS Self Consumption: Choose whether you want to:
- use default values for MCS self consumption - this will let you set default values which will be used by default for each of the inputs required for the MCS consumption calculations.
- manually enter MCS self consumption - if you select this option you will need to set the inputs required for the MCS calculations on every project.