Setting financial defaults
This guide applies to the easy-pv.co.uk and beta.easy-pv.ie versions of Easy PV, references to MCS only apply to the UK site. The information provided here may not be accurate for easy-pv.com and easy.pv.ie.
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.