Introducing CashFlow, the first-ever payments system built for Solar Pros, by Solar Pros

“If we were starting OpenSolar today, we’d build CashFlow in at the ground floor.”  This passing remark by our co-founder and CEO, Birchy, has stuck with me since we started this project.  

CashFlow is a brand new payments system, built for solar professionals, by solar professionals.  It’s the result of many months of extensive research with hundreds of solar professionals from around the world.  During that time, we’ve proven our original concept as former solar pros ourselves, and we’ve learned a lot too!  Birchy’s right that effortless cash collection is mission critical for solar businesses, and should underpin the entire workflow on OpenSolar.  And now it does.

What we’ve been reminded of through our research is that every solar business out there has assembled a payments process using a suboptimal collection of third party tools.  

• They tend to be expensive because of the fees associated with transaction costs, invoicing and accounting  
• They tend to be cumbersome because they’re not tied in with the key milestones of a solar project 
• They’re error-prone, because they rely on humans to key in the numbers right every… single… time
• They’re certainly labor intensive because they rely on manual processes to compensate for shortcomings of the system

Fundamentally, none of these payment systems are designed with the complex and unique characteristics of a residential solar transaction in mind, leaving solar businesses to jury-rig their own solutions which fall short on some or all of the above dimensions.

And that’s why we’ve created CashFlow.  Whether you use OpenSolar’s built-in CRM or your own, CashFlow introduces new levels of efficiency in collecting cash, the lifeblood of your business.  It includes a free-of-charge, fully customizable invoice that carries your brand.  It’s tied to your customizable project milestones so that the right amounts are automatically invoiced at exactly the right time, and automatic payment reminders are sent if payment is not received, reducing the amount of time you or your team spends chasing them.  So it cuts down on hours spent collecting cash and provides peace of mind that the right amount will be collected every single time.

But it also reduces your hard costs.  It includes multiple ways for your customer to pay, including credit cards, debit cards and bank to bank transfers.  And for credit cards, it addresses issues that have plagued the solar industry by reducing credit card transaction fees by up to 20%.  It also enables you to automatically calculate and pass on credit card surcharges to your customers, if that’s the way they want to pay.  

CashFlow comes with downloadable reports that make accounting reconciliation much easier, ensuring that your back office team (or you, if you’re a small business!) doesn’t have to guess what each individual payment is, who it’s from and what project it’s for.  And we’re already working on full accounting integrations with the leading online accounting software providers, coming soon.

Margins can be tight in this business, and you can be out thousands after a project is installed before full payment is received, causing real problems for your working capital.  The team at OpenSolar has obsessed about these issues, and built a solution for you that smoothes out the bumps, and quite literally improves your cash flow.  

Setup is easy and quick, so you’ll experience the efficiencies in no time.  As always, please reach out to us if we can be of any help, and thanks in advance for trying out CashFlow.  We’re confident that you’ll love it.  

Ready to go? Improve your CashFlow today at opensolar.com/cashflow.