Solar installer software in Australia: one record from lead to STC claim

What does a solar or battery job have to prove?

It has to prove that an accredited person designed and installed an approved product to the standards, on site, at a network approved address, because the STC discount the customer already received depends on it. That is the core difference between solar and most trades. The installer usually gives the customer the incentive up front, then recovers it through an agent once the evidence passes. If the evidence fails, the margin goes with it.

So the software question for a solar business is less about scheduling and more about whether every install leaves behind a complete, consistent evidence trail that a registered agent, the Clean Energy Regulator and a state electrical regulator would all accept.

The life of a solar job, stage by stage

A residential solar or battery job passes through at least eight stages, and each one produces a record someone else will check. The table maps what is created where in a typical setup.

Stage	What happens	Record created	Where it usually lives
1. Lead	Enquiry from your site, SolarQuotes or referral	Contact, address, bills	CRM or design tool
2. Design and proposal	Panel layout, shading, battery sizing, price	Design, single line diagram, proposal	OpenSolar or Pylon
3. Sale	Signed contract, finance if any, STC assignment	Contract, assignment form	Design tool e-signature, agent paperwork
4. Network approval	Connection application to the distributor before install	Approval and export limit	Distributor portal
5. Install	Accredited installer on site	Timestamped photos, serial numbers, on site attendance evidence	Phone camera, installer app, agent app
6. Electrical certificate	State certificate for the electrical work	CCEW, COES or equivalent	State portal
7. STC claim	Agent creates STCs in the REC Registry	Compliance statements, retailer declaration, evidence pack	Agent portal, REC Registry
8. Service	Monitoring, warranty, faults	Service history	Job system, inverter portal

Count the systems in the last column. A typical installer runs five or six, and the address, serial numbers and installer details are retyped across most of them. That is where errors creep in, and errors in a written statement are exactly what the CER audits.

What do OpenSolar, Pylon and job tools cover?

Design tools own stages 1 to 3, job systems own scheduling and invoicing, and STC agents own the claim; nothing owns the join. From each vendor’s own site at the time of writing:

• OpenSolar says it is free of charge and offers automatic design and bill of materials, single line diagrams, proposals with e-signature, a project management CRM and permitting integrations.
• Pylon, based in Sydney, offers high resolution imagery and shading simulation, a battery advisor, automatic single line diagrams, installer job sheets, owner’s manuals and voltage rise reports, plus a sales CRM. It lists integrations with SolarQuotes, Xero, ServiceM8, Nearmap and finance providers, on a model with no fixed fees.
• Job management systems such as simPRO and ServiceM8 handle crews, stock, invoicing and service calls.
• STC agents run portals and apps for evidence capture and claims.

These tools are good at what they do. Replacing them with a custom system would be a poor use of money for almost any installer. The custom opportunity is the layer between them.

STCs and the REC Registry: where claims fail

Claims fail on missing or inconsistent evidence, not on the design. The CER’s guidance on creating STCs lists, for solar PV and batteries: designer and installer compliance statements, retailer declarations, electrical safety certificates, serial number photos and on site attendance evidence. Documents must be signed and photos must carry time and date data. Certificates must be created within 12 months of installation, and the CER notes that registration for an owner account can take six weeks or more.

The stakes are real. The CER’s October 2026 quarterly update reported a Victorian installer convicted and fined $10,000 for false statutory declarations about attending installations, and two accredited installers declared ineligible, one for 3 years after 24 installations with breaches. Under the regulations, three or more inspection reports with adverse findings, or three or more written statements with false or misleading information, can lead to an installer being declared ineligible.

An evidence checker that runs before the pack leaves your business is cheap insurance:

• Every required photo present, with timestamp and location data intact
• Serial numbers in photos match the serial numbers on the paperwork
• Installer on the job holds current SAA accreditation, with battery endorsement for battery jobs
• Products on the approved list on the install date
• Electrical certificate number recorded and matches the address
• Network approval reference attached
• Claim date well inside the 12 month window, with an alert at 8 weeks out

Accreditation and battery rules software should track

Accreditation is per person and battery work needs an endorsement, so your roster needs to know who can sign which job. Solar Accreditation Australia has been the CER approved accreditation scheme operator since 29 February 2024, replacing the Clean Energy Council. For battery STCs, the CER requires an SAA accredited installer with battery endorsement, a battery on the approved list, installation to AS/NZS 5139:2019, and a nominal capacity between 5 and 100 kWh, with STCs only for the first 50 kWh of usable capacity.

The Cheaper Home Batteries Program works through these battery STCs, and the CER adjusts the STC factor over time; it was 8.4 from January to April 2026 and 6.8 from May to December 2026. Proposals and finance calculations that hard code the factor will be wrong by the next change. Store it as a dated setting.

The CER’s December 2025 notice to installers adds two points: inspections are checking battery isolation and emergency labelling, which have been common failures, and from early 2026 installers must take geotagged, timestamped photos of critical labelling and signage and supply them with compliance paperwork. A mobile checklist that will not close a battery job until those photos exist is a small build with a direct payoff.

Network approvals and the electrical certificate

Each distributor runs its own connection process, so approvals need tracking per network. Ausgrid, for example, asks for embedded generation applications up to 1 MW to be lodged through its online portal before installation. A business working across Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy and Essential Energy in NSW, or interstate, needs the approval reference, export limit and status on the job record.

The electrical certificate is the other cross check. In NSW, Building Commission NSW lists users of the registered CER installer portal among the groups eligible to send certificate data through its eCert API, which shows how closely regulators now link the two records. Our electrician software page covers certificates by state in more detail.

Retail conduct sits alongside all of this. The New Energy Tech Consumer Code covers selling, quoting, installation and warranties for solar, batteries and EV chargers, and its site reported more than 2,000 approved sellers as of October 2025. Your quoting and contract templates should reflect whatever code you have signed.

After install: service and warranty

Service work is where a solar business earns repeat revenue, and it depends on knowing exactly what is on each roof. If serial numbers, inverter models, battery firmware and install dates are captured cleanly at stage 5, warranty claims and recall checks become a search, not a site visit. If you’re thinking about a customer login for monitoring and service requests, the customer portal guide sets out the options.

Typical builds and indicative costs

The common builds connect existing tools rather than replace them. These are indicative AUD market ranges, ex GST, not quotes. They sit within the bands Expeed publishes for Australian custom software: $15,000 to $40,000 for simple internal tools and $40,000 to $150,000 for mid complexity systems.

Build	Includes	Indicative range
Compliance evidence and STC workflow layer	Joins design tool, CRM or job system and agent portal through their APIs; evidence checker; accreditation and approved product checks; 12 month claim alerts	$30,000 to $70,000
Install photo checklist app	Offline mobile capture, required photo rules by job type, timestamp and location preserved, serial number capture, sync to the job	$20,000 to $50,000

Expeed puts annual maintenance at 15% to 20% of the build. The biggest cost driver is how open your design tool, job system and agent are to integration; our API integration cost guide explains why.

How AWLabs would approach it

We’d start with a Development Consult to map which of the eight stages cost you the most rework. If a build is worthwhile, a paid Discovery Audit tests the APIs of your design tool, job system and agent, and you receive a fixed price Schedule of Work with three options: The Minimum, The Recommended and The Complete. Senior engineers lead every build, with updates every Tuesday and Friday, Sydney time.

We haven’t delivered a solar project yet, so we’ll lean on your accredited staff and your agent for compliance detail. See our workflow automation service, API development and the construction and trades page. This is general information, not legal advice, and scheme rules change often; check the CER before relying on any figure here.