You took $2,850 off the price at the quote. Four months later the certificates were rejected.
Wattlebank assigns the certificates on every job and discounts their value off the customer’s price on the day they sign. The certificates are created after the install, traded weeks later, and can be knocked back months after that — for a missing photograph, an unsigned declaration, a serial number nobody could read. Seventy-four jobs were rejected or withheld last year, worth $211,000. The customer had already had the discount. The panels were already on the roof. Solar is a business where the software either captures the evidence at the moment of install, or the money goes back.
We built the screens that make it stop — every one of them live and clickable below. Then we build the same for your business, with no commitment: the screens your team would use, in your language and your brand, linked up so you can walk your own process through them. Open it, show your team — if it's a fit, we'll make a detailed, priced proposal.
Wattlebank Energy does not exist. We cannot show live client systems, so this study is built around a fictional installer — invented business, invented crews, invented customers, invented figures. The network operator, the retailers and the certificate prices are all invented too. What is not invented is the work: the evidence chain, the accreditation obligations, the grid connection and meter mechanics and the failure modes are all real, and the screens are genuine working pages rather than pictures of pages. Every mockup on this page opens and responds to clicks.
What this is not: a design or proposal tool, and it is not the certificate registry. It does not size a system, produce the layout or replace your accreditation body, and it is not something you would swap your quoting software for. Your design tools, your accounting and your registry logins all stay exactly where they are.
What it is: the layer none of them owns — the evidence chain behind a certificate you already discounted at the quote, the accreditation that lapsed mid-job, the crew that arrived without the paperwork, and the enquiry that went cold on a Saturday night. Where a tool already does its job, we integrate with it rather than replace it.
On scope: this is written for residential solar and battery installation in Australia, with a South East Queensland firm as the example. Certificate values, deeming, state incentive schemes and network connection rules all change, and several differ by state — in a real build those are configuration rather than code, for exactly that reason. All figures are Australian dollars.
A good installer in a market with nowhere left to hide margin
Wattlebank fits residential solar and batteries across Brisbane, Ipswich and Toowoomba. Five crews, four accredited installers, 1,180 systems a year and a genuinely good reputation. It is also running at 22.8% margin in a market where everybody is, which means the difference between a good year and a bad one is not sales — it is how much of what it has already earned it manages to keep.
- Installs a year
- 1,180
- Revenue
- $11.1m
- Average job
- $9,400
- Average margin
- $2,140
- Crews
- 5
- Accredited installers
- 4
- Certificate value assigned
- $3.36m
- Rejected or withheld
- $211,000
- Blocked right now
- $179,000
- Days install to certificates
- 34
- Return visits a year
- 184
- Jobs with a battery
- 35%
Nine failures, and what each one actually costs
None of these is a sales problem. Every one of them is money Wattlebank has already earned and then hands back, usually because of something that would have taken thirty seconds on the day.
The job cannot close until the evidence exists
One rule holds this together, and it is deliberately blunt: a crew cannot close a job on the tablet until the evidence pack is complete. Not a reminder, not a report somebody runs on Friday — the same hard stop as testing the system before you leave. Serials are scanned rather than photographed, so an unreadable one is rejected on the spot. The array shot prompts from height with an example on screen. Check-in and check-out are geotagged, which takes four seconds and removes the attendance question entirely.
Everything else follows from that. Certificates get created in days rather than weeks, which removes most of the price exposure without anybody taking a view on the market. Return visits stop, which gives back fifty-one installs a year. And the audit sample stops being something to dread, because the evidence was always going to be there.
Eight screens follow. Each one opens as a real page — click through them.
Eight screens. Every one of them real.
No screenshots, no slideware — each screen below is a working page, rendered live in its frame. Click a frame or its link to open the full screen in a new tab and use it.
First response
An enquiry that landed at 21:47 on a Tuesday, answered in thirty-eight seconds, qualified over four exchanges, and holding a Saturday assessment slot by 21:54. Bill, daytime occupancy, roof type, ownership, postcode and certificate zone are all captured on the way through, so the assessor arrives already knowing them.
Underneath, conversion measured against how long the customer waited, and the channel breakdown — including the one enquiry in seven that is a missed call, better than a fifth of which were never returned.
Operations
Where the certificate value actually sits — traded, created, ready to create, evidence incomplete, or gone. $112,000 is in jobs where the pack is complete and nobody has created the certificates yet, which is a queue with nobody assigned rather than a compliance problem.
Alongside it, grid approvals by connection type and the nine jobs booked to install before their approval is back.
The evidence chain
The screen this study is built around. The customer got $2,850 off the price on the day they signed. The certificates are created after the install and traded weeks after that — and this job cannot create them at all, because six panel serials are unreadable, the battery serial was never captured, and the array photograph was taken from the driveway.
None of it can be fixed from the office. A job that was worth $2,180 of margin at quote becomes a $1,010 loss on a photograph, and fifty of the seventy-four failures last year were something a phone could have captured correctly on the day for nothing.
Portfolio & margin
Wattlebank discounts at one price and sells at another, six to ten weeks apart, and nothing connects the two. Over twelve months that gap cost $47,000 — not a trading position anybody took, just a number nobody watched.
Then the finding that reframes the whole business: $170 a job goes on return visits for evidence. Across 1,180 installs that is $200,000, almost exactly the $211,000 lost to rejections. The same failure charges twice.
Job record
One installation end to end — enquiry, design, grid application, the approved export limit, install, certificates, meter. Sixteen of the eighteen documents on this job are perfect. The two that are not are the two that decide whether $2,850 exists.
It also tracks what is still owed to the customer: forty days after install, this household is exporting to the grid and not being paid for it, because the retailer has not reconfigured the meter.
Crews & schedule
Five crews, and four of this week’s twenty-three slots are return visits to collect evidence — most of a crew-day, every week, invisible in the accounts because it is not booked as anything.
Over a year that is 184 return visits, $62,400 of direct cost, and fifty-one installs that did not happen. The displaced margin is $109,000, which is the number that actually matters.
Accreditation
Everything Wattlebank sells rests on an accredited installer physically on the roof — not supervising from the van, not signing off afterwards. Seventy-four per cent of jobs evidence that with a geotagged check-in. Nine per cent have a signed job sheet, which proves a signature and not attendance.
All four jobs with nothing on file are the subcontract crew, who are paid per install and whose paperwork nobody inspects on the day.
Customer portal
A second audience. The job in plain terms, the documents worth keeping, and the two things a solar customer actually rings about: why the export limit is lower than they were quoted, and why they are not being paid for what they export.
It says both plainly, including that the meter is the retailer’s job rather than Wattlebank’s — and then offers to chase it anyway.
The tablet first, because that is where the money is lost
Four phases of two weeks each — eight weeks end to end. The on-site capture goes live first, because every install that happens without it is another job that may come back. Everything behind it is reporting on data the crews are already producing. Each phase ends with something the team actually uses, not a demo.
Discovery & data
Weeks 1–2.
- Evidence requirements per system type
- Approved component list and validation
- Migrate jobs, customers and certificate history
- Agree what closes a job
On-site capture
Weeks 3–4.
- Scanned serials with validation at the point of capture
- Guided photographs with worked examples
- Geotagged installer check-in and check-out
- Job cannot close with an incomplete pack
Certificates & margin
Weeks 5–6.
- Creation queue with an owner and an age
- Discounted against realised, by job
- Margin by system type, including rework
- Grid approvals and install date gating
Customer & rollout
Weeks 7–8.
- Customer portal and meter chasing
- Export limit disclosure, in writing, every time
- Accreditation and audit register
- Parallel run with one crew first
Eight weeks is possible because most of it already exists. The job and customer records, document handling, obligation and expiry tracking, escalation rules, the messaging engine and the portal are running in production across six sectors already, including installer businesses that live or die on evidence captured in the field. The conversational SMS and email layer behind the first-response screen is a product we already sell. What actually gets built for an Australian solar firm is the sector core: the evidence requirements per system type, the certificate lifecycle, and the network connection gating. That is the part this study is about, and it is the part we would spend the eight weeks getting right.
What is real here, and what is not
Real
- The evidence chain, and the fact that certificate value is discounted long before it is earned
- The accreditation obligation, and the difference between proving attendance and proving a signature
- Grid connection approvals, export limits and the meter reconfiguration that nobody owns
- That most solar enquiries arrive out of hours against two competing quotes, and that the first credible answer frames the other two
- The failure modes. All nine are drawn from how installers actually run
- The screens themselves: working HTML, not images, built the way we build the real thing
Not real
- Wattlebank Energy, its crews, its customers, its network operator and its retailers. All invented
- Every figure on every screen, including certificate values and rejection rates. Constructed to be plausible, not measured
- The conversation itself. Nadia Farsoun is invented, and the indicative prices, certificate values and conversion rates in it are illustrative rather than measured
- Any claimed outcome. We have deliberately not put a saving or a return on this page, because we would be making it up
- Any resemblance to a client. We do not show live client systems, which is precisely why this study exists
The engine underneath is already in production
The difficult parts of this system exist and run today — they are just doing it for other sectors. Live platforms, with the same client and case records, document handling, approval limits, escalation rules and portal at the centre of each:
- Medical tourism
- Student management
- Retrofit & remediation
- Financial brokerage
- Property management
That is why the working mockup is a realistic offer: we are not sketching a new product to sell you, we are showing you what the existing one would look like with your stages, your language and your brand on it — before any build begins.
We would rather show you your own screens
This took a fictional installer and made its process visible. The same exercise works better with a real one — your jobs, your language, your brand — and it costs you nothing to find out whether it is worth building.
A conversation about your jobs, your crews and where the money leaks.
A working mockup of your own process — clickable, in your language and your brand.
Click through it with your team. If it's a fit, we'll come back with a detailed, priced proposal. If not, we part on good terms.
Ready to see your own screens running like this?
Tell us how your business actually runs — your jobs, your crews, your certificate paperwork, where the money leaks — and we'll show you how we'd build it. If it's a fit, we build your screens. No commitment — and a detailed, priced proposal only if you ask for one.
What happens next
- We reply within one working day — a person who has read your note, not a bot.
- If it's a fit, we build your mockup — the screens above, re-skinned to your process and your brand.
- You click through it before anyone commits — if it earns the build, we talk about that.
Every enquiry is confidential — we never share your details, and we never put client work on a website.
Thank You!
Your message is on its way. We'll be in touch with you directly — usually within one working day.