The sale closes months before the system switches on.
Signing is roughly the midpoint. What follows — design, permitting, interconnection, install, inspection, activation — is where cancellations happen and where the customer stops hearing from anyone.
Thirty minutes · no predetermined package
What happens after the pipeline ends.
The pipeline ends at contract signature, so the longest and riskiest part of the job is tracked in a spreadsheet.
Proposal versions proliferate, and nobody can say which one the customer actually signed.
Permitting and interconnection status live in portals with no feed, so updates are manual and stale.
Financing approval sits with a third party, and the record does not know whether it is what is blocking the job.
Canvassing leads arrive on paper or in a separate app and reach the system late, if at all.
A customer who hears nothing for two months assumes nothing is happening, and sometimes cancels.
What you are probably running, and what constrains it.
The typical stack
What the rules require
Six questions before changing anything.
How a job actually completes.
Lead
canvass, referral or webQualified on the address before the person — roof, shading, orientation and utility territory decide viability.
Design and proposal
versionedProduction modelling, pricing and financing, each change producing a document that has to be traceable.
Contract and financing
approvedSignature and lender approval, which are two clocks that rarely run together.
Permitting and interconnection
the long waitMonths, across parties you do not control, and where the customer goes quiet.
Install and activation
and monitoringCrew scheduled, inspected, energised — and the referral conversation that most operations never have.
What solar companies ask.
What should a solar CRM track that a generic one does not?
Site qualification, proposal versions, financing status, permitting and interconnection. Those are stages rather than fields, and they occupy the majority of the timeline.
Why do solar deals cancel after signing?
Because the longest part of the process happens after the sale and usually goes dark. Permitting and interconnection take months, and a customer who hears nothing assumes nothing is happening.
Can you connect Aurora and our financing partners?
Yes, where an API exists. Where one does not — several utility and AHJ portals — the realistic answer is structured manual status with a named owner, not a pretend integration.
How should proposal versions be handled?
As versions of one record with a clear signed state, so a design or rate change does not create a second document nobody can reconcile.
What is the right cost metric in solar?
Cost per install, not cost per lead. Channels that produce volume and cancel look excellent on the wrong metric.
How do you keep the customer informed during permitting?
A portal showing where the job is, with automatic updates when a stage changes. It costs little and it is the cheapest cancellation prevention available.
Can canvassing leads reach the system in real time?
Yes, and they should. Field-originated leads that arrive a day late have already lost most of their value.
Does this replace Enerflo or Sunbase?
Not necessarily. Often the right answer is keeping them for what they do well and building the post-sale visibility they lack.
What does a project like this cost?
It scales with the number of external parties — lenders, utilities, AHJs — rather than with install volume.