Introduction

Congratulations - you’ve been approved for CashFlow! Collecting payments has never been easier.

This article contains tips for getting the most out of CashFlow once you’ve completed configuration in the CashFlow Setup Checklist. 

Tips

Apply CashFlow to sold projects

Once you get approved with CashFlow, you don’t have to wait until you sell a new project to be able to experience effortless payment collection. You can also enable CashFlow on projects that have already been sold, and collect any remaining milestone payments through CashFlow.

On a sold project, navigate to the Payments tab. Select the yellow “Enable CashFlow Payments” button on the right hand side. Once the calculations are applied, you must save the project to fully enable CashFlow.

If you have already collected any payments on this project, you can mark them paid offline.  

Let your customers know that paying for their solar just got easier

We recommend adding a note about CashFlow to your existing customer communication to make sure that your customers know about the simple, seamless payment experience that you have provided for them. 

For example, if you use an email template for sending proposals to customers, you can add in instructions for paying the deposit through the online proposal when they are ready to accept it. 

Here’s sample text that you can include in proposal emails:

Your proposal includes a link directly to a simple, secure payment interface you can use to pay the deposit when you’re ready to move forward. 

Use CashFlow for all customer payments

• Sales reps can lock in customer commitments with integrated payment checkout and point-of-sale deposit collection straight from signed proposal
• Installation crews can use OpenSolar’s mobile app to issue invoices at the end of the installation at the click of a button
• Project managers can stay up to date with centralized, actionable lists for all projects and invoices. This makes it easy to manage and track jobs with real-time activity trackers on the post-sale payments tab
• Finance & Operations teams see the benefits of automated invoicing and reminders with the simplest process to always be in sync with accounting
• Installation companies can use Standalone invoicing for complete flexibility and time savings, especially on non-standard project invoices like subcontracted work (e.g. roof replacement, service panel upgrade) or post-installation service visits

Review CashFlow permissions by role

CashFlow adds a variety of new permissions that admins can set by role. When you enable CashFlow, new CashFlow permissions are set to defaults by role. If you have custom roles set up in your org, their CashFlow-related permissions will automatically match the default Sales Rep permissions. 

We recommend reviewing the CashFlow permissions for each role to ensure that your organization is set up for success across teams. 

Set up smart surcharging

CashFlow makes it easy to pass on credit card fees to customers willing to pay them, while following local regulations and card fuels. When you get started with CashFlow, there are a few steps that you should take to understand compliance and set up your business for success. 

If you plan to use surcharging with standard credit cards (Visa/Mastercard), you should notify Mastercard that you intend to start surcharging by filling out this form. We recommend that you wait 30 days after submitting this form to allow standard surcharging to comply with Mastercard’s notification rules. 

OpenSolar does not allow credit card surcharging in states that we understand do not allow it, as detailed in the “Regions” section of our Smart Surcharging Help Center article. We are working to keep this state list updated, but we recommend that you stay up-to-date on regulations in your states of business, and configure surcharging based on your assessment of state rules. 

If you believe our list is out of date, please submit a ticket to let us know. We will review the ticket and update our surcharging rules as needed.

For more information on Smart Surcharging and guidance on compliance for your business, please review our Smart Surcharging Help Center article. 

Get your finance and accounting team members up to speed on CashFlow

At OpenSolar, we understand that invoicing and payments impact more than just your sales team. In particular, your finance and accounting team members will likely have questions for you about this new system.

To make this transition easy, we’ve put together this CashFlow overview for finance and accounting. In this guide, you’ll find an overview of CashFlow features and benefits, a detailed FAQ section, and thorough objection handling for the questions and concerns that your team members may have about CashFlow. 

We’re confident that CashFlow is the best payments & invoicing solution for solar installers, and this CashFlow overview is designed to help your finance & accounting teams understand this too. 

We’d encourage you to invite your accounting and operations team members to create free OpenSolar logins to your account by clicking here. 

Explore everything that CashFlow can do for you

Check out the CashFlow Help Center to learn more about the many opportunities available to you through CashFlow.