Solar Installation Data Model | FieldCamp

How a solar installation business runs in FieldCamp — the sale-to-PTO project lifecycle, permits, interconnection, installed equipment, and milestone billing.

A solar installation is not a one-day work order — it is a months-long project that moves from a signed deal through survey, design, permitting, utility interconnection, install, inspection, and finally Permission to Operate.

FieldCamp models that whole arc on its core records, then adds a thin specialized layer: one Solar Project that owns the lifecycle, plus child records for permits and installed equipment.

This works whether you run a single-truck residential outfit or a multi-megawatt commercial EPC — the same model bends to both, and everything on this page can be tailored to how your company actually sells and installs.

What the core already gives you

Most of a solar business is already covered the day you sign up. The records below carry the money, the catalog, the scheduling, and the field work without any custom build.

Customers — the homeowner or business, with separate property, billing, and company addresses so the service site and the billing address can differ. Lead source and the New Lead to Active lifecycle cover the top of the funnel.
Requests — the inbound solar inquiry before a project exists, with one-click conversion to an Estimate, Job, or Invoice.
Estimates & Invoices — the proposal and the bill. Solar proposals are usually multi-option Good / Better / Best (6kW versus 8kW versus 8kW plus battery), with deposits, contract terms, and e-signature built in. Invoices handle deposits, partial and full payments, and payment terms.
Jobs and Visits — every field event: the survey, the install day or days, and the inspection. Each carries crew assignment, GPS check-in and check-out, signature-gated completion, and photo capture.
Price Book plus inventory, warehouses, and vendors — the catalog of panels, inverters, racking, conduit, disconnects, batteries, and EV chargers, with cost versus price and stock per warehouse.
Job Forms — the survey checklist, roof and shading assessment, install QA, safety and JHA, and inspection sign-off, captured on site with readings, photos, and signatures.
Team Members and service areas — crew assignment by skill, such as certified electrician, and territory-based dispatch.

So the specialized layer is deliberately lean. Everything financial, scheduling, catalog, and field-capture stays on core.

What solar installation adds

Solar needs records that core does not provide: a project that sits above the jobs and owns the sale-to-PTO arc, the permits and interconnection applications that solar operations live and die by, and the actual installed equipment with serial numbers and warranties.

These are added as custom records built on FieldCamp's own engine — the same engine you use to extend any record. There are three of them.

Solar Project — the lifecycle owner

The Solar Project is the record that owns the whole deal. It ties together the customer, the signed proposal, the field jobs, the permits, and the installed equipment, and it moves through its own stages from Lead to Permission to Operate.

It links to a customer, to the signed Estimate, to the field Jobs for survey, install, and inspection, and to its Invoices.

Field	What it holds
Project name / number	The project label and reference number.
Project type	Residential or Commercial — the switch that drives the rest of the model.
Financing type	Cash, loan, lease, PPA, or PACE.
System size (kW)	The installed system size.
Annual production (kWh)	Expected yearly output.
Energy offset (%)	Share of the customer's usage the system covers.
Contract value	The signed deal amount.
Utility company	The interconnecting utility.
AHJ name	The authority having jurisdiction for permits.
Contract signed date	When the deal was signed.
Target PTO date	The goal date for Permission to Operate.
Salesperson	The team member who sold it.
Project manager	The team member who runs it.
Gross margin	A calculated value: contract value minus equipment cost minus labor cost.

FieldCamp stores the resulting design numbers — system size, annual production, and energy offset — as fields you enter or import.

It does not run the shading, irradiance, or layout simulation itself; that is the job of a design tool like Aurora or OpenSolar, which you connect to FieldCamp rather than rebuild.

Solar Permit — permits and interconnection applications

Each building, electrical, structural, or fire permit, and each utility interconnection application, is tracked as its own record under the project, with reference numbers and approval dates.

A residential project usually has one or two of these. A commercial project has several. It is a child record of the Solar Project.

Field	What it holds
Permit kind	Building, electrical, structural, fire, or interconnection.
Issuing authority	The AHJ or utility name.
Application number	The reference number on file.
Submitted date	When it went in.
Approved date	When it cleared.
Expiration date	When the approval lapses.
Fee	The permit or application fee.
Conditions / notes	Corrections, conditions, and remarks.
Plan set / approval docs	Attached plan sets and approval documents.

Installed Asset — as-built equipment, serials, and warranty

The panels, inverters, batteries, and optimizers actually installed — each with its serial number, warranty, and monitoring link. This is the physical installed unit, distinct from the Price Book catalog item, which is a type of panel rather than a specific one.

It is a child record of the Solar Project.

Field	What it holds
Asset type	Panel, string inverter, microinverter, battery, optimizer, or disconnect.
Catalog item	The matching Price Book product.
Manufacturer / model	The make and model.
Serial number	The unit's serial.
Quantity	How many of this unit.
Warranty years	Length of the warranty.
Warranty expiry	When the warranty ends.
Monitoring URL	The link to the monitoring portal.
Install date	When it went on the roof.

A handful of custom fields also sit directly on existing records: roof type, shading notes, and a monitoring portal link on the customer, and a project link on each Job so every survey, install, and inspection job rolls up to its project.

How these records link together

The Solar Project sits above the field work. A customer owns its projects; each project is born from a signed Estimate, owns its survey, install, and inspection Jobs, carries its Permits and Installed Assets, and is billed on one or more Invoices.

Each record page is assembled from the same building blocks as any core record: a header and key numbers (system size, contract value, days to PTO, energy offset), related tables for Permits, Installed Assets, Jobs, and Invoices, equipment cards with serial and warranty, a map and address with directions, as-built photos and plan sets, and an activity timeline.

The sale-to-PTO lifecycle

The Solar Project moves through a fixed, milestone-gated sequence. Each stage is a hand-off to a different team and often to an external party — the permitting authority or the utility — with its own owner, reference numbers, and deadlines.

Stages can carry guardrails. You can block the move from Permitting to Interconnection until the permit's approved date is set, block the move into Installation until a Permit record is approved, and require as-built photos before an install is marked complete.

A confirmation message can guard the move to Lost.

The Permit record runs its own short workflow to track each application: Not Started, Submitted, In Review, then either Corrections Requested (which loops back to Submitted) or Approved, Inspected, and Closed, with Rejected as a final state.

Automations keep the project moving without manual steps. Reaching the Installation stage can create the install Job automatically, and when every install Job is done the project's stage can roll forward.

A signed Estimate can convert straight into a Solar Project. Reaching a milestone can notify the project manager to take the next step, such as submitting the interconnection application.

Time-based reminders — for example, "alert me five days before the permit deadline" — are handled by FieldCamp's separate Workflow Automation product, not by the project's stages. Stage-change automations fire when a project moves; deadline reminders fire on a clock.

Residential vs commercial

The model is one shared Solar Project. Residential versus commercial is a single Project type marker plus configurable requirements on each stage move — not two separate record trees.

Residential

A single homeowner is the decision-maker and the sales cycle runs days to weeks. The system is typically 3 to 12 kW with one inverter or microinverters. Financing is cash, loan, lease, or PPA. There is usually one AHJ permit and a simplified utility application, one inspection, and standard deposit-plus-progress-plus-final billing. The install-complete move can require a signature on site.

Commercial / EPC

Multiple stakeholders and an RFP or bid stretch the cycle to weeks or months. Systems run from 50 kW to multiple megawatts with several inverters. Financing adds PACE and investor draws. There are multiple permits — building, electrical, structural, fire — and a full study-track interconnection with a witness test. Inspections multiply, often including an independent-engineer visit. Billing is milestone-based, tied to project stages.

Because Permits and Installed Assets are child records, the same model absorbs the difference by cardinality: a residential project carries one permit, a commercial project carries several, with no change to the records themselves.

Commercial milestone billing — draws at notice-to-proceed, mechanical completion, substantial completion, and PTO — is modeled as multiple Invoices linked to the project, each issued when its stage is reached. A stage-change automation can prompt the next Invoice.

FieldCamp's invoices are per-document, so milestone billing is several linked Invoices rather than a single draw schedule that auto-computes retainage or percent-complete.

For most installers this is enough; if you need true progress billing with automatic retainage, that is the one place the model leans on a workaround rather than a built-in record.

Built on the customization engine

The Solar Project, the Permit, and the Installed Asset are not hard-coded features — they are custom records built on the same engine every FieldCamp account can use.

You define objects and fields, set the stages and workflows each record moves through, and arrange every record page from a library of building blocks.

The solar setup is one configuration of that engine, and you can tailor it — add a field, add a stage, change a guardrail — to match how your company sells and installs.

Jobs

The survey, install, and inspection work orders that roll up to each Solar Project.

Visits

The field appointments under a Job, with dispatch lifecycle, signatures, and on-site forms.

Estimates & Invoices

Multi-option Good / Better / Best proposals and the milestone invoices that follow.

Price Book

The catalog of panels, inverters, racking, and batteries each Installed Asset is drawn from.

Custom objects & fields

The engine the Solar Project, Permit, and Installed Asset records are built on.

Stages & workflows

Define the sale-to-PTO stages and the guardrails on each move.

Coming from Scoop Solar

Most installers run on a stack rather than one tool. The design and shading study lives in Aurora Solar or OpenSolar; the project and field execution lives in a dedicated ops platform.

For that second part, Scoop Solar is one of the tools installers reach for most.

If you are coming from Scoop, the shapes line up closely. Scoop centers on a project that moves through stage gates from permitting and design to procurement, scheduling, installation, PTO, and closeout — the same arc FieldCamp models as the Solar Project.

The difference is that in FieldCamp the project, its permits, and its installed gear are records you own and shape, sitting on the same engine as your customers, jobs, and invoices.

In Scoop Solar	In FieldCamp	Notes
Customer / site account	Customers	The homeowner or business, with separate property, billing, and company addresses so the site and the bill can differ.
Project	The Solar Project, a custom object that owns the sale-to-PTO arc	The lifecycle owner that ties together the customer, proposal, jobs, permits, and installed equipment.
Project stages / stage gates	The Solar Project's stages and workflows	Lead → Site Survey → Design → Permitting → Interconnection → Installation → Inspection → PTO → Closeout, with guardrails on each move.
Field Mobile App work / site checklists	Jobs and Visits	The survey, install days, and inspection, each with crew assignment, GPS check-in and check-out, and photo capture.
Forms and checklists	Job Forms	The survey, roof and shading assessment, install QA, safety and JHA, and inspection sign-off, captured on site with readings, photos, and signatures.
Tasks	Visits, or a checklist on the Job	Field work is scheduled as Visits; smaller to-dos live as checklist items on the job.
Equipment / installed gear	The Installed Asset child record, tied to Equipment patterns	Panels, inverters, batteries, and optimizers with serial number, warranty, and monitoring link.
Materials and bill of materials	Price Book	The catalog of panels, inverters, racking, conduit, and batteries, with cost versus price and stock per warehouse.
Permits and interconnection applications	The Solar Permit child record, linked to Permits	Each building, electrical, structural, fire, or interconnection record with reference numbers and approval dates.
Project templates	Stage and field configuration on the Solar Project	The repeatable setup is the object's own stages and workflows and field set.
Auto Actions	Stage-change automations	Reaching a stage can create the install Job, roll the project forward, or notify the project manager.
Field crews / teams	Team Members and service areas	Crew assignment by skill, such as certified electrician, and territory-based dispatch.
Documents and photos	Files on the Job, Visit, and Solar Project	Plan sets, as-built photos, and approval documents attach to the record they belong to.
Invoicing	Estimates & Invoices	Multi-option proposals and milestone invoices tied to project stages.
Project Tracker reporting	Related tables and key numbers on the Solar Project page	System size, contract value, days to PTO, and the live Permits, Assets, Jobs, and Invoices tables.

What you gain. In Scoop the project structure is the product, and you work inside the model it ships.

In FieldCamp the Solar Project, its Permits, and its Installed Assets are records you can rename, restage, and relayout, so you can match how you run today and then extend it with custom objects and fields of your own.

One honest difference. Scoop and the design tools upstream of it carry depth FieldCamp does not try to copy — the shading, irradiance, and layout simulation of a design platform, and the heavy financing and monitoring integrations a solar-only ops tool builds in.

FieldCamp stores the design numbers — system size, annual production, energy offset — as fields, and links out to your monitoring portal, rather than running the simulation or the integrations itself.

The clean split is to keep the design in the upstream tool you already use, and run the project, the permits, the install, and the billing in FieldCamp.