A rooftop installer in India in 2026 is running a regulated logistics business that happens to sell solar. PM Surya Ghar had reached about 50 lakh households by August 2026, and each installation moves through the same chain: lead, survey, proposal, consumer agreement, feasibility, installation, inspection, net meter, subsidy, and then five years of maintenance the vendor has already promised.
Most software sold to installers covers the first third of that chain. This piece is about the other two thirds, because that is where the working capital and the risk sit.
The workflow, end to end
Across vendor documentation and MNRE's own guidelines, the same stages recur for a residential installer:
- Lead intake from IndiaMART, Meta lead ads, WhatsApp and referrals.
- Site survey with photos, roof strength and shadow-free area.
- Design, bill of materials and proposal, with the subsidy slab applied.
- Portal application, consumer agreement and feasibility. Since September 2026 the consumer must approve the agreement on the national portal before installation can be uploaded.
- Material dispatch with module and inverter serial numbers, which now have to match the per-consumer DCR certificate.
- Installation and commissioning checklist, including earthing readings and geo-tagged photos.
- DISCOM inspection and net meter. Approve, send back or reject.
- Subsidy release and collections, including milestone invoices with GST.
- Five years of comprehensive maintenance, which the model agreement and the guidelines put on the vendor.
What most solar software covers
We looked at the products installers in India are actually offered. Prices are from the vendors' own pages in October 2026; capabilities are as the vendors describe them.
- Design and proposal tools such as Arka360 list Rs 46,000 to Rs 1,00,000 a year in India, including GST, with CRM as an add-on. Strong on design and proposals; no subsidy, DISCOM, inventory or maintenance modules are listed.
- Solar CRMs such as Quickest Solar CRM list around Rs 6,999 per user per year. They cover lead capture, survey, fast proposals with subsidy slabs and a DISCOM pipeline stage. No inventory or installation tracking is listed.
- Generic CRMs such as Zoho CRM cost Rs 800 to Rs 2,600 per user per month billed annually, plus GST. They work for solar through partner customisation on Zoho Creator, which is where the cost and the maintenance go.
- Odoo and ERPNext solar builds cover more of the chain. One published ERPNext solar EPC app lists subsidy and net-metering workflow states, serial-number tracking from receipt to commissioning, crew scheduling and maintenance contracts, from about US$999 before scoping.
- Global tools such as Aurora Solar and OpenSolar are built for other markets, priced in US dollars, and list nothing for PM Surya Ghar or DISCOM workflows.
The pattern is consistent. As one solar CRM vendor puts it, generic CRMs "end when an opportunity is marked as closed." So do most solar CRMs, a few steps later. Everything from dispatch onward goes back into spreadsheets and WhatsApp groups.
The seven things a solar ERP must do
1. Track every file against the clock. Each installation should show its current stage, who it is waiting on (consumer, DISCOM, bank, your own team) and for how many days. MNRE now acts on backlogs: in August 2026 it deactivated 66 vendors for a month and advised against holding applications more than 60 days.
2. Hold serial numbers from receipt to roof. Module and inverter serials recorded at goods receipt, assigned at dispatch and confirmed at installation. A typo now blocks a subsidy file, and the same record answers warranty claims for the next 25 years.
3. Turn completed stages into invoices. If a stage is complete in the project, the milestone invoice should draft itself, with GST, rather than wait for someone to notice.
4. Track the subsidy and the cash. How much is waiting on subsidy release, how much on customer milestones, and how old each amount is.
5. Know your capacity. Agreements in hand versus crews and material available this month. This is exactly the gap MNRE penalised.
6. Run the maintenance you have already sold. Five years of comprehensive maintenance per system, with visits scheduled from the commissioning date and logged against the system record.
7. Keep the evidence. Photos, earthing readings, test reports and DCR certificate numbers attached to the installation, ready when a DISCOM or a third-party inspector asks.
Build, buy or bolt together
Buy a solar CRM if your problem is sales speed and you are under about 20 installs a month. It is cheap and quick to start.
Bolt together a generic CRM, a design tool, accounting software and spreadsheets if you have someone who enjoys maintaining it. Most installers already run this. It breaks quietly when that person leaves.
Build or adopt an ERP when the questions above take more than one screen to answer. The cost is higher up front; the return is in faster subsidy collection, fewer sent-back files and not losing track of maintenance you owe.
What we built
We built SolarOS for a solar EPC: 16 modules on one database, including CRM, project execution, a DISCOM liaison tracker, serialised inventory, IoT generation monitoring, finance and maintenance. A won quote becomes a project, a completed stage drafts the milestone invoice, and a generation drop opens a service ticket. The client engagement is confidential, but the system is live to explore.
If you run an installation business and want to see whether that model fits your workflow, the useful first step is to count how many of your open files have been waiting more than seven days, and on whom. If you cannot get that number in under a minute, that is the problem to solve first.
Sources: Mercom India (August 2026); MNRE Operational Guidelines for PM Surya Ghar (7 June 2024); Energetica India (May, August and September 2026); vendor pricing pages for Arka360, Quickest Solar CRM, Zoho CRM and ECOSIRE's ERPNext solar app, all checked 6 October 2026. Vendor descriptions are the vendors' own.