Software for solar and heat pump installers: a UK guide

Last updated: August 2026

It is a Thursday in October. Three hours went into a room by room heat loss survey in a cold bungalow last week, and the customer has just gone with someone £900 cheaper. Two more quotes from that fortnight have gone quiet. Meanwhile the job commissioned on Tuesday needs a certificate raised, a commissioning confirmation sent to the network operator, a voucher redeemed and a handover pack emailed, and every one of those deadlines runs from a different event.

That is the shape of renewable installation as a business. Most of the work that decides whether you get paid happens before the van arrives and long after it leaves, and almost none of it looks like a job sheet.

Twenty hours of unpaid work for every job that lands

The market is growing much faster than the people in it. MCS published its 2025 figures on 10 February 2026: 369,000 certified installations in the year, a 34% increase on 2024, made up of 267,032 rooftop solar systems, more than 60,000 heat pumps and more than 40,000 battery installations. Over the same year the number of MCS certified installers grew 7%. Volume grew roughly five times faster than the installer base, and the gap is absorbed by the people already here.

The pre-sale cost is the part nobody prices. Spruce, writing on 24 August 2026, puts it at an average of two hours per customer enquiry with around 10% of enquiries converting to paid work, which is twenty hours of enquiry handling for every job that goes ahead.

That is not a failure of salesmanship, it is designed in. Energy Saving Trust, where most householders land first, tells them to get quotes from at least three different installers, all MCS certified. You are quote two of three from the customer’s first search. Nesta’s survey of heating engineers found 45% believed customers abandon installations because of excessive cost across quotes.

The survey itself is real work, not a look round. A heat pump design needs a room by room heat loss calculation to BS EN 12831 under MIS 3005-D, and field trials published by DESNZ and cited by Nesta recorded survey visits running around two and a half to three and a quarter hours. Anyone who calls that a quote visit is mispricing their year.

Four clocks per job, and none of them start together

A callout trade has one deadline: the customer is waiting. A renewable install has four, each triggered by a different event, and all of them are yours to watch.

• The voucher. Ofgem’s installer workflow tells installers to complete the installation within three months of voucher issue, or six months for ground source.
• The connection window. Under the Energy Networks Association fast track procedure for small generation and storage, the planned commissioning date on the application must fall between ten working days and three months after the application is submitted.
• The commissioning confirmation. Confirmation must reach the network operator no later than 28 days after commissioning, where the tests were not witnessed.
• The certificate. Fourteen days to raise the certificate on the MID under the current MCS scheme, thirty days under the redeveloped one.

Miss the voucher window and the customer’s grant sits in limbo while a fresh application is made for the same installation. Miss the certificate and everything downstream stalls: grant redemption needs it, the customer’s Smart Export Guarantee registration needs it alongside evidence of the network notification, and their insurer may ask for it. MCS is blunt about the worst case: an installation cannot be certified retrospectively.

The vocabulary is load bearing here, because the three routes are not the same act. A G98 is a notification, used below 3.68kW per phase. A G99 is an application you make and have answered. G100 governs an export limitation scheme, which is often what allows a larger array or a battery to connect at all. Northern Ireland has a single network operator, NIE Networks, with its own G99/NI recommendation. And every installation you register with MCS carries a £30 fee.

MCS has changed, and the tail is now six years

MCS has rebuilt the installer scheme and it is live, with certification bodies moving installers across in phases through 2026. Most of the advice you will find online predates it.

Consumer Code membership is no longer mandatory under it: the MCS Customer Commitment now discharges the obligation that RECC or HIES membership used to. That change arrives when your certification body moves you, so if you are still on the current scheme you still need a code. Certificate creation windows go from fourteen to thirty days, assessment becomes risk based, and the Installer Agreement is held with MCS directly.

Complaints changed too. MCS is now the single point of contact once a customer has raised the issue with you first. Unresolved cases go to alternative dispute resolution through the Furniture and Home Improvement Ombudsman, and its decisions are legally binding on installers certified under the redeveloped scheme. What MCS asks the complaining customer to supply is the part with practical consequences: photographic evidence, and supporting documents such as contracts or quotes.

On the other side, MCS announced approved financial protection products on 28 January 2026, replacing insurance backed guarantees and mandatory for domestic contracts under the redeveloped scheme, with at least six years of cover from the moment of installation.

Six years is now the working life of a job record, which is a long time for a photograph to live in a phone gallery. In Dispatch, certificates, commissioning records and handover documents attach to the job as files and are kept for the life of that job. One exception is worth knowing: photographs a customer sends you through a portal form or a message thread are deleted 30 days after the job closes, while completion photographs, certificates and signatures stay.

The same property details, typed into five systems

Nesta names the mechanism. Its report lists the network application or notification, the voucher application, the handover pack, the MCS certificate and the building compliance certificates, and notes that each of these requires the installer to dig up and manually enter a similar set of information.

Its ranked barriers were insufficient customer demand at 41%, difficulty recruiting staff at 30%, and time spent on administrative tasks at 19%. The conclusion is sharper than the ranking: administrative tasks are a larger barrier to increasing installations than the physical installation work itself, at a point where 87% of respondents said they wanted to install more each year.

Building control adds another login, and not the same one everywhere. In England and Wales the electrical work in a solar or battery install is notifiable under Part P, and registration with a competent person scheme lets you self certify. Being MCS certified does not make you Part P registered; a firm needs both. Scotland has no Part P at all: the route is a building warrant. Northern Ireland has its own Building Regulations again.

Planning moved in England on 29 May 2025. SI 2025/560 removed the one metre boundary restriction for domestic air source heat pumps, raised the permitted unit size, and made MCS 020 the sole planning standard referenced. Noise conditions still apply, so the MCS 020 assessment is doing more of the work than it used to. This is England only: Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each run their own permitted development rules.

Many firms in this trade still do that work. EV charge points and general electrical contracting are covered in job management software for electricians, and gas boiler work sits in job management software for plumbers.

Three VAT treatments in the same week

Installing qualifying energy saving materials in residential accommodation is zero rated for VAT under Notice 708/6 until 31 March 2027, after which the reduced rate of 5% applies. Solar panels and heat pumps qualify, and batteries and smart diverters were added on 1 February 2024. Northern Ireland is on the same treatment.

Two things follow. A VAT registered domestic installer reclaims input VAT on equipment while charging 0% output VAT, a persistent repayment position. And 31 March 2027 is a cliff edge for anything quoted before it and completed after. Both are questions for your accountant.

New build is a different rule set, and MCS reports 28% of 2025 certified installations were on new builds. Where you invoice a VAT registered contractor inside the Construction Industry Scheme, the VAT domestic reverse charge applies and the invoice must say so, and it never applies when invoicing a householder or another end user. One week can therefore carry 0% to a homeowner, a reverse charge invoice to a housebuilder, and standard rate on non qualifying work.

Grants reach into the quote document itself. Since 28 April 2026 the grant must be shown as an upfront discount, giving the total cost before grant, the grant amount and the net payment, and the customer cannot be asked to hand the grant money over. That makes the quote a compliance artefact as much as a sales document.

Cash flow follows the same sequence. You buy equipment for a fixed design, install, commission, raise the certificate, then redeem, and Ofgem pays on its next scheduled payment day, weekly. Every day between commissioning and the certificate is a day of your money sitting somewhere else. Deposits and staged payments are how most installers bridge that gap, and quoting with a deposit covers how to structure one.

How Dispatch helps

Dispatch holds a renewable job from first enquiry to the first winter, on one record: the customer, the site, the survey, the quote, the visit, the photographs, the commissioning documents and the invoice.

The pre-sale work is where this trade bleeds time, so start there. Send a private link and the customer completes your own survey form before you drive out, with photographs of the board, the loft and the cylinder space, and a signature on screen. Quote with line items, VAT and a deposit percentage, and they read it in their own time and accept by typing their name. Acceptance raises the deposit invoice automatically and drafts the final one ready for handover, so a yes turns into money without another phone call.

Through the install, certificates, commissioning records and handover documents attach to the job and stay for its life, which is what a six year obligation actually needs. A completion report captures the write up and photographs before the job closes. Two way message threads cover the first winter calls without another group chat.

Card payment lands in your own Stripe account, and overdue invoices chase themselves at 3, 10 and 21 days.

Every feature is on every plan, everything runs in the UK, and there is a free plan to try it on a live survey.