OpenSolar and Solar Outlet launch Hardware Ordering on OpenSolar’s Design Platform

OpenSolar’s new Hardware Ordering function weaves in Solar Outlet’s online distribution warehouse to the existing solar design and sales workflow.

Sydney, Australia– 19 Sept 2023 – OpenSolar Pty Ltd, a software company focused on empowering solar installers with the world’s most accurate solar design and sales platform at no cost, and Solar Outlet, Australia’s largest online distributor for solar panels, inverters, batteries and complete kits, have partnered to provide an all-in-one solution for designing, selling, and purchasing for solar projects.

This new integration will remove a significant amount of guesswork and manual data entry by the solar professional (Pro). And according to one of the early beta testers, “it’s easier than ordering a pizza online.” - Jimi Gatland, Light Touch Solar.

After projects are designed and sold on the OpenSolar platform, solar professionals can instantly add the entire kit list to the new OpenSolar cart and purchase the equipment from Solar Outlet.  The system provides real-time equipment availability as they design, so that they only sell what they know they can install. 

In addition to per-project purchasing, the new Hardware Ordering function simplifies bulk ordering while still allowing Pros to enjoy the same trade prices and discounts they normally see but without the pen and paper tracking and time-consuming phone calls.

“A fast-moving market like Australia needs better tools that take less time,” said Rami Fedda, Co-founder of Solar Juice, parent company to Solar Outlet. 

“That’s why we are excited to partner with OpenSolar and offer a design solution that provides stock updates and product alternatives in real time so that solar professionals can sell products that are actually in stock, and avoid costly change orders.”

“Solar Pros have one of the hardest and most important jobs in the world. Yesterday’s hardware ordering tools involved using pen and paper to manage their stock, making phone calls to distributors to get the best prices, and spending a lot of time double and triple-checking their orders to ensure accuracy,” said Maaike Gobel, Head of Asia Pacific at OpenSolar. 

“But today all that hassle goes away. We want to see a world powered by sunshine, so it’s critical that barriers to productivity are removed.”

Hardware Ordering on OpenSolar is intended to continue to break down silos in the solar installer’s workflow so that their businesses can grow unimpeded. This post-sale functionality is offered at no additional cost to the Pros or their customers, just like the rest of OpenSolar’s free-of-charge design and sales platform.

Solar professionals on OpenSolar can go to pages.opensolar.com/partners/solar-outlet to learn more about the Hardware Ordering feature and how to get started. To create an OpenSolar account, solar businesses can register on OpenSolar.com.