Branding your calculator

Theme dresses the calculator your customers see, the emails they get and the quote PDFs you send. The dashboard stays Solar Desk, because the dashboard is not something a customer ever looks at.

Like Pricing, this page is admin only. A rep sees it with the inputs disabled.

The figures here are illustrative.The screenshots come from Meridian Solar, a demo installer, so the figures in the preview panel are built on example pricing rather than a real quote.

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1. The preview panel, updating live as you type. It shows the header, the tagline, the four figures and the button in whatever palette you have chosen.
2. Eleven colours, each a picker and a hex box. Button and highlight is the one people change first.
3. The readability panel, which grades six text-and-background pairs and can stop you saving.
4. Where new enquiries go. At least one address is required, and it is the only route by which you find out an enquiry has arrived.

Four blocks: colours, readability, wording and behaviour, with a live preview alongside.

Colours

Eleven, each with a picker and a hex box. They come in pairs, because almost every one is a foreground sitting on a background:

• Page background and Card background, plus a Subtle fill for the quieter panels.
• Body text and Secondary text, on those backgrounds.
• Rules and borders.
• Header bar and Text on the header.
• Button and highlight, and Text on a button.
• Link text, which carries the only hint on the block: it is usually a darker version of your highlight colour, so that it reads as text.

That hint is the whole trick. A highlight colour is chosen to be seen from across a room, and a bright amber or a mid green makes a wonderful button and a terrible sentence.

The readability check, and why Save can refuse

This is the most opinionated screen in Solar Desk, so it is worth explaining rather than only describing.

Six pairs are checked, each against a minimum of 4.5:1, and each is named in plain English rather than in colour theory:

Pair	What it is
Body text on the page	Most of the words on the calculator
Body text on a card	The same words on a white panel
Secondary text on the page	Hints, captions, the small print under a field
Link and accent text	Your link colour, against the page
Navigation text on the rail	Your header text, against your header bar
Text on an accent button	The label on your main button

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1. The header counts the problems: "Readability, all pass" when the palette is clean.
2. Each row gives the measured ratio, so you can see how much headroom you have rather than only whether you scraped through.

A palette that passes. The ratios are shown even when they pass, which is what lets you tell 4.6:1 from 17:1.

Fail one, and three things happen at once. The header changes to count the problems, the failing row turns red and says what it needs, and Save is disabled with “Fix 1 readability problem first.” beside the button.

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1. Link text changed to a pale yellow. On screen it looks like a colour choice, not a mistake.
2. 1.31:1 against a minimum of 4.5. Text at that ratio is effectively invisible to a lot of people, and perfectly legible to whoever picked it.
3. Save is disabled, not warned. The message beside it counts the problems.

One bad colour is enough. Nothing else on the page can be saved until it is fixed.

Save is disabled rather than warned about, and the message beside it counts the problems. The block is enforced twice, here in the page and again on the server, so a failing palette cannot be saved by other means.

Why a white-label tool refuses

The page that would become unreadable is not ours. It has your name on it, your colours, your phone number, and a customer who cannot read the saving figure does not blame Solar Desk.

The harder reason is that this is not a mistake you catch by eye. A contrast failure looks perfectly fine to the person who chose the colours, on the monitor they chose them on, in the room they were sitting in. The design this product replaced shipped a muted grey at 4.43:1, a hair under the line, and nobody noticed for months. A warning would have been scrolled past. A gate is not.

Fixing one

It is almost always the link colour or the text on your accent button.

• Link and accent text failing? You have probably used your highlight colour as your link colour. Darken it until it passes; the two are separate fields precisely so that they can differ.
• Text on an accent button failing? Swap between a near-black and a near-white label. One of the two will pass against almost any button colour.
• Secondary text failing? Your secondary grey is too light. This is the one that slips through most often, because it looks tasteful.

Your logo

There is no upload control on this page, or anywhere else in the application.

The branded header will show a logo when there is one, but nothing in Solar Desk sets it. Send us the file and we will put it in place for you. Until then, your customers see your company name set in your header colours, which is a plainer page rather than a broken one.

Wording

• Tagline. Sits under your name at the top of the calculator. Meridian’s reads “Cleaner energy, clearer numbers”.
• Step 1 label through Step 6 label. Rename the six steps of the calculator in your own words. The defaults are Your property, Your roof, Your energy use, Your system, Your estimate and Register your interest, and each box shows its default as a placeholder, so leaving one blank keeps the default rather than producing an unnamed step.

Behaviour

Four settings, and they matter more than the colours do.

Callback window (hours). Between 1 and 336, and 48 by default. This number is promised on the confirmation screen and repeated in the email, in your name. Promising a window you do not hit is worse than promising a longer one.

Where new enquiries go. One address per line, and at least one is required. This is the only way you find out an enquiry has arrived, and the notification rule behind it surprises people: Solar Desk sends one email per unread run. Four customer messages in a row produce one email, and the counter only resets when somebody reads. There is no reminder and no scheduler, so a recipient who never opens their email gets exactly one, ever. Put an address here that a person actually watches, and put in more than one if that person takes holidays. See emails.

How long a quote stays valid. In days, 1 to 365, and 30 by default. After that a customer can still read the quote but cannot accept it. Panel prices move, and a quote with no expiry is a price you are still bound to a year later.

Show finance options. Turn it off if you are not authorised to offer credit. While it is on, a customer sees an instalment plan and a representative example on step 5, and that example cannot be switched off, because quoting an APR and a monthly payment is a regulated financial promotion.

One checkbox does nothing yet

Ask for details before showing the estimate is on this page and it saves, but the calculator does not read it. Ticking it changes nothing a customer experiences today. It is here because it is coming, not because it works.

The preview panel

The right-hand side is a live mini calculator in your palette: your name, your tagline, the four figures and your main button, updating as you type. Underneath it sits the address your calculator is live at.

It is the fastest way to judge colours, and it is not the calculator. It has no steps, no map, no finance and no forms. For that, use the real preview.

Saving

Save theme confirms with “Saved. Your calculator is using these now.” Unlike pricing, this takes effect immediately: the next page a customer loads is in the new colours and the new wording.

Setting at least one address under “Where new enquiries go” clears the third of the three go-live blockers.