A tour of the dashboard
The dashboard is always Solar Desk’s own, in Solar Desk’s colours. Your branding goes on the customer-facing side and stops there. That split is why the product is named the way it is: this is the tool you log into, not a solar brand your customers meet.
- Notices appear here, at the top of the main column: the not-live banner, the suspended banner, and this amber warning that your figures are still Solar Desk's placeholders.
- The rail. Four screens, and that is the whole application: Leads, Products, Pricing and Theme.
- Pipeline value counts everything still open. Bought and Lost drop out of it, and Bought moves across into Confirmed value instead.
- The bottom of the rail: a link to your own calculator, the email you are signed in as, and Sign out.
The rail
Section titled “The rail”Four entries, in the order you need them.
The pipeline, and the screen you land on. Every enquiry as a row: name, contact details, where they are, when it arrived, the system they configured and the four figures it produced, plus a status and a comment you can edit without opening anything.
Above the table sit four metric columns (total quotes, pipeline value, confirmed value, and a breakdown by status) and the filters. The search box and status filter keep their state in the address bar, so a filtered view is a link you can send to a colleague, and Export to Excel exports exactly what is on screen.
Start at the quote list, then reading a lead.
Products
Section titled “Products”Your catalogue: the panels and batteries a customer picks from on step 4 of the calculator. New accounts arrive with nothing in it, deliberately, so that nobody’s quotes carry another installer’s hardware. See your product catalogue.
Pricing
Section titled “Pricing”The sheet everything else is arithmetic on. Generation, tariffs, your costs, how much solar a household actually uses, and your finance terms. Change a figure here and every new estimate moves. Admin only, and the most important page you will fill in. See setting your pricing.
The customer-facing side: colours, the wording on each step, and the behaviour settings that decide how fast you promise to call back and who gets emailed when an enquiry arrives. Also admin only. See branding your calculator.
The bottom of the rail
Section titled “The bottom of the rail”Under a good deal of empty space you get three things: a link to your own calculator, the email address you are signed in as, and Sign out.
The link is worth knowing by its wording. It reads Preview your calculator while your account is pending and View your calculator once you are live, which means you can always tell which state you are in without reading a banner. Either way it opens in a new tab. See previewing your calculator.
Where the banners appear
Section titled “Where the banners appear”Two banners can appear across the top of the main column, above the page heading, on every screen:
- Not live yet. Your calculator answers 404 for the public while you add your pricing, products and branding. We take it live with you.
- Account suspended. Your pipeline is still here and still yours to read, but nothing can be changed and the calculator is offline.
A third notice looks similar but is not a banner: the amber placeholder warning that appears under the heading on Leads and on Pricing while your costs are still Solar Desk’s example figures. It goes away when you replace them, and it is worth knowing exactly what it checks.
What you will not find
Section titled “What you will not find”Two absences that surprise people, both covered elsewhere: there is no password reset and no way to add a colleague, and there is no notification centre. In-app, the only signals are the unread badge on a lead, the “wants a call” tag, and the number in the status breakdown. Everything else arrives by email.