Proposal Tool Basics and Key Concepts

The Proposal Tool turns a finished Scanifly design into a customer-facing proposal that stays in sync with the design. Skim this article before the rest of the Proposal Tool guides, because they all use the vocabulary defined here.

You open the Proposal Tool from the Scanifly sidebar or from an individual project. For the full entry paths, see How to Navigate the Sidebar and Dashboard.

Terms You'll See

What you build

• Proposal: a saved, named output tied to one project and one design.
• Design: the array layout you built in Scanifly, from either drone or on-site imagery.
• Design image: the rendered view of your design that appears in the proposal and refreshes automatically whenever you change the design.
• Standard proposal: the built-in proposal that works with no setup.
• Custom proposal: a proposal built from a template, either one your company made or one Scanifly provides.
• Active proposal: the proposal that renders when you generate. You choose the active proposal from the proposal list. See How to Save and Manage Proposals.

How it's configured

• Editor (Proposal Builder): where you make adjustments to a proposal.
• Preset: a saved bundle of settings that also controls which editor sections you see. A preset controls settings; a template controls layout.
• Variable: a value or calculation available to pricing rules and templates.

Money

• Adder: a cost line item, entered as a flat amount, dollars per watt, or a percentage.
• Import adder: an adder that applies automatically based on rules your admin set. You cannot change it on an individual proposal.
• Incentive: the reverse of an adder, applied as a discount against system cost.

[Image: Annotated screenshot of the Proposal Tool editor (Proposal Builder) with the major regions labeled and numbered, including the Preset selector, the section list, the Summary panel, and the Generate button]

What Updates Automatically vs. What Your Admin Sets

Some values arrive in your proposal on their own because they come from the project. Others were chosen for you in global settings before you ever opened the editor. The two lists below are independent; items are not paired across them.

Flows in from the project automatically

• Customer name
• Address
• System size
• Production
• Design image

Comes from global settings, configured by your admin

• Utility rates
• Loan providers
• Pricing
• Equipment
• Adders

🚧 Locked by your admin 🚧 Import adders and global settings apply to every proposal and cannot be changed on a single proposal. If a value looks wrong, ask your admin to update it in global settings rather than working around it in the editor.

[Image: Screenshot of the global settings page with the Adders section highlighted]

📘 Pro Tip: AI is not required to use the Proposal Tool at all. Pricing and savings math is never AI-generated. AI is optional help for building templates, custom variables, and rules.

For more information on where to open the Proposal Tool and how the dashboard is laid out, please see this support article: How to Navigate the Sidebar and Dashboard.

For more information on what each section of the editor does, please see this support article: Proposal Builder Overview: How It Works.

For more information on the settings your admin controls, including presets, please see this support article: Global Settings Explained.

For more information on adders and incentives, please see this support article: How to Add Incentives and Cost Adders (Without Double Counting).

[NEEDS CLARIFICATION: the original draft referenced a "Proposal Tool Permissions: Who Can Do What" article. No such article exists. Confirm whether permissions are covered by Team Management or whether a new article is needed.]

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please reach out to our chat support or email hello@scanifly.com.