Skip to content
English
  • There are no suggestions because the search field is empty.

Proposal Tool Basics and Key Concepts

Learn the terms the Proposal Tool uses and understand which parts of a proposal fill in for you.

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 Open the Proposal Tool.

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 remote 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.

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.

📘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.

Helpful Articles

Link

The Proposal Editor: What Each Section Does

Proposal Builder Overview: How It Works

Presets: How Settings Are Grouped and Saved

Global Settings Explained

Proposal Tool Permissions: Who Can Do What

Proposal Tool Permissions

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