Set Up the Proposal Tool: Order of Operations

The Proposal Tool has a lot of settings, and they depend on each other. Presets hold most of your configuration, libraries feed the editor, and variables feed your pricing rules. If you configure these in the wrong order, you will have to go back and rebuild work you already did.

🚧 Admin only 🚧 Global settings require the Manage proposals permission. If you cannot see global settings, your permission level is set to Create proposals or lower. For more information, see Proposal Tool Permissions: Who Can Do What.

Follow the nine steps below in order.

❗ IMPORTANT: You Must Click Update Preset or Your Changes Are Lost

Most global settings are stored on a preset, not on your company as a whole. When you change a setting in global settings, you are almost always changing preset information.

Nothing you change is saved until you click Update Preset.

When you make a change, you have three choices:

Update Preset. Saves the change to the preset you are working in.
Discard. Throws the change away.
Save as a new preset. Keeps your original preset as it was and saves your change into a new one.

If you leave the settings area without doing one of these three things, your change is gone. There is no recovery. Get in the habit of clicking Update Preset after every block of work, not at the end of a long session

1. Set Permissions in Team Management

Before you touch any settings, make sure the right people can reach them. From the Scanifly homepage, go to Team, edit each user, and set their proposal permission level. A salesperson needs Create proposals. A sales manager who will do this setup needs Manage proposals.

Do this first so you are not configuring settings that your team cannot see, and so anyone helping you with setup has access.

For more information, see Proposal Tool Permissions: Who Can Do What.

2. Create a Preset Before Anything Else

In global settings, create a new preset and start it as a new blank preset.

This is the step people skip, and it is the one that causes rework. A preset is a group of settings, and nearly everything you configure in the following steps attaches to the preset you are working in. If you configure company details, libraries, and pricing before you create the preset you actually want to use, you will end up rebuilding them inside the correct preset later.

📘 Pro Tip: One preset is enough if your company works one way. Create more only when you genuinely need them, for example one for commercial and one for residential, or one per territory.

For more information, see Presets: How Settings Are Grouped and Saved.

3. Fill In Company Details and Branding

Open Company Details and add your proposal contact fields, your Default Proposal Controls (title, subtitle, and default page visibility on export), and your color scheme.

Your company name and address come from your Scanifly company settings in the customer portal and are not editable here.

For more information, see Company Details, Branding, and Default Proposal Controls.

4. Add Credentials for AI and SignNow

Open APIs and Credentials. Add an OpenAI key if you want AI help later when building custom templates, custom variables, and rules. Add your SignNow API key if you send proposals for signature.

Do this before you build variables and templates, because the AI assistance in those areas depends on the key being in place. AI is not required to use the Proposal Tool at all, so you can skip this step if you do not want it.

For more information, see APIs and Credentials: OpenAI and SignNow.

5. Build Your Libraries

Open Defaults and Assumptions and build out each library:

Utility library
Loan provider library
Lease and PPA provider library
Ground mount presets
Environmental impact calculations

Build these before pricing and variables, because your libraries are what the editor offers your team when they pick a utility, a financing provider, or a ground mount installation type.

For more information, see Defaults and Assumptions: Utility, Financing, Ground Mount, Environmental.

6. Set Pricing Configuration and Build Your Equipment Library

Open Pricing Configuration and decide how you price modules. Leave module base pricing off to use a base price per watt, or turn it on to price modules in tiers from the equipment section.

Then build your equipment library: inverters, optimizers, and other balance of system items.

Make the pricing configuration decision before you build equipment, since it determines whether your module pricing lives in pricing configuration or in equipment.

For more information, see Pricing Configuration: Price per Watt or Module Tiers and Equipment Library and Module Pricing Tiers.

7. Create Your Variables, Adders, Incentives, and Import Adders

Open Variables and build your custom variables, AI variables, input variables, adders, incentives, and import adders.

This comes after pricing and equipment because import adder rules reference your variables and your pricing, so the pieces they depend on need to exist first.

For more information, see Variables Overview: The Six Types and What They Do, Variables: Custom, AI, and Input Variables, and Variables: Adders, Incentives, and Import Adders.

8. Decide What Your Team Sees and What Customers See

Now that everything exists, decide what to show.

Use Project Builder section visibility to control which sections your team sees in the editor. Use line item visibility to control which cost and incentive lines print on the proposal your customer reads.

Do this second to last, because you cannot sensibly decide what to hide until you know what you have built.

For more information, see Control What Your Team Sees: Section and Line Item Visibility.

9. Add Media, PDF Content Pages, and Templates (Optional)

The standard proposal works with no further setup, so everything in this step is optional.

Upload image assets to the media library if you plan to build custom templates.
Add PDF content pages to append existing collateral, such as a spec sheet or an About Us page, before or after any proposal.
Build custom templates in the template builder, which requires the Manage proposal templates permission from Scanifly.

For more information, see Media Library and PDF Content Pages and Template Builder: Access, Templates, and Pages.

Before You Finish

Click Update Preset one more time and confirm your changes are saved. Then create a test proposal from a real design using your preset and generate it, so you can see your settings on an actual export before your team starts selling with it.

For more information, see Presets: How Settings Are Grouped and Saved and Standard Proposal Example.

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