Documentation

Getting started

This guide takes you from installing Solvera to a working solar configurator on your storefront. If you are a solar distributor or installer, this is the place to begin.

What Solvera does for you

Solvera replaces spreadsheets, off platform quoting tools, and one off email quotes with a guided wizard on your store and a live bill of materials engine. You add your own Shopify products and tag them with the properties that matter (manufacturer, profile, color, compatibility). Solvera handles the conditional logic, quantity formulas, and product matching at runtime, including solar specific engineering like rail cut optimization, microinverter string packing, wire gauge selection, and pier spacing.

Your customers get a clean step by step experience with a running bill of materials. At the end they can email the quote, share it, or add the full system to the cart for checkout.

1. Install the app

Install Solvera from the Shopify App Store. After you approve the access scopes, the app opens inside your Shopify Admin. On first run it lands on the Module Selection page.

The app is embedded, which means it runs directly inside the Shopify Admin. There is nothing to download.

2. Understand the admin layout

Click Configuration in the app's left navigation to open the configuration area. Its sidebar is organized into four sections:

Product Catalog: turn modules on or off and add your products.
Calculations: control the questions customers answer and how quantities are computed.
Customer Experience: control how the quote looks, how it is priced, how it is delivered, and your branding.
Settings: measurement system, company profile, and API access.

At the bottom of the sidebar are the Preview and Publish buttons. A top navigation bar gives you quick access to the configuration, preview, publish, and the sales tools.

Solvera admin with the full left sidebar visible, showing Product Catalog, Calculations, Customer Experience, and Settings sections, with the Module Selection page open and the Racking module expanded into sub-modules — The Solvera admin with all four sidebar sections visible. The Module Selection page is open with the Racking module expanded to show its sub-modules (Pitched Roof, Flat Roof, Ground Mount).

3. Choose your modules

Open Configuration, then Module Selection under Product Catalog. A module is a top level part of a solar system:

Solar Panels
Racking (with sub types: pitched roof, flat roof, ground mount)
Inverters (microinverters, optimizers and rapid shutdown, string inverters, batteries, monitoring)
BOS (balance of system: wiring, connectors, wire management, grounding, safety labeling)

Toggle on the modules you sell. For each one, choose a selection behavior:

Always included: the module is always part of the configuration.
Customer chooses: the customer decides whether to include this module, using a "Choose Components" step at the start.

You can leave everything as "Always included" to start. You can change this anytime.

Tip Choosing your modules before adding products tells Solvera which product categories you'll be working with, which keeps the rest of the setup focused on what you actually sell.

4. Add your products

Solvera reads products from your Shopify catalog, so create your products in Shopify first (with images and prices). Then add them into Solvera's product tables.

Open each module page (Panels, Racking, Inverters, BOS) and add products to the relevant item types. For example, in Racking you add rails under the Rails item type, clamps under Mid Clamps, and so on. Fill in the property columns so the engine can match the right product to each customer selection.

The Solar Panels configuration page in the Solvera admin showing four panel products in a table with property columns: Short Lead, Panels Per RSD, Short Circuit Current, Voltage at Max Power, Open Circuit Voltage, Panel Width — The Solar Panels page with products added and their property columns filled in. Each column captures a technical specification used by the configurator to match products to customer selections.

For full detail on product tables, multi scenario rows, coverage indicators, accessories, and CSV import, see Product Catalog.

5. Review your calculations (optional at first)

Solvera ships with sensible defaults for every quantity formula and engineering calculation, so you can launch without touching this section. When you are ready to fine tune, the Calculations section lets you adjust the questions customers answer, the calculated values, and the quantity formulas per item type. See Calculations and BOM formulas.

6. Set up the customer experience

In the Customer Experience section you can:

Configure the System Overview summary shown to customers.
Control the Quote Display (what shows in the BOM sidebar and quote).
Set Quote Pricing (tax, shipping, surcharges) Growth+
Configure Quote Delivery emails.
Apply your Branding (logo and colors) Professional

See Customer experience and branding.

7. Add the configurator to your storefront

The configurator is delivered as a Theme App Block, so you do not need to edit theme code.

In Shopify Admin go to Online Store > Themes.
Click Customize on your live theme.
Navigate to the page where you want the configurator. A dedicated page (for example "Design Your Solar System") works best.
Click Add section or Add block and select Solar Configurator.
Set the heading if you want a custom title.
Click Save.

Shopify theme editor with the Solar Configurator block selected, showing the block settings panel on the left with Heading text field set to 'Configure Your Solar System' and Show configurator toggle on — The Shopify theme editor with the Solar Configurator block added. The block settings panel shows the configurable heading field and the show configurator toggle.

8. Publish

The storefront always shows the last published version of your configuration, so your customers never see half finished edits.

Click Publish in the sidebar.
Click Publish New Version.
Solvera captures a snapshot of all your settings (products, formulas, branding, pricing, content, and quote settings) and serves it to the storefront.

Whenever you make changes later, the Publish button shows an "unpublished changes" indicator. Publish again to push those changes live. You can preview before publishing and roll back to any earlier version. See Publishing and versions.

The Solvera Publish Configurator page showing Current Status with live version v115, Version History table with multiple successful versions, and the Publish New Version button — The Publish page after several successful publishes. Each version is listed with its timestamp, change summary, and a rollback option. The currently live version is marked with the green Live badge.

9. Test it

Visit the storefront page where you added the block and run through the wizard as a customer would. Use Preview in the admin to test changes before publishing.

You are live Your customers can now design a complete solar system on your store and get an accurate quote in seconds. From here, fine tune quantity formulas in Calculations and BOM formulas, style the quote and apply branding in Customer experience and branding, or set up your sales team in Quotes and sales mode.

A note on measurement units

Go to Settings > General Settings to choose Imperial (feet and inches) or Metric (meters and millimeters). This cascades through all unit labels and dropdown values across the admin and storefront, including engineering values like pipe sizes.