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.

Prefer to watch first? This walkthrough covers the entire guide in seven minutes: sample catalog, module setup, publishing, the storefront experience, and sales rep mode.

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 opens on Home, a Get started checklist grouped into Set up your configurator, Go live, and After launch. Most steps tick themselves off as Solvera detects your work; the rest you tick by hand. Steps your plan does not include are greyed out and left out of the count, so the total varies by plan.

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

The Solvera Home page inside the Shopify admin, titled Get started, reading 3 of 7 steps complete. Under Set up your configurator: Load your product catalog is badged Detected with 52 products found; Choose your modules is badged Marked by you; Review your formulas is expanded, showing buttons for an example mid clamp formula, Calculated values, Preview, and The defaults work for me, with a Formulas guide link on the right; Set up quote delivery is still open; Add your branding is greyed out and reads Requires Professional with an Upgrade link. Under Go live: Publish your configuration carries an Unpublished changes badge, and Add the configurator to your storefront is open. Under After launch: Receive your first quote. Four tiles across the bottom read Documentation, Sample catalog, Ask Solvera, and Support, and an Ask Solvera button sits in the bottom-right corner.
The Get started checklist part way through setup. Steps badged Detected were completed automatically and Marked by you were ticked by hand; the rest show a button that takes you straight to the right page, plus a link to the matching guide on this site. Add your branding is greyed out here because this store is not on the Professional plan, which is why the count reads out of seven rather than eight.

Below the checklist, a Last 30 days row shows quotes created, quote value, quotes emailed, and customers quoted, each compared with the previous 30 days. It appears on every plan; the full Analytics dashboard behind the View Analytics button is a Professional feature.

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:

At the bottom of the sidebar are the Preview and Publish buttons. The app's main navigation lists Home, Configuration, Preview, Publish, New Quote, Quotes, Analytics, Plans & Pricing, and Help and docs.

Help is built in. Every page description ends with a Learn more link to the matching section of this documentation, and an Ask Solvera button sits in the bottom-right corner of every admin page (in the Preview toolbar on the Preview page). It opens a panel where you can ask questions in plain language; answers come from this documentation and cite the page they came from. The same panel, with links to the guides and to support, is available as the Help and docs page in the main navigation.

The Solvera admin inside Shopify. The app's own navigation runs down the far left with Configuration, Preview, Publish, New Quote, Quotes, Analytics, Plans and Pricing, and Help and docs. Beside it the configuration sidebar shows four sections, Product Catalog, Calculations, Customer Experience, and Settings, with Preview and Publish buttons at the bottom. The Module Configuration page is open, with a description line ending in a Learn more link, a one-line sample catalog banner offering Set up samples, and the module list with Racking expanded into Pitched Roof, Flat Roof (Ballasted, Tilt Legs, Metal Roof) and Ground Mount. Always included and Customer chooses pills sit to the right of each top-level module, and an Ask Solvera button floats in the bottom-right corner.
The Solvera admin with all four configuration sections visible. The Module Selection page is open with Racking expanded to show its sub-modules. Note the Learn more link at the end of the page description and the Ask Solvera button in the corner, which appear on every page.

3. Choose your modules

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

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

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. Product names are links to the Shopify admin. Property columns include Short Circuit Current, Voltage at Max Power, Open Circuit Voltage, and Panel Width, and the Storefront band has Min Order Qty and Promo Text columns
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.

Try it with a sample catalog

If you want to see the configurator working before you commit to entering your own catalog, load the built in sample set. On Module Selection a one line banner offers Set up samples, and the Home page has a Load sample catalog button that opens the same card.

  1. Click Download products CSV, then use the Open Products in Shopify link and import that file from Products > Import. This creates the sample products in your store with their images and prices.
  2. Back on the card, a live check reports how many of the sample products it can find in your store. Add sample products stays disabled until that check passes, then loads the matching rows into your Panels, Racking, Inverters, and BOS tables.
  3. Publish, and your storefront shows a complete working system you can configure end to end.

The samples cover the pitched roof racking path and include both a microinverter and a string inverter, so you can run a full configuration on either. Flat roof and ground mount are intentionally left empty; they use the same engine. The set is capped at 20 products per module so it works on every plan.

When you are finished, Remove in the same banner deletes only the sample rows and leaves anything you added yourself untouched.

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 and the calculated values, and each item type's Quantity tab holds its quantity formula. A simple one to start with is mid clamps: (panels - 1) * 2, found on the Racking page under Mid Clamps. See Calculations and BOM formulas.

6. Set up the customer experience

In the Customer Experience section you can:

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.

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

Once the block is on your published theme, the Add the configurator to your storefront step on the Home page shows Detected. If it says "Seen in your theme editor", save the theme; if it says "Seen on an unpublished theme", publish that theme so customers can reach it.

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.

  1. Click Publish in the sidebar.
  2. Click Publish New Version.
  3. 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.

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