From the Knock to the Commission Check: Why a Solar Deal Shouldn't Change Systems Four Times

Follow one deal through a typical solar org and count how many times a person types it.

A rep drops a pin in the canvassing app and marks the door "interested." Later they text the setter the name and address. The setter puts the appointment in a calendar. After the sit, somebody creates the deal in the CRM. After the signature, somebody enters it in the commission sheet, with the system size, the split, and whatever adders they remember.

That's the same homeowner entered four or five times by three people. Every one of those is a place for a digit to change.

Where it shows up

Nobody notices on the day it happens. They notice on payday.

The rep thinks the split was one thing and the sheet says another. The setter says the appointment was theirs and the CRM shows a different name. The deal that was "signed" in one system has been "cancelled" in another for two weeks, and nobody told the person counting on the check.

We made this point in the $77,000 stack teardown: commission disputes are how orgs lose their best closers, and almost every one traces back to two systems holding two versions of the same deal. Nobody's being dishonest. Two records disagree and somebody has to be wrong.

You can't out-manage that with a better spreadsheet. The answer is to stop copying the deal.

The same deal on GRID

Here's the path when canvassing, pipeline and commissions are sections of one platform instead of three products.

At the door. A rep starts a canvassing session and works the map, the satellite view or the list. The app reads public records on the address in front of them. They disposition the door with one tap: not home, not interested, interested, appointment set, come back, renter, has solar, do not contact.

That last group matters more than it looks. A "do not contact" recorded at the door is only useful if the rest of your org can see it next month.

In the pipeline. The homeowner the rep just marked is the same record the pipeline tracks: new, qualified, proposal sent, signed. Nobody retypes the address. A manager looking at the board is looking at what the rep actually did, not at what someone transcribed.

At the proposal. Proposals and e-sign are in the same platform, and the installer pricing you're selling against is visible on the deal before you submit it. The numbers that set the commission are the numbers on the deal.

At payout. Commission tracking reads from that same deal. Splits are applied automatically and payout lines are ready per period. When a rep asks why a check is what it is, the answer is on the record they created at the door.

One honest limit: GRID tracks commissions and builds the payout lines. It doesn't run payroll yet. Payroll processing is in development, so today you still pay your people through whatever you pay them with.

What the owner gets out of it

Fewer disputes is the obvious one. The less obvious ones:

• You can see the whole funnel. Doors knocked to appointments to signed to funded, without stitching three exports together. If a rep sets a lot and closes little, or the reverse, it's visible.
• Roles keep it clean. Admins see everything, managers see their team, reps see their deals, setters see their sits. A setter can confirm their appointment got credited without seeing anyone's pay.
• Your admin gets their week back. The hours spent moving deals from one tool to another were never work. They were the cost of owning tools that don't talk.

What it costs

Canvassing tools are usually priced per rep, per month. So are CRMs. Commission software is often priced the same way or by payout volume. Those are fair prices for good products, and they scale with your headcount whether your reps sell or not.

On GRID all three are $0, for every seat. We're paid on the install side of the deal, only when it funds. Adding a rep to your canvassing team doesn't change what you owe us, because you don't owe us anything for it.

You also aren't locked in. The CRM imports from a CSV, so you can load your current pipeline on day one, and it exports, so your data stays yours.

The bottom line

A deal should be entered once, by the person who met the homeowner, and then move. Every system it has to be copied into is another chance for it to be wrong, and the rep who knocked the door is the one who pays for the mistake.

If your org is running a canvassing app, a CRM and a commission sheet that don't agree with each other, bring one real deal to the intro call and we'll walk it through. It takes 20 minutes.

Book the call →

---

GRID is a dealer operating platform and does not sell solar to homeowners. Payroll processing is in development. Nothing here is a representation about earnings or results, which depend on your organization.