Solar Sense

A commercial quoting system for a solar installation business, replacing a manual Excel-based workflow with a proper web application.

[GITHUB LINK] solarsense-uk.com

The problem

[EXCEL WORKFLOW VISUAL]

An Excel-based quoting process

Solar Sense were producing commercial installation quotes through an Excel-based workflow. It worked, but it wasn't built for consistency, speed, or easy reuse of pricing data across quotes.

The objective

[OBJECTIVE VISUAL]

A proper quoting application

Replace the spreadsheet with a web application built around a centralised pricing engine, so every quote pulls from the same source of truth and follows the business's real budget cascade through to a Gross Total.

How I approached it

An 8-step quote wizard

The core of the system is an 8-step quote wizard backed by a centralised pricing engine and a pricing_defaults database table, with a management-only settings page for maintaining that pricing data. Pricing was extracted directly from Solar Sense's real budget spreadsheet rather than estimated.

Technology

Stack

Built and run locally on WAMP during development, edited in Notepad++.

PHP MySQL JavaScript CSS

Development

[QUOTE WIZARD VISUAL]

Wizard, library, and a live calculator

Alongside the wizard, the system includes a quote library, login and authentication with CSRF protection and brute-force lockout, and automatic Quote Reference generation. The Totals page runs a live JavaScript calculator that mirrors the PHP pricing engine, with a colour-coded Gross Margin indicator built around the brand's green (#8dc63f) and orange (#f5821f).

Challenges

[TESTING VISUAL]

Matching the real numbers exactly

[DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES — specific issues encountered while matching the pricing engine to the real budget sheet]

Result

Outcome

[RESULTS — outcome of the delivered system]

Screenshots

A closer look

[WIZARD SCREENSHOT]

[TOTALS PAGE SCREENSHOT]

[QUOTE LIBRARY SCREENSHOT]

Reflection

What I learned

[WHAT I LEARNED FROM BUILDING SOLAR SENSE]