GUIDE FOR ASSET OWNERS AND MANAGERS

This guide is for asset owners and asset managers who use SolarGrade to oversee a portfolio of solar (and solar-plus-storage) sites built and maintained by outside partners. 

As an owner or manager, you rarely turn the wrenches yourself. Your job is to keep a clear, current picture of every asset, hold your EPC and O&M partners accountable to scope and quality, and keep everyone working from the same information. SolarGrade supports all three of these goals through a connected set of features: Projects, Templates, Site Visits, Issues, Reports, the Planner, and Analytics. 

This guide is organized around the work you actually do: 

• How to Structure Your Portfolio — organizing your assets as projects, using project statuses to track lifecycle, and using contacts to keep stakeholder information in order. 
• EPC Contractor Oversight — setting up and supervising the build phase, from commissioning checklists through punchlists and sign-off. 
• O&M Vendor Oversight — standardizing preventive maintenance, planning recurring work, and trending issues across the operating fleet. 
• The Keys to Collaboration — roles, report sharing, cross-account report import, and external contractor access so every party stays aligned. 

Every instruction in this guide uses functionality that exists in SolarGrade today. Where a feature is limited to certain plans or roles (for example, Analytics or SG Lite), that is noted. For the underlying step-by-step articles and videos, refer to the appropriate SolarGrade Support Center article.

In SolarGrade, your portfolio is built from Projects. A clean, consistent project structure is the foundation for every report, work order, and analytics view that follows. 

Each Project represents a single site or asset. When you open a project, general information about the site lives in the left sidebar — name, client, address, site access instructions, an open-issue summary, and the commercial operation date. The rest of the project is organized into tabs beneath the top menu: 

• Project Details — system information, system design, modules, inverters, racking, and progress tracking. 
• Team Members — the users assigned to the project, grouped by role (admin, manager, inspector). 
• Reports — every report for the project, filterable by date, title, scope, and issues. 
• Issue Summary — all issues for the project, filterable and exportable to CSV. 
• Photos — a photo repository per site visit, with bulk download. 
• Site Visits — a log of past and upcoming site visits in a filterable table. 
• Drawing Set / Documentation — uploaded PDF drawings and georeferenced layouts. 
• Work Orders — all work orders for the project, mirroring the Planner. 

1. Creating and Organizing Projects 

To add a project to your portfolio: 

• Click Projects in the side navigation. 
• Select Add Project in the top right of the table, then Add New Project. 
• Enter the name, location (by address or coordinates), and contact (from your database or add a new one). These are the only required fields — you only need a primary contact to create the project. 
• Add a Custom ID if you use an internal naming or asset-numbering system. 
• Add system information, system design, modules, inverters, racking, and energy-storage details from your records. 
• Add any external links you want associated with the project; these become buttons on the project page. 
• Set a Project Status (covered in section 1.2). 
• Assign the project to your team. Note: inspectors must be assigned to both the project and the site visit to access both. 
• Click Save. You will then be prompted to upload and georeference project drawings. 

Recommended practices for a clean portfolio: 

• Use Custom IDs consistently so SolarGrade names line up with your internal asset register, making projects easy to search by ID. 
• Georeference your drawings early. SolarGrade recommends linking all drawings but uploading about 10 for optimized use. Georeferenced layouts let field findings be pinned to exact locations on your site. 
• Archive rather than delete assets you want to retire from the active view but keep on record. Use the three-dot menu (square-with-down-arrow icon) to archive, and the archived-projects toggle to bring them back. Deleting is permanent. 
• Export when you need to report up. From the Projects page, use the Export button to export project details or issues to CSV for further analysis. 
• Use bulk upload for large intake. For onboarding many sites at once, request the current Bulk Project Upload template from SolarGrade Support and follow its formatting rules. 

2. Project Statuses 

Project status is a lifecycle label on each project. It tells everyone, at a glance, where an asset sits in its life — and lets you filter your portfolio by phase. 

SolarGrade provides seven project statuses. You choose one when creating a project and update it as the asset progresses: 

The descriptions above are guidance for choosing the right status; the status itself is a label you control. 

Setting a status when you create a project 

During Add New Project, the Add a project status step lets you select one of the seven options before saving. 

Changing a project's status later 

Update a status the same way you edit any project detail. There are two routes: 

• From inside the project: on the Project Details tab, click the three vertical dots above the map preview, choose the pencil (Edit) icon, change the status, and click Save. 
• From the Projects dashboard: find the project, click the three vertical dots on the right of its row, click the pencil icon, change the status, and click Save. 

Why statuses matter to you 

• Filtering: the Projects dashboard can be filtered so you can review only Construction sites before an EPC call, or only Operational sites for an O&M review. 
• Portfolio clarity: anyone opening SolarGrade can immediately see how many assets sit in each phase. 
• Aligning oversight to phase: statuses help you point the right activity — commissioning visits, preventive maintenance, remediation campaigns — at the right assets. 

3. Using Contacts Effectively 

Contacts are the people and organizations connected to a project who do not need to log in to SolarGrade. They keep stakeholder information organized and make report sharing painless. 

Contacts store important stakeholder information — owners, EPCs, O&M providers, financiers, advisors — without consuming a license. Unlike Team users, contacts do not receive login credentials and cannot access the platform. They serve as reference points on your projects and can be selected when you share reports. 

Contact information fields 

• Company — the organization the contact belongs to (for example, the EPC, the asset owner company, or the O&M provider). 
• Role — the contact's relationship to the project, chosen from SolarGrade's role list (see below). 
• Full Name — the person representing the company. 
• Email Address — used for communication and when sharing reports externally. 
• Telephone / Mobile Number — so your team can reach the contact when coordinating site visits or scheduling. 

Available contact roles 

Assigning an accurate role keeps reporting and project organization easy. SolarGrade offers the following role options: 

Associating contacts with projects 

Each contact can be linked to one or many projects. Once a contact is associated with a project, your team can quickly see who is involved, select that contact when sharing reports, and reference their information during site visits and coordination. 

Setting the Primary Contact 

Every project requires one Primary Contact — usually the main client or organization associated with the work, such as the company being invoiced or the asset owner. If you see an error that a primary contact is required, one has not been selected yet. To fix it: 

• Go to the Contacts list. 
• Click the star icon next to the contact's Company name to mark them as the Primary Contact. 
• Click Save. You can now create the project without the error. 

Contacts vs. Team users 

Best practices for contacts 

• Keep company names consistent so the same EPC or O&M firm is not entered three different ways across your portfolio. 
• Set the Primary Contact to the party you invoice or the asset owner, so reports and project records point at the right stakeholder. 
• Capture both email and phone for any partner you will coordinate site visits with. 
• Use roles deliberately — tagging the EPC, O&M provider, and technical advisor correctly makes it obvious who does what on every asset. 

From construction through energization, your priority is build quality and schedule. This section walks through using SolarGrade to supervise an EPC partner end to end — without inventing process the platform doesn't support. 

1. Set Up the Project for the Build Phase 

• Create the project (section 1.1) and set its Project Status to Construction (or Pre-Construction / Commissioning & Energization as appropriate). 
• Add the EPC as a Contact, using the role EPC or General Contractor so it is clear who is responsible for the build. 
• Upload and georeference the drawing set on the Documentation tab, so field findings can be pinned to exact site locations. 
• Assign your internal managers and inspectors to the project. Remember inspectors must be added to both the project and each site visit. 
• If you track build quantities, set up Progress Tracking (see 3). 

2. Build a Commissioning / Quality Checklist with Templates 

Templates are the standardized checklists your field team works through. They turn an inspection into a consistent, comparable report every time. 

A SolarGrade template (sometimes called a framework) is a mind-map of sections, categories, and items. Items are either informational items (data you want documented) or issue items (checkpoints scored Pass, Fail, or N/A). Every account ships with default templates built using NREL guidelines that transfer well to EPC and commissioning work. 

Recommended approach — start from a default template rather than from scratch: 

• Go to the Templates tab and toggle to Default Templates. 
• Select the default template closest to your commissioning scope. 
• Click Use as a pattern for a new template. 
• Customize the copy — drag and drop sections, categories, and items, and delete anything you don't need. It is always easier to delete than to build from scratch. 
• Make sure every issue item has a clear description stating what the issue is, why it matters, and the recommended action. 

Tips that improve oversight downstream: 

• Prefer issue items over informational items for anything that can pass or fail — only issue items feed Analytics and issue trends. 
• You can preset the severity of certain issues and make specific issues required for completion, so nothing critical is skipped. 
• Keep templates broad and general, then tailor them per site visit. For example, keep one “Inverter 1” category you can duplicate during the visit. 
• Need a submittal-ready preview? Open a template, scroll to the bottom, and click Export template as .pdf. 

3. Schedule and Conduct Commissioning Site Visits 

Site visits are where the checklist meets the field. Each visit is built from a template and becomes a report. 

To create a site visit: 

• Open the project and select the Site Visits tab. 
• Click Create Site Visit in the top right. 
• Choose the template from your library. (To use a default template, copy it into your space first.) 
• Assign inspectors, a date range, and scope. Inspectors must be on both the project and the site visit. 

Track build progress across visits 

Use Progress Tracking to measure cumulative quantities (modules, piles, inverters, and so on) across multiple visits: 

• Open the project, go to Project Details, and expand the Progress Tracking section. 
• Click Add Project Tracker, name the item, and enter the target quantity (your goal). 
• During each site visit, the team selects the tracker and enters the quantity completed in that visit; SolarGrade adds it to the project's cumulative total. 
• Published reports show this data as line graphs, and the project page gives an at-a-glance view. 

Documenting findings as issues 

When an inspector finds a problem during the visit: 

• On the issue item line, select FAIL (the yield icon). A pre-written description populates explaining the issue, its significance, and the recommended action — editable as needed. 
• Georeference the issue by dropping one or more pins on the map or drawing. (A barcode scanner is available to capture equipment serial numbers.) 
• Add and annotate photos; each photo is tagged with the uploading user and a timestamp. 
• Set the criticality level, the occurrence count, and the prevalence (Isolated, Prevalent, Endemic, or Systemic). 
• Set the status: Open for future remedy, Closed if corrected in the field (include before and after photos), or Observation to flag something internally without it appearing as a task. 

4. Manage and Close the Punchlist 

A punchlist is how you hold the EPC to fixing what the inspection found. SolarGrade builds punchlists directly from your existing issues. 

An issue stays Open until the work is verified and someone changes its status to Closed. To drive remediation, create a punchlist: 

• Remediation-only punchlist — narrows a single site visit down to its previously found issues. From the Site Visits tab, click the three dots on a visit's row, choose Create Punchlist, assign inspectors / date range / scope, and save. 
• Custom punchlist — pulls issues from across the whole project. On the Issue Summary tab, filter the table to the issues you want, click Create Custom Punchlist, and optionally add template data to build a full templated visit that carries the prior issues. 

When the EPC reports an item fixed, re-inspect it and change the issue status to Closed. You can also reclassify severity from the project's Issue Summary table if something was categorized incorrectly. 

5. Manage EPC Scope and Schedule with the Planner 

The Planner is SolarGrade's work-order system. Use it to tie commissioning activity to a contract, a budget, and a schedule you can see at a glance. 

A Work Order (WO) is a group of tasks performed for a client under a contract or scope. Tasks come in three types: site visits, punchlists, and custom (a free-text item such as “Book travel”). You can view everything in a table or a Gantt chart. 

To create a work order for an EPC scope: 

• Open the Planner tab and click + Add Work Order. 
• Name the WO and set its status (Created, Contracted, Scheduled, Completed, Delivered, Invoiced, or Archived). 
• Set the dates, a budget, a scope, and projected hours. 
• Select the EPC contact and the project, then add the team members (only members on the project appear). 
• Add tasks — link or create site visits, build punchlist tasks from open issues, or add custom tasks. 

What this gives you as a manager: 

• Budget vs. actual: the budget/hours you enter are the plan; actual budget and actual hours sum the completed tasks, so you can see whether a scope is tracking on-plan while it is underway. 
• Percentage completion: progress based on completed tasks, for milestone tracking. 
• History log: every change to a WO and its tasks over time (three-dot menu › History). 
• Export: the Export Work Orders button downloads all WOs, tasks, and statuses to CSV. 

6. Bring the EPC Into the Loop 

Your EPC may or may not use SolarGrade. The platform supports both cases so the contractor can act on findings directly. 

• EPC has no SolarGrade license — use SG Lite (enterprise). Share a site visit or punchlist as a web form the contractor completes without an account. They mark items, add photos and locations, and Submit for Approval; you reopen or close the form to control edits. (See section 4.5.) 
• EPC uses their own SolarGrade account — use Report Import. Bring their reports into your account for a portfolio-wide view, or share yours for them to import. (See section 4.4.) 
• EPC just needs the result — share the report. Send the interactive report or a PDF/Word export to the EPC contact (section 4.3). 

7. Generate and Share the Commissioning Report 

Once a visit is complete and the inspector has written an executive summary, scroll to the pre-site-visit information and click Generate Report (on mobile, switch from Form to Details first). Reports follow your template structure — sections, categories, item classification, item title — with an issue summary, a georeferenced site map with pins, and the executive summary. 

Tailor what stakeholders see with a Report Customization (Reports tab › gear icon › Add Customization): choose your logo, which issue statuses and severities appear, whether informational and pass items are included, cover-page content, and more. Then share the report or download it as PDF or Word (.docx). 

Once an asset is energized, oversight shifts to keeping it healthy. This section covers standardizing preventive maintenance, planning recurring work, and trending issues across your operating fleet. 

1. Move the Project to Operational and Add the O&M Vendor 

• Edit the project and set its Project Status to Operational. Record the commercial operation date. 
• Add the O&M provider as a Contact with the role O&M Provider. 
• Confirm your managers and inspectors are assigned to the project. 

2. Standardize Preventive Maintenance with Templates 

Consistent PM templates are what make a fleet comparable. The cleaner your templates, the cleaner your analytics later. 

Build a preventive-maintenance template by copying and customizing a default template (section 2.2). PM checklists rely heavily on informational items to capture measurements and conditions, alongside issue items for any failure or non-conformity. 

Informational item types that suit O&M data capture include: 

• Table — for IV-curve traces or string voltages; it is interactive with Excel and Google Sheets for copy/paste. 
• Number / Range — readings such as breaker ratings or on-site temperature. 
• Photo / Geo Notes — documented conditions tied to a location. 
• Timestamp / Signature — arrival times and sign-off on completed work (for example, a JHA). 

Critical rule for trend-able data: log all failures and non-conformities as issue items, not informational items. Issues that are recorded as informational items will not appear in Analytics. Keep issue names concise and consistent across the portfolio so the same defect is grouped, not duplicated. 

3. Plan Recurring O&M with the Planner 

O&M is recurring by nature. Work orders let you scope a maintenance contract once and track delivery against it all year. 

How you scope work orders is flexible — one per task, one per contract, or one spanning a calendar year. For O&M, many managers create a WO for the annual maintenance scope, then add tasks for each scheduled PM visit and each corrective punchlist. 

• In the Planner, create a Work Order for the O&M scope, selecting the O&M contact and the project. 
• Add site-visit tasks for scheduled PM, choosing your PM template, and assign the team and dates. 
• Add punchlist tasks for corrective work generated from open issues. 
• Track delivery with the table or Gantt view; drag dates on the Gantt to reschedule. 

Useful for managing a vendor over time: 

• Duplicate a WO to reuse a scope as a template (three-dot menu › Duplicate). Duplicating clears everything except the contact — by design — so you can build WO templates per vendor. 
• Budget and hours vs. actuals help you see whether a vendor is delivering within the contracted budget and time. 
• Export Work Orders to CSV for reporting and reconciliation. 

4. Capture Corrective Work and Track Issues Over Time 

Corrective work follows the same pattern as EPC findings: inspectors mark FAIL, georeference, photograph, and set criticality, occurrence, prevalence, and status. For recurring or widespread defects, set occurrence and prevalence accurately (up to Systemic) so the scale of the problem is visible. 

Drive remediation with punchlists (remediation-only or custom), and close issues only when the fix is verified. If two inspectors logged the same defect, merge the issues to combine photos and locations into one record with a correct occurrence total. 

5. Monitor Fleet Health with Analytics 

Analytics turns your site-visit records into a portfolio dashboard — the clearest way to see how your operating fleet is performing. 

Availability: Analytics is accessible to admin users in the desktop app, on Business and Enterprise accounts. The dashboard updates every six hours, with a countdown to the next refresh shown in the corner. 

Use it to: 

• Filter by projects (clients, sites, attributes) and then by issue type (severity, category) to focus on what matters. 
• Spot trends and recurring problem areas across the fleet, and compare performance between sites or vendors. 
• Identify data-quality gaps — if a project shows fewer issues than expected, it often means failures were logged as informational items rather than issue items. 

You cannot export an individual chart, but you can export issue data at the portfolio, project, or site-visit level (Projects page › Export › Export Issues; or the project Issue Summary; or a site visit's three-dot menu › Download Issues) and analyze it in a spreadsheet. 

6. Verify Vendor Performance 

Combine the tools above to hold an O&M vendor accountable: 

• Reports document each PM and corrective visit; share them or export to PDF/Word. 
• Issue exports and Analytics show whether defects are being closed and whether the same problems keep recurring. 
• Planner actuals (budget and hours vs. plan, percentage completion, WO history) show whether the vendor is delivering the contracted scope on time. 

SolarGrade is built for many parties — owners, managers, inspectors, EPCs, O&M vendors, and advisors — to work from a single source of truth. This section pulls together the features that keep everyone aligned. 

1. Set Up Your Team with the Right Roles 

There are five user roles. Choosing the right one for each person is the foundation of safe, effective collaboration. 

For the complete permissions matrix, see the team-responsibilities table linked from the Support Center's Teams article. 

Inviting team members and assigning projects 

• Go to the Teams page and click Invite. 
• Enter the member's details and select their user type, then click Invite. 
• Assign people to projects either from the project's Team Members tab (best for adding several people to one project) or from the Teams page via the Associated Projects column (best for adding one person to many projects). 

Single Sign-On (SSO) is available for organizations on unlimited-user contracts and is configured at the account level; contact support@solargrade.io to set it up. Admins can also edit a user's information from the Teams page (email addresses cannot be changed). 

2. Use Contacts to Keep Stakeholders Aligned 

Contacts (section 1.3) are your shared directory of external stakeholders. Because contacts can be selected when sharing reports, keeping them accurate means the right owner, EPC, O&M provider, or advisor can be looped in on findings in a couple of clicks — without giving them platform access they don't need. 

3. Share Reports with Stakeholders 

Reports are the main artifact you share. SolarGrade gives you several ways to get them to the right people and to keep track of who has access. 

To share an interactive report: 

• Generate the report, then click the Share button in the left navigation panel. 
• Enter recipients, or choose from the viewers and contacts already in your account. 
• Or click Create Shareable Link. Caution: anyone with that link can open the report. 

You can also share (and bulk share) from the Reports tab or a project's Reports tab using the share icon. To download instead, use Download PDF or Download .docx at the top of a report. To see and manage who has access, go to the Teams tab and review the Viewer category (owners and admins only). 

4. Collaborate Across Companies with Report Import 

When two companies work the same asset, Report Import gives both a real-time, portfolio-wide view from the same data. 

Whether you are an asset manager, technical advisor, EPC, or O&M contractor, you can import reports compiled by another team into your own account. This enables cross-account collaboration, consolidates contractor reports into one platform, and keeps everyone on a single source of truth. 

To import a report: 

• Go to the Reports tab and click Import Report. 
• Check the reports you want and click Continue. 
• Choose the project to associate them with — or click + Add Project (name and address auto-fill from the report). Select the client, assign team members, and click Create. 
• Click Import. 

An imported report appears as a read-only copy. To act on it, create a punchlist from the site visit or duplicate it to make edits. When you begin report sharing you choose a default account, which is where shared reports are imported going forward. 

5. Close the Loop with External Contractors via SG Lite 

SG Lite lets a contractor without a SolarGrade license complete a site visit or punchlist from a web link — perfect for getting subcontractors to remediate directly. 

Availability: SG Lite is a simplified, web-based site-visit form for enterprise accounts, usable on desktop or mobile with cellular service, and requires no license. Data added through it is attributed to “SG Lite” (removable via a report customization). 

• In the project's Site Visits tab, create or locate the site visit or punchlist. 
• Select the share icon beside Generate Report (or on the visit's row), generate the shareable link, and email it to the contractor. 
• The contractor opens the link and works through the form — marking items pass/fail/N/A, adding photos, locations, and criticality — then clicks Submit for Approval, after which they can no longer edit. 
• As the SolarGrade user, control edits via the share icon by changing the link status: Open to reopen for edits, or Closed to lock it from further outside changes. 

6. Communicate On-Site Context with the Notes Field 

Each site visit has a Notes field (on the desktop at the top of a site visit, or the mobile Details page) for quick team communication — site-access instructions, a heads-up that a report is ready for review, and so on. It is a rich-text field (bold, italics, links, lists). Every user with access sees the note, who wrote it, and when. Note that the Notes field is not included in the report.