How Convert Solar Eliminated Financing Rejections and Accelerated Job Close-Outs
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6 crews
About Convert Solar
Convert Solar is a NABCEP-certified residential solar installation company operating 6 experienced install crews across Virginia and Maryland, with crew leads averaging 6+ years in the field.
We spoke with Nathan Edwards, Quality Control Manager at Convert Solar, who brings a rare dual perspective to the role. Nathan spent his first year at Convert as an installer doing attic and roof work, worked his way up to crew lead, and was then pulled into the office to run quality control: reviewing photo packages, managing lender funding submissions, and coordinating inspections. That ground-level background shapes how he runs QC today: he knows exactly what crews face in the field and exactly what lenders and inspection teams need to see on the back end.
Overview
Before SiteCapture, Convert Solar’s documentation workflow ran through Google Drive. Install photos trickled in days after jobs were completed, QC happened after the fact, and nearly every Palmetto LightReach funding submission came back rejected — not because of bad installation work, but because of blurry photos, missing shots, or angles that didn’t meet lender standards. The team was losing time, losing money on truck rolls, and losing confidence in the documentation process.
Convert Solar first encountered SiteCapture through a funding partner requirement, saw immediately that it was the QC system they’d been looking for, and rolled it out company-wide roughly three to four months ago. Today, the team runs all six crews through SiteCapture, submits LightReach milestones directly through the integration, and reviews photos in real time while crews are still on site. Since making the switch, they have had no M1 install photo rejections on any of their LightReach jobs.
The Challenge: A ~90% Rejection Rate, Week-Long Photo Delays, and No Real-Time Visibility
Convert Solar’s core problem wasn’t the quality of their work — their six crews average over six years of experience and consistently deliver clean installs. The problem was documentation. Photos uploaded to Google Drive days after a job was done gave the QC team no way to catch issues while crews were still on site, and nothing about the system enforced what shots needed to be captured or how.
The result showed up most painfully in their Palmetto LightReach funding submissions.
Key pain points the team needed to solve:
- A ~90% first-submission rejection rate with Palmetto LightReach. On the first 40 Palmetto LightReach lease jobs Convert Solar submitted, roughly 90% were rejected at M1 (the install photo milestone) over shots that were unclear, missing, or taken at the wrong angle. Not one of those rejections was about the work itself.
- Photo delays of up to a week. Installers would finish a job, go home, and upload photos whenever — sometimes not until the following week. That delay held up everything: inspections couldn’t be scheduled, milestone packets couldn’t be submitted, and customers couldn’t get PTO.
- Costly truck rolls to remote job sites. Convert Solar runs crews in Maryland, five hours from their main office. A single return trip to recapture a missed shot ran $600 or more. Every Palmetto LightReach rejection was a potential truck roll.
- No quality control before the crew left the site. Photos went straight into Drive with no structure, no required fields, and no way to review them until days later. By then, fixing a problem meant sending someone back.
- Searching for a needle in a haystack. A standard install package ran 100 to 300 photos, with crews dumping duplicates alongside the shots that actually mattered. Finding one specific grounding photo or electrical detail meant scrolling through all of it by hand.
The Solution: Real-Time QC, Structured Templates, and Direct LightReach Integration
Convert Solar came to SiteCapture through Purelight, a funding partner that required them to use the platform for its installs. Nathan and owner Chad quickly recognized it as the system they’d been looking for, brought SiteCapture in-house, and spent about a month building out their template before rolling it to all six crews.
The team built out the Palmetto LightReach template SiteCapture provided, layered in their own QC requirements on top, and trained their crews in Richmond in person. Setup took roughly a month — the majority of that time spent getting the template right. After that, onboarding the crews was straightforward.
Inside SiteCapture, Convert Solar’s team:
- Built a combined Palmetto LightReach and internal QC template so every install is photographed to the lender’s standards and Convert Solar’s own, simultaneously, without requiring a separate submission process.
- Runs real-time QC while crews are still on site. When a section of the install is complete, the crew texts or calls Nathan. He pulls it up in SiteCapture immediately and either clears them to move to the next step or flags something before anyone leaves the site.
- Submits to Palmetto LightReach directly from SiteCapture. Nathan hits “Ready for LightReach,” waits five minutes, and the integration syncs the photos into Palmetto’s portal automatically — no downloading, no manual upload, no missed files.
- Downloads labeled photo packages for the inspections team. SiteCapture auto-labels every photo based on the form field it was captured under. Nathan downloads the zip file, drags the labeled folders into Google Drive, and the inspections team can find exactly the shot they need without searching through hundreds of duplicates.
- Uses example photos in every template section so crews know precisely what “fuse rating,” “CTs,” or “both taps in the MSP” looks like — removing ambiguity before a single photo is taken.
The Results: No Install Photo Rejections, Same-Day Photos, and a Streamlined Path to PTO
Since Convert Solar rolled out SiteCapture to all six crews, the rejection cycle that once defined their LightReach submissions has ended. The team has processed 15+ Palmetto LightReach lease jobs through SiteCapture and has not received a single M1 install photo rejection.
- Near-zero M1 rejections on Palmetto LightReach submissions. In the 15+ LightReach jobs processed through SiteCapture, Nathan cannot recall a single install photo rejection — a complete reversal from the ~90% first-submission rejection rate the team experienced on Google Drive.
- Photos are available the same day as the install. Where photos once arrived up to a week after a job, SiteCapture captures them in real time. The moment the install is done, the documentation is ready — and inspections and funding submissions can begin immediately.
- Real-time QC from the office, while crews are in the field. Nathan reviews sections as they’re completed and gives feedback by phone or text while the crew is still on site. Issues that would have required a $600 truck roll to Maryland are caught and corrected before anyone drives home.
- Faster path to inspection, funding, and customer PTO. Getting photos in on the day of the install compresses the entire close-out timeline. Inspections can be scheduled sooner, Palmetto LightReach milestones can be submitted faster, and customers can turn their systems on sooner.
- Organized and labeled photo packages that the inspections team can actually use. Auto-labeled photos in a structured zip file replaced the 100–300 unlabeled images that used to get dumped into Drive. Everyone downstream (inspections, office, electricians) can find what they need in seconds.
- All six crews are fully standardized. After training the Richmond crews in person, Convert Solar now runs every install through SiteCapture, regardless of which crew or which market.
What's Next for Convert Solar
Convert Solar is ramping back up after a busy stretch and growing its battery business, adding Tesla Powerwall, Franklin, and M-Phase 5P installs to a portfolio that’s shifting heavily toward Palmetto LightReach lease projects. Nathan is also interested in SiteCapture’s AI capabilities, including automated photo validation, after learning about them through conversations with the SiteCapture team. With all six crews now operating in SiteCapture and the LightReach integration running smoothly, the next phase is pushing deeper into what the platform can do as install volume picks back up.
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