Comparison
Claim Timer vs a spreadsheet
This is the real competitor. Most solar shops track warranty registrations in a sheet, and for a lot of them that is a reasonable thing to do. Here is where it holds, and the four places it gives way.
The honest test
Find one serial
Pick an install from three years ago and produce the nameplate photo in under a minute. If you can, your sheet is fine.
A spreadsheet is free, flexible and already open, and for a shop doing a handful of installs a month it can genuinely be enough. It breaks in four specific places: the nameplate photo is never on the row, one date column cannot hold each brand's separate conditions, nobody actually owns the sheet, and it never raises its hand when a condition stops being true. Claim Timer exists for those four things and nothing else.
What a spreadsheet genuinely does better
Not a token paragraph. These are real advantages and we do not have any of them.
It is free and it is already open
No trial, no card, no new login for the office. If the sheet is doing the job, the correct amount to spend on replacing it is nothing.
Everyone can already drive it
Nobody has to be trained on a spreadsheet. Sorting, filtering and a new column take seconds, and no support ticket.
It bends to your process
Your columns, your order, your notes in the margin. Software makes you accept somebody else's shape for the record. A sheet never argues.
It exports and it outlives us
A CSV opens anywhere, forever, with no vendor between you and it. That is a real advantage and worth naming out loud.
The four places it gives way
Every one of these is something we have watched happen, and none of them is fixed by being more organised.
The photo is not on the row
A serial number typed into a cell is a claim waiting to be rejected over one wrong character. The nameplate photo that proves it lives in somebody's camera roll, in a shared drive folder named by address, or in a text message from a tech who has since left. In year eight, the row says F5-4821-99B and nothing on earth proves it.
There is one date column for many different asks
A spreadsheet gives a job one install date. The manufacturers do not work that way. GoodWe's ten year term is five unless the inverter stays connected to its portal. Tesla's ten can fall to four without internet. Silfab's product warranty is twelve years and becomes twenty five only if the install is registered inside 180 days. Those are four different asks and they do not fit in one column called Registered, Y or N.
Nobody owns it
The sheet is maintained by whoever remembers. It is accurate for the installs done in the weeks somebody was on top of it and quietly wrong for the rest. The person who set it up leaves, the column meanings drift, and two people edit the same row on a Friday. No one is lying. The record is just not anybody's job.
It never tells you anything
A spreadsheet answers questions. It does not raise them. Nothing in it turns red when a condition stops being true, because most warranty conditions have no date attached: the Powerwall drops off the internet in March and the sheet looks exactly the same in April as it did in February.
The second one is the one people are most surprised by, because the whole industry talks about registration deadlines and almost no brand actually has one. What they have instead is conditions with no date on them, which is precisely the thing a date column cannot track.
Side by side
| Spreadsheet | Claim Timer | |
|---|---|---|
Cost | Free | Free for 5 installs a month, then $99 to $349 depending on volume |
Setup | None. It is already open | CSV import, or add your next job by hand |
Serial photo on the record | No. The photo lives somewhere else | Photographed on site and kept on the equipment record |
Per brand conditions | One column, if somebody built it | Each brand's own conditions on each piece of equipment, for 19 brands |
One address, three brands | One row, one date | Three records, three sets of conditions, tracked separately |
Registration confirmation number | A cell, if somebody pasted it | Saved against the equipment, next to the portal it came from |
Anything that raises its hand | No | An at risk list inside the app. There is no email or text yet |
Building the claim | Hunt through email, drive and camera roll | A checklist that locks submit until it is complete, then one PDF |
Files with the manufacturer for you | No | No. Claim Timer builds the pack. A person still submits it |
Bends to your own process | Completely | Conditions are editable. The shape of the record is not |
Three rows go to the spreadsheet and one goes to nobody, because Claim Timer does not file with the manufacturer for you either. It opens the portal with your details in the order the form asks for them, and a person presses submit.
Which side of the line are you on
A short version, so you do not have to read the rest of this to decide.
If all of this is true
One person owns it and is still here. You can produce a three year old nameplate photo in a minute. You know which of your brands attach conditions rather than deadlines, and you have checked them. Nobody has been denied a claim over evidence.
If any of this is true
Serial photos live in a camera roll. More than one person edits the file. You have jobs carrying three manufacturers on one row. You have had a claim stall over paperwork you were fairly sure you had, and you never went back to find out how many other jobs are in the same state.
Common questions
Including the ones where the answer is to keep your spreadsheet.
Is a spreadsheet actually good enough for warranty tracking?
For a small number of installs a year, with one person who owns the sheet and a disciplined habit of filing the serial photo against the address, yes. The point at which it stops being good enough is usually not volume. It is the first claim that gets denied for evidence you know you had somewhere.
What is the single biggest thing a spreadsheet cannot do?
Hold the nameplate photo on the same row as the serial number. Every other gap can be patched with more columns and more discipline. That one cannot, and it is the gap that decides whether a claim survives a manufacturer asking for proof of the serial.
Why not just add more columns for each brand's conditions?
You can, and some shops have. It works until a job carries three manufacturers, at which point one row has to hold three different sets of conditions with three different states. That is a record per piece of equipment, and once you have built that in a spreadsheet you have built a database with worse validation.
Can I bring my existing spreadsheet in?
Yes. Upload a CSV, match the columns, and Claim Timer shows you what each row will get before it writes anything. Rows already past a window come in marked expired rather than being rejected, because knowing which jobs you are exposed on is the point.
What if my spreadsheet is working fine?
Then keep it. Genuinely. Take the free claim pack checklist, check your process against it, and come back when the sheet stops being able to answer where the serial photo is.
Read next
Why solar warranty claims get denied
The evidence that would have saved them, most of it a photo
Your solar panel serial number
Where to find it and why a claim dies without it
A registration SOP for a three truck shop
The process a spreadsheet needs and rarely gets
Every brand's warranty terms
19 brands, read from the manufacturer's own document
Free warranty tools
Deadline calculator, claim checklist, truck roll cost
Claim Timer pricing
Free for 5 installs a month, unlimited users on every plan
Import the spreadsheet and see what it was hiding
Upload your CSV, match the columns, and Claim Timer shows you what each row gets before it writes anything. Rows already past a window come in marked expired rather than thrown out, because that backlog is usually the reason people look at this at all.