Everything you need for a claim is on the roof today
And almost none of it survives the drive home.
The serial is legible, the label is in front of somebody, and the equipment is identifiable. An hour later it is a number in a text message and a photo in a camera roll. Claim Timer takes twenty seconds of that hour and turns it into a record that is still good in year eight.
- Under 20 seconds
- What the nameplate photo costs a tech who is already on the roof.
- One job, three records
- Panels, inverter and battery each carry their own maker's conditions.
- Unlimited users
- On every plan, including free, so putting the whole crew on it costs nothing.
Handover is the only cheap moment
Everything a warranty claim will ever need exists on install day and costs almost nothing to record: the make, the model, the serial, a photo of the label, the date, and whether the thing that this brand requires actually got done. Every day after that, the same information costs a phone call, a drive, or an argument.
The trouble is that handover is also the busiest moment, and the person who understands warranty conditions is not on the roof. So the registration becomes a note to self, the note becomes a row in a sheet, and the row is either right or it is not, and nobody finds out for eight years.
Of the 19 brands in our catalogue, only 3 run a real dated registration window. That sounds like good news and it is the opposite. A deadline is at least a thing you can put in a calendar. What the rest run is conditions, and a condition has no date, so nothing ever turns red.
Six things that happen on install day
All of them in the twenty seconds a tech spends photographing a nameplate, plus what the office does with it afterwards.
The serial is captured where it is legible
On the roof, in daylight, with the label in front of the person holding the phone. A serial typed from memory into an office spreadsheet on Friday is the version that gets a claim rejected.
The conditions are known before the crew leaves
Whether this inverter has to stay on the manufacturer's portal, whether this battery has to hold an internet connection, whether this array has a dated window. Different for every brand on the same truck.
Commissioning is checked, not repeated
Where commissioning already registered the equipment, you confirm it rather than doing it twice. Where it did not, the record stays open and visible instead of being assumed done.
The confirmation number gets saved
The portal gives you a reference and then you close the tab. Claim Timer keeps it against the equipment, which is the thing a manufacturer asks for years later when nobody remembers the job.
The office can see what the crew did not finish
An at risk list of equipment whose conditions nobody has confirmed. It lives in the app, so somebody has to open it. Email alerts are not built yet.
The backlog comes in too
Upload a CSV of the installs you have already done. Rows already past a window come in marked expired rather than being thrown out, so you find out today rather than during a claim.
One truck, three manufacturers, three different asks
This is the normal state of a residential solar job, not the exception.
The inverter
GoodWe publishes a ten year term that is five unless the inverter stays connected to its portal. No date, no reminder, and no notification when the connection drops. It can often still be fixed late, which is exactly why it is worth finding.
The battery
Tesla's Powerwall term can fall from ten years to four without internet. The customer changes their router in year three and nothing anywhere records it.
The array
Silfab's product warranty is twelve years, and twenty five only if the install is registered inside 180 days of purchase. Miss it and thirteen years of product cover are gone, with nothing to appeal to.
Your job file has one install date on it. Claim Timer splits that into one record per piece of equipment, each holding that brand's own conditions, serial and proof. Two settled and one still open on the same job is the normal state. All of it is in the warranty reference, read from each manufacturer's own document with the date it was read.
Make it somebody's job, then make it small
Software does not fix a process nobody owns. What it can do is make the owned version take twenty seconds.
On the truck
- Photograph the nameplate on every piece of equipment before it goes on the wall or the roof.
- Check what was read off the label. Anything uncertain is flagged amber rather than saved quietly.
- Save. The photo stays on the record whether the read worked or not.
In the office, that week
- Open the at risk list and work down it.
- For each piece of equipment, confirm that brand's conditions or open its portal with your details already in order.
- Paste the confirmation number back. The record closes and stops appearing on the list.
What installers ask
Including the ones where the answer is no.
Who in the crew actually uses this?
The tech uses one screen: photograph the nameplate, check what was read off the label, save. Buttons are full width and thumb sized because this happens on a roof, in the sun. Everything else, the conditions, the portal, the confirmation number, happens in the office. Every plan has unlimited users, so the whole crew being on it costs nothing.
We register at commissioning already. What does this add?
It records that you did, against the specific piece of equipment, with the confirmation number. Registration being done and registration being provable are different states, and the second one is the one a manufacturer asks about. It also catches the jobs where commissioning covered the inverter and nothing covered the panels.
Does a job with three brands count as three installs on my plan?
No. Plan limits count installs a month, not manufacturers. A job with an inverter, a battery and an array is one install against your plan and three records inside the product, because that is how the manufacturers treat it.
Does it replace Jobber, Housecall Pro or ServiceTitan?
No. Keep using them. Claim Timer does not schedule jobs, dispatch techs, send invoices or run a CRM, and it is not going to. It covers the manufacturer obligation on each piece of equipment after the job has closed.
Does Claim Timer submit the registration for me?
Not yet. It opens the manufacturer portal and copies your install details in the order that portal asks for them, so you paste straight down the form, then you save the confirmation number. Automatic submission is on the list and we are not going to claim it before it works.
What about the installs we did last year?
Put them in. Some conditions can still be met late: GoodWe publishes no deadline on its portal connection, so a two year old inverter may still be recoverable this afternoon. Where a window has genuinely closed, the honest position is a shorter term, and knowing that now is worth more than finding out mid claim.
Read next
A registration SOP for a three truck shop
Who does what, on which day
Installer, customer, auto: the three registration routes
And how each one fails
Your solar panel serial number
Where to find it and why a claim dies without it
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
Per install, not per user. Unlimited crew on every plan
Put your next install in and watch the clock
Free for 5 installs a month with unlimited users, so the whole crew can be on it before you decide anything. Claim Timer holds the record and builds the claim. It does not file with the manufacturer for you.