Solar Discount Approval Rules: Stop Reps Giving Away Margin

Picture a Tuesday evening. You are at a family function when a rep messages: "Sir, 5 kW wale customer ₹15,000 kam maang rahe hain. Kar dun?" You have no price list in front of you and no idea what that job costs. The rep is sitting in the customer's drawing room, waiting. So you type, "Dekh lo, jo theek lage."

That one sentence can be the most expensive thing an owner says in a month. The problem is often not discounting itself but a missing rule, so every request is decided by whoever answers the phone, in a hurry, with no numbers.

This guide gives you a solar discount approval rule on one page, which we call the Discount Card: a floor price, three approval bands, a short list of things a rep may offer instead of price, and a log line that goes on the lead. It needs no special software. It sits beside four other guides in this series. The weekly meeting is the solar sales pipeline review, where you will read the discount log. Targets are in how to set a solar sales target. The evidence that a visit happened is the Trail Check. And the card is something you teach on day one of the new rep onboarding plan.

Why a small discount costs more than it looks

A discount is paid out of your margin, not out of your price. That is why a number that sounds small in the customer's drawing room is large in your books. At a 15% gross margin, 3% off takes away one fifth of the profit on that job, and you need a quarter more jobs just to earn what you would have earned without it.

The table shows the arithmetic for three margins. Every figure is illustrative: it assumes your cost on the job does not change when the price does, and it shows what is left of the profit and how many extra jobs you must sell to make the profit back.

Illustrative arithmetic. Profit lost = discount ÷ margin. Extra jobs needed = discount ÷ (margin − discount). Margin means gross margin on the job after direct costs, as a share of list price.

Read one row. At a 15% margin, a 5% discount costs a third of the profit and asks you to find half as many jobs again. Extra jobs also need extra leads, extra site visits and a crew that has the time. The recovery is rarely free.

The same direction shows up in big-company data. McKinsey's article "The Power of Pricing" (2003, republished by Forbes) found that for the average S&P 1500 company, a 1% price rise with steady volume lifted operating profit by about 8%, and that "the sword of pricing cuts both ways". Those are American listed companies with different margins from a rooftop installer. Take the direction, not the number. Your own number is in the table above.

For the full picture of what a healthy margin looks like and what to count as a direct cost, read our solar business margins guide. For choosing the list price itself, see the solar business pricing strategy. This guide starts after the list price is set, at the moment a customer asks for less.

Five ways margin leaves that nobody calls a discount

A rep may not call it a discount at all. "Customer ko khush kar diya" is how it sounds. Margin leaves in five shapes, and your rule has to count all five, because a customer who is refused one will ask for another.

The same McKinsey article describes a "pocket price waterfall", a tool that shows how much revenue a company really keeps from each transaction after discounts, allowances, rebates and other deductions. Your Discount Card does the same thing for a ₹3 lakh job: list price at the top, every Give subtracted in rupees, and what you keep at the bottom.

The Give-Get-Log Rule

The Give-Get-Log Rule says that every rupee a rep gives must be added up (Give), matched by something the customer gives back (Get), and written on the lead (Log). A request with no Get and no Log is not approved, whoever is asking. It is a short rule on purpose. A rep can remember three words while a customer is watching.

1. GIVE

   Add up everything in one rupee total

   Price cut, stacked cuts, freebies at your cost, and the cost of any slower payment (the five leaks above). The total is what is compared with the rep's band.

2. GET

   Name what the customer gives back

   A token advance today, a signature by a fixed date, a survey date confirmed, a referral name, or a bigger system. It must be something you can check later, not a mood.

3. LOG

   Write one line on the lead before the customer leaves

   List price, Give total, Get, who approved and when. If it is not on the lead, it did not happen, and nobody can audit it.

4. BAND

   Ask the right person

   The Give total decides who may say yes: the rep, the sales head or the owner. The bands are on your card (section below).

Why insist on a Get? A discount with nothing in return teaches both sides the wrong lesson. The customer learns that the first price was a starting point. The rep learns that asking the owner is a way to look helpful. A Get changes the conversation from "will you cut?" to "what can we agree today?". Our solar sales best practices post calls a version of this the Value-Before-Discount rule, and the objection scripts give you the words for a price objection. This post is the policy behind those scripts.

Set the floor first: the price no deal goes below

The floor price is the lowest price at which a job still earns the minimum gross margin you have chosen, and everything above it is the room your team may use. Set it before you set any band, because a band is just a share of that room.

The steps are simple. Take the list price from your price list. Take the direct cost of the same job (modules, inverter, BOS, labour, transport, commissioning; the margins guide above says what to count). Choose the minimum margin you will accept as a share of price. Then floor price = direct cost ÷ (1 − floor margin), and room = list price − floor price. Here is one job worked through.

All figures in this table are assumptions for illustration. They are not market prices. Replace them with your own list price and your own costs.

Two cautions. First, redo the sum whenever your costs move. Module and inverter rates change, and a floor worked out last quarter can be wrong today. Second, do not copy one percentage across all your jobs. Commercial jobs usually carry a thinner margin than a home rooftop, so the room in rupees per kW is smaller. Work out each job type from its own cost, not from a rule of thumb.

Solar discount approval bands: who may approve what

A discount band is the largest total Give that a person may approve without asking anyone above them. The simplest way to set bands is by thirds: the rep gets one third of the room, the sales head two thirds, and the owner all of it. Round each band down to a figure people can remember, and state it per kW so a rep can use it on any system size.

Here are bands for the example above, where the room is ₹20,000 on a 5 kW job.

Illustrative. Margin left = (list price − Give − direct cost) ÷ (list price − Give), using the assumed ₹3,00,000 price and ₹2,52,000 cost.

Three rules keep the bands honest. The band applies to the total Give across the whole sale, not to each conversation. A rep who gave ₹4,000 on Monday has ₹2,000 left on Thursday. Payment-term changes always go to the owner, because the cost of money is easy to give away and hard to see. And the approver can say yes, no, or "here is a smaller offer", but should not say yes to a Give that arrives without a Get.

If you are the owner and the only approver, use two lines: a rep band and an owner band. The idea is the same.

What a rep may offer instead of price

When a customer pushes on price, the rep needs something to offer that is not a rupee off the list. The options below are ordered by how little they cost you. Each one still counts in the Give total, at your cost. Reps do not know your costs, so publish a short sheet with the cost of the usual extras, for example one service visit, and let them add it up.

Now the other side of the exchange. A Get is real only if you can check it later. These work.

The approval request and the log: copy and paste

The approval message must be short enough that a sales head can answer it between two meetings. If it takes a phone call to understand, reps will skip it. Send this blank to your team and ask them to keep it in their notes. It uses plain text and capital-letter labels, so it looks the same on every phone.

DISCOUNT REQUEST | Rep: __ | Lead: __ (name, area) | Size: __ kW
LIST: ₹__ | CUSTOMER WANTS: ₹__ | I CAN GIVE: ₹__
GIVE TOTAL (price + extras at cost + payment delay): ₹__
CUSTOMER'S REASON: __ (competitor quote seen? Y/N)
GET: __ (what the customer gives back, by when)
DECISION NEEDED BY: __ (visit or call at __)

The reply has three allowed forms:

YES up to ₹__ | GET: __ | valid till __
NO | offer instead: __
NEED MORE | send the competitor's quote / scope

When the deal moves, the rep copies the outcome onto the lead as one line. Whatever CRM you use, make sure each lead has a place for an activity note, and use it for this.

DISCOUNT LOG | List ₹__ | Final ₹__ | Give ₹__ (price __ + extras __ + payment __)
GET: __ | Approved by: __ on __ | Reason: __

A log works when it takes under a minute to write and the owner reads it every week. When nobody reads it, it stops. That is why the pipeline review, not the card, keeps the rule alive.

A week of requests, worked through

Here is how the rule plays out on one week. It uses the same assumed 5 kW job (list ₹3,00,000, floor ₹2,80,000) and the bands above. The customers and numbers are illustrative.

Monday, customer A. Wants ₹10,000 off. The rep's band is ₹6,000. The customer is ready to pay a token advance today and sign by Friday, so the rep has a Get. The rep gives ₹6,000, says "this is the most I can do on my own", and writes the log. The job closes at ₹2,94,000 with a 14.3% margin.

Wednesday, customer B. Shows a WhatsApp quote ₹25,000 lower. The rep sends the request. The sales head asks to see the other quote and finds that it lists unbranded modules and gives no structure detail. That is not a like-for-like comparison, as our post on branded vs unbranded solar prices explains. The head offers ₹10,500 off plus one cleaning visit worth ₹1,500 at cost, a Give total of ₹12,000, which is the top of the head's band. The customer chooses the cheaper quote. The rep logs "lost, price, competitor quote unbranded". A lost deal with a clear reason is better than a won deal at a loss.

Friday, customer C. Asks to pay the ₹1,50,000 balance 90 days after commissioning. Payment terms go to the owner. The owner agrees to 45 days, a Give of ₹2,219 at the assumed 12% a year, and asks for the advance to be paid before material is ordered, with the balance date written on the lead.

If the rep had said yes to every ask as stated, the Give would have been ₹10,000 + ₹25,000 + ₹4,438 = ₹39,438 across the three requests. With the card, the money actually given was ₹6,000 + ₹2,219 = ₹8,219, and one lost deal has a clear reason on file.

Audit your last 20 deals in 30 minutes

Before you roll out the card, find out how much you already give away. Take the last 20 closed deals and fill one row per deal. You need the list price for the same system on the day the deal closed. If your rates have moved since, use the rate that applied then.

Then read three things. First, the average ₹ off per kW for each rep. A rep far above the others needs a conversation, but check first whether that rep gets the harder leads. Second, the number of deals with no reason on the lead. If it is most of them, you do not have a policy yet. Third, whether all reps give about the same. If so, the leak is probably not the reps. Your list price may be above what the market will pay, and your reps are quietly correcting it. Fix the list, not the people.

Take the result to your next pipeline review and keep one line in the weekly agenda for the discount log. The sales target post has a guard for deals closed at a deep discount, and the daily report can carry one extra line for any Give that day. Both tie the rule to meetings you already hold.

Keep the rule fair: five traps

A discount rule fails in predictable ways. These five are the ones to design for.

Pay commission on the final price, not the list price. If a rep earns on list, discounting costs the rep nothing and the rule fights the pay plan. Our solar sales rep salary guide covers incentive models; the only line you need here is that commission follows the invoiced amount.

Asking is normal. Customers ask for discounts, and a rep who reports every ask is doing the job. Do not scold the request. Review the pattern of what was given.

Do not invent deadlines or stock shortages. "Offer ends today" works once and then costs you trust. Offer a deadline only when it is real, such as a crew slot that is truly filling.

Put every discount on the invoice, and do not waive GST. Under section 15(3)(a) of the CGST Act, 2017 (CBIC, as updated to 1 January 2022), a discount given before or at the time of supply is excluded from the value of supply if it is "duly recorded in the invoice". GST on renewable energy devices has been 5% since 22 September 2025, down from 12%, as PIB (Ministry of New and Renewable Energy) announced on 17 September 2025 and the GST Council FAQ of 3 September 2025 confirms. The rate on your own invoice depends on what you supply, so check it with your CA. A rep cannot "remove" the GST, and a customer who asks for a bill-less price is asking you to sell outside the books. How the rule applies to your contract type is a question for your CA. Our GST on solar guide has the detail.

Show the subsidy on its own line. The PM Surya Ghar subsidy is not your discount budget. PIB, 29 February 2024 describes it as 60% of system cost for 2 kW systems and 40% of the additional cost between 2 and 3 kW, capped at 3 kW, which at benchmark prices means ₹30,000 for 1 kW, ₹60,000 for 2 kW and ₹78,000 for 3 kW or higher. The same release says households apply on the National Portal, where they can choose a vendor and see vendor ratings and a benefits calculator. So customers can compare you. Lay out the proposal as list price, discount, price before subsidy, subsidy, net cost, as the proposal pricing guide and the checklist in what to include in a solar quote suggest.

How QuickEstimate fits

A discount rule needs a list price that everyone shares. If three reps quote from three different rate sheets, a discount is hard to measure, because nobody agrees what it was a discount from.

Quickest Solar CRM is where that list price can live. On the solar pricing calculator page, the admin sets panel, inverter and BOS rates, plus a margin and an admin cost, once. The team picks components or enters the kW, and the estimate prices itself from those rates. When a rate changes, the admin updates it once and every new estimate uses it. That closes the first leak, a rep quoting an old or personal rate.

It does not decide what a rep may take off the final figure. That is the Discount Card, and it runs on people. This post does not assume that Quickest has an approval workflow, and you do not need one for the card to work.

• Admin-set price list with margin, one source for the list price in every estimate, so a discount always has a clear starting point.
• Team members with permissions, so reps work from their own logins. Ask in a demo which permission level suits your price list.
• Proposal templates with terms and conditions, where you can write what is included and how long a price holds.
• Activities on a lead, and lead filters, where the discount log line lives and where you find it again at audit time.

What to do this week

1. Run the 20-deal audit (30 minutes). Use the table above. Write down the average ₹ off per kW for each rep and the number of deals with no reason on the lead.
2. Fill in the card for one job type. Pick your commonest system, work out the floor and the room, and set rep, sales head and owner bands in rupees per kW. Send the card and the request format to the team.
3. Start the log on the next request. Make "no Get, no Log, no yes" the only rule for the first month.
4. Read the log at the next pipeline review. Then redo the floor whenever your price list changes.

If your price list is already in a CRM, the demo is a quick way to see how an admin-set list works with your own systems.

Frequently asked questions

What is a discount approval process in solar sales?

It is a written rule that says who may approve how much discount, what the customer must give in return, and what is recorded on the lead. In a small solar business it is usually one page: a floor price, bands for the rep, the sales head and the owner, and a request format. It works with a spreadsheet, a WhatsApp group or a CRM.

How much discount can a solar sales rep give without approval?

There is no standard percentage, because margins differ by job and by company. Work it out from your own numbers. Take your list price, find the floor price at the minimum margin you accept, and give the rep about a third of the room above it. In the example in this post, with an assumed ₹3,00,000 list price, the rep band is ₹1,200 per kW, or ₹6,000 on a 5 kW job.

Do I need a CRM with an approval workflow to control discounts?

No. A written card, a fixed request message and a log line on the lead are enough for a team of a few reps. A workflow can speed up the request, but it does not replace the decisions: the floor, the bands and the Get. Quickest Solar CRM has an admin-set price list with margin, and this post does not assume an approval workflow.

Should reps know the floor price?

We suggest that they know their band in rupees per kW but not the floor. If the floor is known, every negotiation drifts toward it. Keep the floor with the sales head and the owner, and let the band be the rep's limit. If you prefer to share it, say so on the card and expect more requests near the limit.

What if a customer shows a cheaper competitor quote?

Ask to see it in writing, then compare it line by line: module brand, inverter brand, system size, structure, warranty and what is excluded. A quote that is lower because it lists unbranded modules or leaves items out is not the same offer. If it is like for like, treat it as an ordinary request: add up the Give, ask for a Get, and send it to the right band.

Is it right to give a discount without a GST invoice?

No. A discount given before or at the time of supply is excluded from the taxable value only if it is recorded on the invoice, under section 15(3)(a) of the CGST Act. GST on renewable energy devices has been 5% since 22 September 2025. Do not agree to a bill-less price or to waive GST. Ask your CA how this applies to your contract type.

How do I stop reps adding freebies as a hidden discount?

Count freebies in the Give total at your cost, and require them to appear in the proposal terms. A free cleaning visit or an extra item then uses up part of the rep's band like any other discount. Review the extras column in your 20-deal audit to see how often they appear.

How often should I change the discount bands?

Redo the floor whenever your price list or your costs change, and look at the bands once a month at your pipeline review. If panel or inverter rates move, the room above the floor moves with them, and bands that were right last quarter can be wrong now.