Solar Financial Back-Office Services

Solar company financials are more complex than typical construction accounting. Projects span multiple months. Incentive receipts flow separately from customer payments. Progress billing tracks against milestones. Change orders need pricing and approvals. Vendor payments coordinate with material deliveries. Getting this right requires dedicated financial back-office attention, not accountant time diverted between operational chaos. RIH Engineering delivers financial back-office as an outsourced service for US solar EPCs, installers, and developers.

What you get

• Project cost tracking with allocation by category (labor, materials, permits, overhead)
• Customer invoicing preparation and coordination with project milestones
• Accounts payable support: vendor invoice processing, coding, and payment coordination
• Accounts receivable support: customer invoicing, follow-up, and payment tracking
• Payment application preparation for progress-billed projects
• Change order pricing documentation and customer approval tracking
• Project margin analysis by project and project type
• Financial reporting to management with actionable dashboards
• Reconciliation support (bank, credit card, vendor accounts)

What we handle for you

Solar financial back-office requires familiarity with construction accounting, project-based revenue recognition, and the specific patterns of solar cash flow (customer deposit, progress payments, incentive receipts, retention releases). Doing this in-house means either dedicated staff who understand solar or diverting your accountant's time to specialty work outside their focus.

We take financial back-office off your plate. You give us access to your accounting system. We handle invoicing, AP/AR, cost tracking, and financial reporting to your standards. Your accountant focuses on strategic financial decisions, not transactional processing.

The cost of doing this in-house

Weak financial back-office costs solar companies in three ways. First, delayed customer invoicing means delayed cash. Second, unreconciled accounts hide margin erosion until it's too late to correct. Third, missed change orders leak revenue that should have been billed. Together these costs typically run 2 to 5 percent of revenue for solar companies with weak back-office.

For a $5M-per-year solar company, that's $100,000 to $250,000 per year of hidden cost. A dedicated financial back-office team costs a fraction of that while eliminating the leaks.

Why RIH Engineering is safe to try

Give us access to your accounting system for one month. We produce a financial dashboard with project-level cost tracking, AP/AR status, and margin analysis. If our reporting doesn't provide the visibility you need, you don't extend the engagement.

Our financial back-office team works in QuickBooks, NetSuite, Sage, Xero, and other accounting platforms. We follow your chart of accounts and reporting conventions rather than forcing you into ours.

Our process

1. You give us access to your accounting system with defined role-based permissions
2. Our specialist reviews your chart of accounts, project structure, and reporting conventions
3. Project cost tracking established with clear allocation by category
4. Customer invoicing set up with milestone-based triggers and approval workflow
5. AP workflow established: vendor invoices processed, coded, and queued for payment approval
6. AR workflow established: customer invoices tracked, follow-up scheduled, aging monitored
7. Change orders documented with pricing and customer approvals tracked
8. Weekly and monthly financial reporting produced per your requirements

Tools and standards

Our financial back-office team works in QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Xero, and industry-specific platforms including Procore financial and Aurora financial modeling. We adapt to your workflow rather than forcing you into ours.

Client-preferred tools: Our team can be trained to use the tool preferred by the client. If your workflow depends on a specific platform, template, or software, we adapt to it rather than force you into ours.