A growing number of UK renewable energy installers now offer both solar PV and heat pump installations. The two technologies share an MCS certification requirement but diverge on almost everything else: grant schemes, survey methods, design calculations, and DNO paperwork. Most software platforms handle one technology well and the other poorly, or not at all. This article compares what each platform actually covers and whether running two systems makes sense.
Solar PV and heat pump installations are both MCS-certified, but the workflows, documentation, and compliance requirements are fundamentally different. Running both on one generic platform means compromising on at least one side.
| Platform | Solar PV Design | Heat Pump Surveys | BUS Grants | MCS Compliance | CRM/Job Mgmt |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Payaca | Proposals only | Yes (surveys, heat loss) | Yes (tracking) | Yes (both technologies) | Yes |
| Pylon | Yes (full design) | No | No | No | Basic proposals |
| OpenSolar | Yes (full design) | No | No | No | Basic proposals |
| EasySolar | Yes (full design) | No | No | No | Basic proposals |
| Jobber | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| SimPRO | No | No | No | No | Yes |
The only UK-focused platform that handles both solar and heat pump workflows in a single system. Payaca covers MCS-compliant proposals, heat pump surveys with heat loss calculations, BUS grant tracking, and job management. It does not include a full solar design tool with 3D modelling or shading analysis. For solar design, you would still use a dedicated tool like Pylon, then bring the project into Payaca for proposals, compliance, and job management.
A strong solar design platform with UK-specific features including shading analysis, panel layout, and yield calculations. Pylon is solar-only. It has no heat pump functionality, no heat loss calculations, no BUS grant tracking, and no MCS compliance features. If you do heat pumps as well as solar, Pylon covers half your business.
Both are solar design and proposal tools. OpenSolar offers a free tier with 3D modelling. EasySolar focuses on mobile-friendly site surveys. Neither handles heat pumps, BUS grants, or MCS compliance documentation. Both are solar-only by design.
Generic field service management platforms. They handle scheduling, quoting, invoicing, and customer management well. They have no renewable energy features at all. No MCS documentation, no heat loss calculations, no solar design, no BUS grant tracking. Every compliance task is manual.
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The Boiler Upgrade Scheme is the single biggest workflow difference between solar and heat pump installations. Solar PV has no equivalent grant scheme with this level of administrative overhead.
For every heat pump installation claiming BUS funding, the installer must:
None of the solar design tools (Pylon, OpenSolar, EasySolar) handle any of this. Generic platforms like Jobber and SimPRO have no BUS-specific features. Only Payaca tracks BUS grants natively. Every other platform requires manual tracking, separate spreadsheets, or direct use of the Ofgem portal without integration.
Both solar PV and heat pump installations require MCS certification, but the documentation standards differ significantly.
A dual-technology installer needs software that generates both sets of documentation. Running separate systems for each technology means maintaining two compliance workflows, two sets of templates, and two places to check when an MCS audit arrives.
If your solar volume is high and your heat pump work is occasional, a dedicated solar design tool (Pylon or OpenSolar) plus manual heat pump processes may be adequate. The solar design tools are genuinely good at what they do, and if heat pumps are 10% of your revenue, the overhead of manual BUS tracking and heat loss calculations in spreadsheets may be tolerable.
If you are running significant volume in both technologies, two separate systems create real problems. Customer data lives in two places. Job scheduling requires checking two platforms. MCS compliance documentation is split across systems. Reporting on business performance means exporting and merging data. Staff need training on two platforms instead of one.
Payaca is currently the closest to a single-system solution for dual-technology installers, though it still lacks full solar design capabilities. The realistic "one system" option for most installers is Payaca for everything except solar panel layout, with Pylon or similar for the design stage only.
For installation businesses running 100+ jobs per year across both solar PV and heat pumps, the limitations of off-the-shelf platforms become a genuine constraint on growth. You end up building workarounds: spreadsheets for BUS tracking, manual processes for MCS certificates, copy-paste between your solar design tool and your job management platform.
A bespoke system built around your specific workflow eliminates these gaps. One system that handles the full lifecycle for both technologies: lead capture, site survey (with heat loss calculations for heat pumps and yield estimates for solar), design, proposal generation, BUS grant applications and tracking, installation scheduling, MCS certificate submission, handover pack generation, and warranty management.
The business case is straightforward. If you are paying for Pylon (solar design), Payaca (job management and heat pump workflows), plus a separate CRM, and still running spreadsheets for BUS grant tracking, a single bespoke system that replaces all of them typically pays for itself within 12 to 18 months through reduced admin overhead and fewer compliance errors.
The MCS Redeveloped Scheme makes this more urgent. Risk-based assessment rewards clean compliance records with less frequent audits. A bespoke system that automates the entire documentation chain, for both technologies, keeps you in the lowest assessment tier and reduces your certification costs over time.
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