General

Adding Equipment to Your Catalogue

Equipment is the catch-all part of your catalogue: everything that goes into a system that is not a panel, an inverter, or a battery. Racking, optimizers, rapid shutdowns, disconnects, conduit and cabling, meters, EV chargers, generators, and so on. It is the simplest product type in Powerlily to set up, because equipment is not pulled into the 3D design tool and has no stringing, SLD, or analysis requirements to satisfy. An equipment record exists for one job: to appear on a quote with a name, a category, and a price.

That simplicity is the point. You can build out your whole balance-of-system list in a few minutes without worrying about a single electrical specification.

The two ways to add equipment

There is no spec sheet extractor for equipment, because there are no technical fields to read off a datasheet. So there are two routes:

Add from the Powerlily library. From the Equipment page, click Add Product, search, filter by brand, and click the plus to copy a ready-made item into your catalogue. Good for common, brand-name parts.
Create one manually. Click to create a new item and fill the short form. Each field saves as you change it, so there is no separate save button. This is the usual route for equipment, since most of it is generic.

If something is missing from the library, email support@powerlily.io and we will add it.

The fields, explained

Field	What it means
Name	What the item is called on quotes and in your catalogue. Required.
Category	What kind of equipment it is, chosen from a fixed list (see below). Used to group and organise items.
Brand	Manufacturer. Drives the logo shown on listings and proposals.
Value	Your price per unit. Drives quote pricing. Required.
Warranty	Warranty length in years.
Include in New Quotes	If checked, this item is added automatically to every new quote you create. Use it for parts that go on every job.
Show in Catalogue	If unchecked, the item is hidden from your catalogue but can still be used on quotes.
Description and Video	Optional rich-text description and a video link, shown on proposals.

Only Name and Value are required. Everything else is optional, though setting a Category keeps a large catalogue tidy.

The categories

Category is picked from a fixed list so that equipment stays consistent across your catalogue and on proposals:

Racks, Optimizers, Rapid shutdowns/MCIs, AC combiners, AC disconnects, DC disconnects, Attachments, Flashings, Junction boxes, Service panels, Revenue grade meters, Cabling and accessories, Communications, Charge controllers, Critical load centers, Automatic transfer switches, Generators, EV chargers, and Other.

If nothing fits, use Other. Category is optional, but it is worth setting, because it is how items are grouped when you browse and filter.

The "Include in New Quotes" flag

This is the one field worth singling out. When Include in New Quotes is on, the item is dropped into every new quote automatically, so you do not have to add it by hand each time.

It is built for the parts that genuinely go on every job: racking attachments, rapid shutdown devices, a standard disconnect, conduit and cabling, and similar staples. Turn it on for those, leave it off for one-off or job-specific items, and your quotes start with your standard balance-of-system already in place. You can always remove an auto-included item from an individual quote if a particular job does not need it.

Quick reference

To put equipment on a quote: Name and Value. That is all that is required.
To keep your catalogue organised: set a Category.
To save time on every quote: turn on Include in New Quotes for your standard parts.
What you do not need to worry about: there are no electrical specs, no design-tool fields, no SLD or analysis requirements. Equipment never enters the 3D design tool.

Building Your Panel Catalogue. The first of the catalogue articles.
Adding Inverters to Your Catalogue. Inverters and their stringing requirements.
Adding Batteries to Your Catalogue. Storage products and their requirements.