Most of what you will find written about a solar installer closing down is written for the homeowner who has already been left stranded. It tells them how to chase a warranty on a business that no longer answers the phone, how to find a new installer, and where to complain. Useful for them. Useless for you, the operator sitting at the kitchen table at ten at night wondering whether you can actually afford to keep the doors open another quarter.
I have spent 17-plus years around the business side of this trade, from PV sales in my first year through to representing suppliers and watching hundreds of install businesses run, grow, stall and sometimes fold. The ones that wind down badly almost always make the same mistake: they treat closure as an event that ends their obligations, when legally and practically it does the opposite. Deregistering a company does not switch off the jobs you have already taken money for. It just removes the entity that was supposed to finish them.
So this piece is for you, the owner weighing an exit, before you have made the call. Not the customer. You. Here is what you still owe, in the order it will bite.
Winding down does not cancel the work you have already sold
Start with the uncomfortable part. A decision to close is a business decision. Your obligations to customers are contractual and statutory, and neither of those care much about your business decision.
Every install you have quoted, signed and banked a deposit on is a contract. Under the Australian Consumer Law, services must be supplied with due care and skill and within a reasonable time, and goods must match their description and be fit for purpose (ACCC, n.d.). Winding down does not give you a clean exit from a contract you have already been paid against. If you cannot complete the work, the default position is that the customer is owed either completion or their money back, not silence.
There is also the question of how you close, because that decides your personal exposure. A solvent wind-down where you settle your debts and then deregister is a very different animal from trading on while insolvent and letting the company collapse. The general legal process, settling creditors, dealing with the tax office, formally deregistering with ASIC, is well documented (Sprintlaw, n.d.). What that general guidance does not tell you is that in solar, a big slice of your “creditors” are customers holding a receipt for a job that never happened. Get advice on the structure before you act, because directors can carry personal consequences depending on how the closure runs, especially if the company was insolvent when it kept taking deposits.
The honest test is simple. If you are still quoting and banking deposits this week while privately planning to shut in two months, stop. That is the exact behaviour that turns a tidy wind-down into a mess with your name on it.
Customer deposits are a liability, not a buffer
This is the one that catches good operators out. Deposits held against jobs you have not started are not your money in any meaningful sense. They are a liability sitting on your books that has to be resolved before you deregister, not after.
You have three clean options for every outstanding deposit, and you need to pick one deliberately for each job:
Complete the job. If it is booked, the panels are in the warehouse and you have a crew, finishing it is often the cleanest resolution. One less refund, one less complaint, one more happy referral on the way out.
Refund it. If you cannot complete, the deposit comes back. Do this while there is still cash in the account to do it with, which is the whole argument for planning a wind-down early rather than closing the day the money runs out.
Novate it to another installer. You formally hand the job, and the deposit, to another business that agrees to complete it. Done properly, with the customer’s written agreement, this gets everyone out whole. I will come back to this, because it is genuinely the best outcome in a lot of cases.
What you cannot do is treat that pile of deposits as working capital to fund the wind-down and hope it nets out. Consumer collapses in this industry very often trace back to exactly that: a business that spent the deposits, then had nothing left to complete or refund. The public write-ups of installer failures read like a warning label (Energy Matters, n.d.; SolarEze, n.d.). Do not become one of them on your way out.
The warranties you have already issued do not close with the company
Every past customer you have installed for is holding a workmanship warranty from you. Panels and inverters carry the manufacturer’s product warranty, which is the manufacturer’s problem and survives your closure through them. Your workmanship warranty, the promise that the install itself was done properly, is yours.
Here is the part worth being straight about. If you deregister the company outright, the entity that issued that workmanship warranty no longer exists, and a customer trying to claim on it has nowhere to send the claim. That is precisely why “installer gone bust, warranty worthless” is such a common and bitter consumer story. Reporting on collapsed solar companies has put the number of stranded warranties in the hundreds of thousands (WhySolar, n.d.).
Two things follow. First, the underlying statutory guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law attach to the goods and services and do not simply vanish because a company folded, although in practice a customer’s ability to enforce them against a deregistered entity is limited, which is cold comfort to them and a reputational stain on you. Government guidance on solar warranties and insurance is worth reading so you understand what you are actually walking away from (Australian Government, n.d.). Second, this is a strong argument for a managed handover rather than a hard close. If another business agrees to honour your live workmanship warranties as part of taking on your customer base, you have turned an abandoned liability into a clean transfer. If you want the detail on where product warranties, workmanship warranties and insurance obligations actually sit, I went deeper on that in home warranty insurance for solar installs.
Accreditation and STCs need active surrender, not passive lapse
Two more loose ends that installers routinely forget in the rush to close.
Your installer accreditation is not something to just let expire. If there are jobs in progress or recently completed, and there almost always are, the accreditation scheme needs to be dealt with deliberately. Notify the accreditation body, resolve anything outstanding, and surrender it properly rather than letting it quietly lapse with unfinished business attached to your accreditation number. A lapsed accreditation with open jobs behind it is an audit problem waiting to happen.
Then there are the certificates. Small-scale Technology Certificates, the STCs you assign on most residential jobs, are not a government rebate no matter how often they get called one. They are tradeable certificates created from a system’s deemed generation, which liable entities, mainly electricity retailers with obligations under the federal Renewable Energy Target, have to buy and surrender to the Clean Energy Regulator. The customer assigns you the right to create them in exchange for the up-front discount, which is why it feels like a rebate to them but is not one.
For a wind-down that matters because any STC assignment in progress is unfinished business with real money attached. If a customer has signed the assignment over to you on a job you are not going to complete, you cannot just walk away holding that paperwork. The assignment needs to be resolved: either you complete and create the certificates, or you release it so the job’s new installer can. Leaving assignments in limbo strands the customer’s discount and can foul up the certificate creation entirely. This is the kind of thing that is invisible until it is a problem, which is exactly why it gets missed.
Handing customers over beats leaving them stranded
If you take one thing from this, make it this. The best exit for an installer with outstanding jobs and live warranties is very often a managed handover to another business, not a hard deregistration.
From your side, a formal handover of stranded customers and open jobs resolves the deposits, gives the workmanship warranties a home, and lets the STC assignments be completed rather than orphaned. From the receiving installer’s side, a pre-qualified book of local customers is a genuine asset, and there are operators who will actively take that on. The commentary on solar company collapses tends to frame the receiving business as a rescuer, and there is real goodwill and real work in that role (SolarQuotes, n.d.). Structured well, everyone comes out ahead: you close cleanly, the customers keep their warranties and their jobs, and another business grows.
The practical blocker is almost always the same, and it is not legal. It is that the owner cannot actually produce a clean list of what is outstanding. Which jobs are half done. Which deposits are held against which installs. Which warranties are live and when they expire. Which STC assignments are sitting unresolved. When that lives across a shoebox of paperwork, three spreadsheets and someone’s memory, reconstructing it under pressure takes weeks you do not have, and a handover falls over before it starts.
That gap is exactly why I am building CurrentFlow. It is designed to keep job status, customer payments and warranty records in one place, so that if this scenario ever arrives, the picture is a login away instead of a fortnight of forensic accounting. It is pre-launch and I am not going to pretend it can do any of that for you today. But the discipline behind it, one live record of every open job, every deposit and every warranty, is worth building into your business now whatever tool you use, precisely because the day you might need it most is the day you will least feel like assembling it from scratch.
The reputational maths
Closing a business is hard enough without it becoming the story that follows you. This industry is small, and operators talk. A wind-down where every customer got completed, refunded or cleanly handed over is a business people will still recommend you to. A collapse where deposits vanished and warranties evaporated is a name that gets typed into warning threads for years.
You do not get to choose whether you have obligations on the way out. You only get to choose whether you meet them deliberately, while you still have the cash and the records to do it, or whether they meet you later on someone else’s terms. Plan the exit early, resolve the deposits, house the warranties, surrender the accreditation properly, clear the certificate assignments. Then deregister. In that order.
References
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. (n.d.). Repair, replace, refund, cancel. https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/problem-with-a-product-or-service-you-bought/repair-replace-refund-cancel
Australian Government. (n.d.). Warranties and insurance. energy.gov.au. https://www.energy.gov.au/solar/get-know-solar-technology/warranties-and-insurance
Energy Matters. (n.d.). My solar has stopped working and my solar installer has closed their business: What do I do? https://www.energymatters.com.au/renewable-news/my-solar-installer-has-closed-their-business-what-do-i-do/
SolarEze. (n.d.). What happens if your solar installer goes out of business? https://solareze.com.au/has-your-installer-shutdown/
SolarQuotes. (n.d.). The duck test: When solar companies wind up. https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/solar-duck-test/
Sprintlaw. (n.d.). Winding down a company in Australia: Essential legal steps. https://sprintlaw.com.au/articles/winding-down-a-company-in-australia-essential-legal-steps/
WhySolar. (n.d.). Solar installer gone bust? 650,000 warranties voided. https://www.whysolar.com.au/industry/collapsed-solar-companies
FAQ
Do my customers’ deposits become my money if I close the business?
No. Deposits held against jobs you have not completed are a liability, not revenue. Each one needs to be resolved before you deregister, by completing the job, refunding the deposit, or formally novating both the job and the deposit to another installer with the customer’s written agreement. Spending deposits to fund the wind-down is the single most common way a tidy closure turns into an insolvency mess with your name attached.
What happens to the workmanship warranties I have already issued?
Product warranties on panels and inverters sit with the manufacturer and survive your closure. Your workmanship warranty is issued by your business, so if you deregister the company outright, there is no longer an entity for a customer to claim against. Statutory guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law attach to the goods and services, but a customer’s practical ability to enforce them against a deregistered company is limited. The cleanest fix is a managed handover where another installer agrees to honour your live workmanship warranties.
Are STCs a rebate I can just forget about when I close?
STCs are not a rebate. They are tradeable certificates created from a system’s deemed generation, which liable entities buy and surrender to the Clean Energy Regulator under the Renewable Energy Target. Customers assign you the right to create them in exchange for an up-front discount. Any assignment sitting against a job you will not complete has to be resolved, either by finishing the job or releasing the assignment, so the customer’s discount is not stranded and the certificates can still be created.
Can I just let my accreditation lapse when I stop trading?
Not if you have jobs in progress or recently completed. Letting accreditation quietly expire with open work behind it invites audit problems. Notify the accreditation scheme, resolve anything outstanding, and surrender your accreditation deliberately rather than letting it lapse by default.
Is it better to hand my customers to another installer or just deregister?
For most installers with outstanding jobs and live warranties, a managed handover is the better exit. It resolves deposits, gives your workmanship warranties a home, and lets STC assignments be completed rather than orphaned, while giving another business a genuine asset. The usual blocker is not legal, it is that the owner cannot quickly produce a clean list of open jobs, held deposits, live warranties and unresolved assignments. Keeping that record straight now is what makes a clean handover possible later.