Go and search for an app to record customer consent and cooling-off disclosure for door-to-door solar sales. I did. The top of the page is a Google Play CRM listing, a field-sales SaaS homepage, and a “best door-to-door apps of 2026” affiliate roundup. Every one of them sells you features and pricing. Not one of them tells you what the law actually requires the app to capture when your rep is standing on a stranger’s doorstep with a tablet.

That gap matters, because when a sale goes sideways and a customer disputes it months later, nobody at the tribunal cares how slick your canvassing app looked. They care whether you can produce a durable record that the right disclosure was given, at the right time, and that the customer agreed to something they actually understood. If your “app” logs a signature and a checkbox and nothing else, you have bought yourself a false sense of protection.

I have spent twenty years around the business side of this trade, and I have watched good install businesses lose money not because the panels were wrong, but because the paperwork could not survive a challenge. So let me do what the review sites will not: start from what the consumer law requires, then translate it into a plain checklist of what your app, or your manual process, has to record.

An app is not a compliant process

Here is the first trap. A door-to-door sales app is a tool. Compliance is a process. The two are not the same thing, and a lot of operators buy the first and assume they have the second.

An app that captures a name, an address, and a scribbled signature satisfies the app vendor’s feature list. It does not satisfy the law, because the law is not interested in whether you collected a signature. It is interested in whether the agreement was formed properly, whether the required disclosures were made, and whether the customer’s right to walk away within the cooling-off window was protected.

If you build your process around the app’s default fields, you inherit whatever the vendor thought was important, which is usually lead tracking and rep performance, not consumer protection. Build the process around the legal requirement first, then find or configure a tool that records it. That order matters.

When a rep knocks unannounced and signs someone up, you are almost always creating what the Australian Consumer Law calls an unsolicited consumer agreement. The customer did not invite the sales pitch. That triggers a specific set of obligations that do not apply to a customer who walked into your showroom.

Consent in this context is not a signature. It is informed agreement. The customer has to understand what they are buying, what it costs, who they are dealing with, and that they have a legally protected right to change their mind. A signature captured on a tablet is only evidence of consent if you can also show what the person was told before they signed. The signature is the last step, not the whole record.

That is the distinction the software listings miss entirely. They treat consent as a data field. The law treats it as the end of a disclosure process, and it expects you to be able to reconstruct that process later.

The cooling-off rules you are recording against

For an unsolicited consumer agreement, the ACL gives the consumer a cooling-off period during which they can cancel the agreement without penalty. For door-to-door sales the standard window is ten business days, and it generally runs from the first business day after the agreement was made or the customer received the required documents (ACCC, n.d.). State fair trading guidance repeats and applies the same framework, and in Queensland the rules also cover permitted calling hours and how the trader must behave at the door (Queensland Government, n.d.).

Alongside the window itself, the trader has to give the customer specific things: a clear disclosure of the cooling-off right, the agreement in writing, and the information the customer needs to cancel. Research and legal commentary on cooling-off periods consistently note that these rights are stronger and the notice requirements stricter for unsolicited agreements than for an ordinary over-the-counter sale (Sprintlaw, n.d.). During that window there are also restrictions on supplying and taking payment, which is why the timing you record is not a nicety. It is the thing that decides whether a payment you took was even allowed yet.

I have written before about how these obligations play out on the ground in door-to-door solar sales compliance, and about the deposit rules that sit right next to them in solar deposit and consumer rights. This article is the record-keeping layer underneath both.

The checklist: what your app or process must actually record

Translate the above into fields, and here is what a compliant record has to contain. Not what is nice to have. What has to survive a dispute.

Timestamped delivery of the disclosure, not just the signature. You need to be able to show when the cooling-off disclosure was presented to the customer, in a form that ties it to that customer and that visit. A signature with no evidence of what preceded it proves nothing. The timestamp is what lets you demonstrate the ten-business-day clock started when you say it did.

Who the rep was, captured at the point of sale. Unsolicited sales rules require the salesperson to identify themselves and their business. Your record should capture the rep’s identity against the job, not leave you guessing three months later which subbie or which canvasser door-knocked that street. If you cannot name the rep, you cannot answer the first question any regulator asks.

Positive acknowledgement of the cooling-off right. Not a buried clause. A discrete, recorded step where the customer acknowledges they were told about the cooling-off period and how to use it. The difference between “it was in the contract” and “the customer confirmed they were told” is the difference between an argument you lose and one you win.

A copy of the agreement given to the customer, and proof it was given. The customer has to receive the agreement, and often the clock and your obligations key off that delivery. Record when and how the copy was handed over or sent, whether that was a printed copy at the door or an emailed PDF on the spot.

A durable record that outlives the device and the rep. This is the one operators get wrong most. The evidence cannot live only on the rep’s phone, in the rep’s memory, or in a canvassing app you might stop paying for next quarter. It has to sit in the customer’s job file, in a form you still control after that rep has moved on. Disputes surface months later. Your record has to still be there, unaltered, when they do.

A clean, tamper-evident timeline. Timestamps that can be quietly edited are worth very little as evidence. The stronger your record can show that the disclosure, the acknowledgement, and the signature happened in that order and at those times, the harder it is for anyone to argue you back-filled it.

Run your current tool against those six. If it captures a signature and a lead status and calls it done, you have a sales app, not a compliance record.

What happens when the record is not there

Picture the dispute. A customer claims they were never told about the cooling-off period, or that a rep took payment inside the window, or that they never understood what they signed. It goes to a state tribunal or to fair trading. The federal guidance points buyers to exactly these pathways when a solar sale goes wrong (Australian Government, n.d.), and each state runs a consumer and trader dispute process to hear them (Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal, n.d.).

At that point the burden is effectively on you to show you did the right thing. If your evidence is “the rep says they told them” and a signed contract with no disclosure trail, you are relying on memory against a motivated complainant. That is a weak hand. Where the disclosure was defective or the cooling-off right was not honoured, the customer may be able to unwind the agreement entirely, and you can be left having supplied and installed with no enforceable contract to stand on.

The record is not bureaucracy. It is the thing standing between you and eating the cost of a job.

Train the reps, do not just log the checkbox

One more thing the app cannot do for you. A tickbox that says “cooling-off explained” is worthless if the rep does not understand what they are supposed to explain. Reps need actual training on these obligations, on what they can and cannot say about finance and timing, and on why the disclosure step is not optional theatre. The app records the process. The training is what makes the recorded process true.

If your reps treat the disclosure as a screen to swipe past on the way to a signature, your beautiful audit trail is just a well-organised record of non-compliance.

Where CurrentFlow fits

This is one of the reasons I am building CurrentFlow. Consent and cooling-off evidence is exactly the kind of record that gets lost when it lives on paper or in a rep’s phone. The idea is to attach disclosure and consent capture directly to the customer record at the point of sale, so the timestamped evidence you would need to defend a sale is already sitting in the job file rather than being reconstructed after a complaint lands. It is designed around the legal requirement first, not bolted on after. The product is still pre-launch, so I am not going to pretend it does this today, but that is the problem it is built to solve.

The broader point stands whatever tool you use: pick the process to fit the law, then pick the software to fit the process. Do it the other way around and you will find out what your app was missing at the worst possible time.

References

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. (n.d.). Telemarketing and door-to-door sales. https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/buying-products-and-services/telemarketing-and-door-to-door-sales

Australian Government. (n.d.). Dispute resolution. energy.gov.au. https://www.energy.gov.au/solar/solar-retailers-and-installation/dispute-resolution

Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal. (n.d.). Consumer and trader disputes. https://www.qcat.qld.gov.au/case-types/consumers-traders-and-businesses/consumer-and-trader-dispute-process

Queensland Government. (n.d.). Door-to-door sales, telemarketing and travelling traders. https://www.qld.gov.au/law/your-rights/consumer-rights-complaints-and-scams/buying-products-and-services/understanding-sales-practices/door-to-door-telemarketing-sales-rules

Sprintlaw. (n.d.). Cooling-off periods in Australian contracts: An essential legal guide. https://sprintlaw.com.au/articles/cooling-off-periods-in-australian-contracts-essential-legal-guide/

FAQ

How long is the cooling-off period for a door-to-door solar sale?

For an unsolicited consumer agreement, which is what a door-to-door sale usually is, the standard cooling-off window under the Australian Consumer Law is ten business days, generally starting the first business day after the agreement was made or the required documents were received (ACCC, n.d.). Because the exact start point can depend on when documents were provided, recording the timing accurately is what protects you if it is ever questioned.

Is a signature enough to prove the customer consented?

No. A signature is only the final step. To show valid, informed consent you also need evidence of what the customer was told beforehand, including the cooling-off disclosure and who the rep was. A signature with no disclosure trail is weak evidence if the sale is later disputed.

Can I take a deposit or payment during the cooling-off period?

The unsolicited consumer agreement rules restrict supplying goods and services and taking payment during the cooling-off window, which is why the timing you record matters so much. Getting this wrong can turn a payment you thought was banked into money you have to hand back. Check the current ACL and your state fair trading guidance for the specifics before you set any payment policy.

Does the app itself make my business compliant?

No. An app records the process, but it cannot design a compliant process for you or train your reps to follow it. Build the process around the legal requirement first, capture the right evidence in a durable record that lives in the job file, and make sure reps actually understand the disclosure they are giving. The software supports compliance; it does not create it.