Frequently asked questions

What kinds of projects can Arka run?

It is built for solar EPC: yield assessment, the schedule, running-account billing and field reporting on one spine. The planner underneath is general, so any contract with tasks, dependencies and money can run as a project today. Other renewable verticals are planned, and each will get its own physics on the same chain.

Who is behind Arka?

Norvis, an Indian company building project systems for the energy transition. The name comes from the Latin norma, the carpenter’s square, and the brand line is the working rule: run it tight. Today Norvis is one founder and an AI engineering system operating under written, binding protocols, and we would rather tell you that than perform a bigger company. Arka is the solar vertical and the first product; wind, storage, green hydrogen and bagasse cogeneration each have a named vertical planned on the same contract chain.

What does it cost, and what does a bigger plan actually buy?

Starter is ₹12,000 per month, Pro is ₹28,000, Enterprise is on application and invoiced on agreed terms. The plans differ in exactly one number: how many projects can run at once. Starter allows 5 active projects, Pro and Enterprise are unlimited, and a completed or cancelled project frees its slot. Every feature ships on every plan. There is no ladder of ticks because nothing in the product is gated by tier.

Can I try it before paying?

Yes. Every new organisation gets 14 days of the full product from the day it is created, and signup asks for no card. Payment details enter the picture only when you choose a plan, and checkout is handled by Razorpay.

How is my data kept separate from other companies?

In the database itself, not just in our application code. Every record carries its organisation, and row-level security in Postgres refuses to return another organisation’s rows regardless of what the application asks for. Browser sessions have no direct write access to the database at all: every write passes through an authenticated server route, and the route derives your organisation from your session, never from anything the request claims.

What happens when I issue an invoice?

Issuing is a one-way act. The invoice number is allocated from a gapless series belonging to your organisation and the financial year, the tax point is stamped, and the document freezes: after that moment its figures and wording cannot be changed by any path, including our own administrative access, because the refusal lives in the database rather than in application code. Corrections happen through a credit note that carries its own number and references the original, which is what section 34 of the CGST Act expects.

How are GST and TDS handled?

The engine suggests Finance Act defaults, 18 percent as the standard services rate and tax deducted at source on contractor payments at 1 percent for individuals and 2 percent for companies, and the rate actually applied is stored on each transaction. A solar EPC works contract has no single rate: renewable energy devices are taxed at 5 percent and services at 18, and where the two are supplied together the value divides seventy to thirty, so a contract like that is billed as two lines rather than one. Whether a supply splits into CGST and SGST or goes as IGST is decided by place of supply, and that determination is snapshotted onto the invoice at the moment it is issued, so a bill raised last year still explains itself this year.

Can my client follow progress without an account?

Yes. You can issue a read-only portal link that shows phases, milestones, progress and invoice status. It works with a token rather than a login, it is rate-limited, and you can revoke it at any time. A revoked or expired link answers as if it never existed.

How do site photographs prove anything?

Each photo is fingerprinted on our server at the moment of upload: a cryptographic hash of the exact stored bytes, the upload time from the server clock rather than the phone’s, and the GPS position and accuracy captured at the shot. The record has no edit path afterwards, so a photograph either matches its fingerprint or it visibly does not.

Is there an API?

Yes, a REST API with per-organisation keys. Keys carry read or write scope, are stored only as hashes on our side, and are rate-limited individually. The API describes itself with an OpenAPI document, and creates accept an idempotency key so a retried sync cannot double-post. Outbound webhooks are signed with HMAC-SHA256 so your receiver can verify every delivery came from us.

Can I get my data out?

Any time. An admin can download the organisation’s projects, tasks, risks, invoices and dependencies as a single file from Settings, and the export itself is logged. Project plans also export to Excel, and invoices and credit notes export as PDF documents.

What happens if I cancel?

You keep full access until the end of the period you have paid for. After it lapses the account locks, but nothing is deleted: choosing a plan again reopens the same organisation with everything intact. If you are leaving for good, take the export before the period ends.