Customer portal

A customer you invite signs in and sees their own jobs, shipments, certificates, invoices and quotes, and nothing of anyone else's. It answers "where is my order" and "send me that cert again" without a phone call.

Giving a customer access

Under Settings > Customer portal, press Invite on the customer's row and enter the person's email. The invitation is bound to that customer. The link is valid for 7 days. Portal users are free: they do not count toward the staff logins on your plan. A customer record has a Customer Portal Access switch, on by default; turn it off and every portal user of that customer is refused at sign-in. A portal user is bound to one customer, and every query the portal makes is filtered by that customer on the server. Portal users cannot open any staff page or call any staff route, and they do not take part in Messages.

What the customer sees

The portal sidebar has Jobs, Certificates, Invoices, Quotes, Request a quote and Account. Certificates, Invoices, Quotes and Request a quote appear only when the shop has them switched on under Settings > Customer portal. The home page carries your shop's name and phone, the note you wrote in settings if there is one, a strip with jobs in process, shipments in the last 30 days and the open balance, then two tables.

Jobs in process

Job number, the customer's PO, part number and revision, the finish, quantity, date received, promised date, a progress bar with the current operation (or "Ready to ship"), and status.

Recently shipped

The last 25 shipped jobs with quantity shipped and the promised date.

Opening a job shows the routing as a list of operation names with a check and a completion time for each one done. The customer sees the step names and when they finished; tanks, times, temperatures, readings and operator names stay inside the shop. The details card has their PO and packing list number, quantity and quantity shipped, received and promised dates and the lot number. Below it are the shipments for the job with date, pieces, carrier and tracking number, and the certificates.

Certificates, shipments and invoices

Certificates lists every cert of compliance issued to the customer with job, their PO, part number, quantity, shipment and date issued. Opening one shows the same certificate document the shop printed, with a Print button, so a customer who lost the paper copy gets it themselves. A shipment opens as the packing slip, with a button to each cert on it.

Invoices lists every invoice that is not void with the customer's PO, date, due date, total, balance and status. Each opens as the invoice document, printable, with your remit-to address and invoice terms text. Payment is not taken through the portal.

Quotes lists quotes once they are past draft, with date, valid-until date, total and status.

Requesting a quote

Request a quote is a subject line and a details box for part numbers, material, finish and spec, quantities, due date and whether drawings are available. Sending it creates a follow-up on the customer's record in your CRM, due today, with the details and the name of the person who asked, and every administrator, manager and office user gets a notification "Quote request from" that customer, linked to the customer page.

Email to customers

Two switches on the customer record send mail without anyone doing anything. Email When Jobs Ship sends a notice for each job shipped with the part, quantity, carrier and tracking number and a link to the shipment in the portal. Email Invoices sends each invoice as it is raised, with the number, total and due date and a link to the invoice in the portal. Both go to the customer's contacts with email addresses, the primary contact first.

The portal user's own account

Account lets a portal user change their name and password. Security gives them the same two-factor authentication, signed-in device list and security activity as staff. A portal user who also belongs to another shop switches between them under Account. A shop that does not want the portal switches it off under Settings > Customer portal. The pricing page is plain about it: every plan has the customer portal, and portal users are free.

Setting it up

Settings > Customer portal is one screen for administrators and managers. The top card holds the shop-wide switches: whether the portal is on at all, whether customers can request a quote, and whether invoices, quotes and certificates are shown. Below them is a note of up to 500 characters that appears at the top of every portal user's home page; shops use it for office hours or the name and number of the person to call about an order. An administrator changes the switches and the note and presses Save. Switching the portal off refuses every portal user on their next request. Switching one feature off removes its page from the portal sidebar and refuses the matching routes on the server, so a bookmarked link does not get around it.

Under the switches is a table with one row per active customer. The Portal access, Email when jobs ship and Email invoices columns are the same three switches as on the customer record, saved as soon as they are ticked. The Portal users column lists each person who has accepted an invitation, with their email and a Remove button, and each pending invitation with its expiry date and a Cancel button. Invite on the row opens the invitation form with the customer already chosen, so the only thing to type is the email address. The Team tab keeps staff; it links here for portal users.