What a client portal is, and what a small business puts in one

What a client portal is

A client portal is the private page where a customer signs in to see what is theirs. Documents, invoices, the status of a job and messages sit there, so the customer looks it up instead of emailing you to ask.

Stripe's documentation says its customer portal lets customers manage their payment details, invoices and subscriptions in one place. That is the core idea. Each tool below adds a few things for one kind of business. They are examples of what a portal holds, not picks and not a ranking.

Whether a portal works comes down to one test, and it is at the end of this post. First, what goes in.

A service firm: bills, documents and messages

A law office, a bookkeeper or a consultant sends a lot of paper, and gets a lot of email asking whether something arrived or what is owed. A portal answers most of those before they are sent.

Clio for Clients, a portal for law offices, lets a client view invoices and payment history and pay right from the portal. Billing is a good place to start, since it is the question with money attached.

For a firm like this, put in:

• Every invoice, paid and open, with a way to pay the open ones.
• The signed engagement letter and the documents the customer needs to keep.
• One message thread per matter, so the history is not spread across several inboxes.
• The next date that matters to them, a meeting, a filing or a deadline.

A studio: files and invoices

A photographer, a designer or a wedding planner trades files and payments with each customer over weeks or months. HoneyBook gives each customer a portal with a Files tab for shared documents and a Payments tab for invoices.

That split is a good one to copy, whatever tool you use. Put the contract, the proposal and the proofs you have chosen to share under files. Put every invoice and the date each payment is due under payments, so the customer knows the deposit is paid and when the balance is owed.

A couple who can see the balance date themselves has one less reason to text you late at night.

A clinic: forms, shared files and receipts

In Jane, clinic software, patients can open all their past payment receipts in the My Account portal and download the ones they need. The same portal shows intake forms waiting to be filled out and the files a clinic chooses to share with a patient.

For a clinic, a dental office or a physical therapy practice, that is most of the list:

• Intake forms, sent before the first visit, so nobody fills them out on a clipboard in the waiting room.
• Receipts the patient can download for their own records or an insurance claim.
• Aftercare sheets and home exercises you decide to share.
• Upcoming appointments, with the address.

Patient files are health records. Before they go into any portal tool, ask the vendor in writing how it protects them, and keep the answer.

A home-service business: quotes, visits and invoices

A plumber, an electrician, a house cleaner or a landscaper mostly gets asked about the visit and the money. When are you coming, what will it cost, did my payment go through.

Put in:

• The quote, with a button to approve it, so the yes is in writing.
• The date of the visit and the arrival window, updated when it moves.
• Photos of the finished work, which also settle questions later.
• The invoice and the receipt, with a way to pay.
• A service history, so a customer can see when the water heater was last serviced without calling.

What stays out of the portal

A portal shows the customer what is theirs and nothing else. That rules out a few things that tend to sit right next to the customer's file:

• Internal notes, like a reminder that someone pays late or likes a call before every visit.
• Drafts of a quote or a document that are not ready to send.
• Your costs and the math behind a price.
• Anything about another customer, including a shared folder that holds more than one household's files.

Look for a tool that keeps these apart. HoneyBook keeps a section marked Not visible to clients where the business stores internal notes that should stay confidential.

Signing in: a link by email or a password

There are two common ways in. With an emailed link, the customer types their email address, gets a link and taps it, with no password to forget. With a password, they sign in the usual way, and get stuck the day they forget it.

When a client first sets up Clio for Clients, they enter their email address and confirm it through an emailed link that expires after one hour. HoneyBook's help page says a customer can sign in with an email address and password, or with a link sent by email that expires after a while.

How to choose: if most customers sign in a few times a year, to pay a bill or grab a receipt, the emailed link is easier. Nobody remembers a password they used once in March. If customers are in every week, a password saved on their phone may be quicker. If your tool offers both, as HoneyBook's help page says it does, turn both on.

Tell customers the link expires. Then a link from last week's email that no longer works does not look like a broken portal.

The one-minute invoice test

Here is the plain test of whether a portal works. Ask someone who has never used it, a friend or a new hire, to act as a customer. Start them at your website or the last email you sent, and ask them to find their most recent invoice. Time it.

If it takes more than a minute, something is in the way. The usual fixes:

• Add a link to the portal on your website, where a customer would look, like the top menu.
• Put the portal link in every invoice email and every receipt.
• Make invoices the first thing on screen after sign-in.
• Rename tabs in plain words if your tool allows it, "Bills" over "Financials".

The tools can carry their end of this. Stripe's portal keeps invoices with payment details in one place, and Jane lists every past receipt for a patient to download. What decides the test is whether a customer gets to that screen without help.

What to do

1. Write down the five questions customers email or call you about most. Those are what your portal should answer.
2. Check whether the tool you already use for billing, booking or files has a customer portal you have not turned on.
3. Sort what goes in and what stays out, and keep internal notes in a hidden section, like HoneyBook's Not visible to clients.
4. Pick a sign-in. An emailed link suits customers who visit a few times a year, and HoneyBook's help page says it offers both that and a password.
5. Run the one-minute invoice test with someone who has never seen the portal, and fix what slows them down.
6. Put the portal link on your website and in every invoice email.

If no tool fits how you work, or your customer records live in a spreadsheet, a portal can be built on your own records. You can read about client portals, a CRM for the customer records behind one, and custom apps. We build portals like this, and you own the code and the accounts from the first day.