What Clients Can Do in the Portal
A tour of the Client Portal from your customer's point of view: signing in, viewing invoices and proposals, and requesting service.
The Client Portal is where your customers go to help themselves. It shows your logo (or your company name), and it gives each signed-in client three pages — Invoices, Proposals, and Payment Methods — plus a Request Service button that is always one click away. This article walks through the portal as your customer experiences it, so you know what they see before you share the link.
How clients sign in
There are no portal passwords. A client opens your portal link and lands on a sign-in page titled with your company name. They enter their email address and click Send sign-in link. If that email is recognized on a client record (or on a contact with portal access — see Share portal access), BranchSite emails them a sign-in link. The link expires in 30 minutes and can only be used once; after clicking it, the client stays signed in on that device for up to 30 days.
Note: The sign-in page always says "Check your email," whether or not the address matched a client. That is deliberate — it keeps outsiders from probing which email addresses belong to your customers.
A Sign out button in the portal header ends the session, and the header always shows which email the visitor is signed in as.
Invoices
Invoices are the portal's landing page. Clients see their invoices grouped under three tabs — Unpaid (the default), Paid, and All — with each row showing the invoice number and name, invoice date, Total, remaining Balance due when it differs from the total, and a Paid or Unpaid badge.
Clicking View opens an Invoice Summary page with the billing address, invoice date, due date, terms, the job and service location, line items, and totals. A View Invoice button downloads the full PDF, and unpaid invoices show a Pay Now button when you accept online payments — see Paying through the portal.
Proposals
The Proposals page lists the client's proposals under Not Accepted (the default), Accepted, and All tabs. Each row shows the job number and name, the date it was sent, and an Accepted or Open badge. From here a client can:
- Click View to open the proposal document.
- Click Review & Accept on an open proposal to reach the acceptance page — the same one linked from your proposal emails, covered in Proposal acceptance.
- Click Make a payment on an accepted job that has a deposit or prepay option available.
Because the portal mints its own links, an accepted client can still pay a deposit here even after the link in their original proposal email has expired.
Payment methods
On the Payment Methods page, clients see the cards and bank accounts they have saved with your company, can add a new one, set a default, turn autopay on or off, and remove a method they no longer use. Details are in Paying through the portal.
Requesting service
A Request Service button sits in the portal header on every page. It opens a form asking how you can help, plus a service address — a signed-in client can pick one of their saved addresses or enter a new one, and if they have more than one account with you, choose which Account the request is for.
The form also works without signing in: the sign-in page carries a "Need service? Request it without signing in" link that opens the same form, with name, email, and phone fields for the requester. Either way, submitting shows "Request received!" and creates a new lead in BranchSite for your team to triage — see Share portal access for how those leads arrive.