A customer portal for invoices, quotes and payments

Count the e-mails your team answered last week that started with "Could you send me…". A copy of an invoice. The statement for the auditors. The quote again, because the first one is lost somewhere in a thread. Each request takes two minutes, but they arrive all day, and they land on the people you need for real work.

A customer portal moves those requests to a place where the customer serves themselves. Done well, it also speeds up the things that make you money: quotes get accepted sooner, invoices get paid sooner, and problems reach the right person with the record attached. Done badly, it becomes one more password nobody remembers.

This guide covers what a portal should do, how to decide who sees what, and a rollout plan that works for a small team.

What customers actually come to a portal for

Before you switch anything on, list what your customers ask for most. For most service and trading businesses, the list is short:

• See and download invoices, with what is paid and what is still to pay.
• Get a statement of everything open, without asking for one.
• Accept a quote or a proposal, with a clear record of who accepted it and when.
• Pay, in full or in part, without waiting for bank details by e-mail.
• Ask for help or a service visit, and follow the answer.
• Say something about one document: "this invoice has the wrong PO number", "we will pay on the 15th".

Everything else is a nice extra. If your portal does these six things well, most of the "Could you send me…" e-mails disappear.

Give each contact a role, not a shared login

The most common mistake is one login per customer company, shared by whoever needs it. You lose track of who did what, a person who leaves keeps access, and the finance manager sees support tickets they do not care about.

Instead, add each person at the customer separately and give them a role that matches their job:

• Viewer: sees the sections you opened to their company, changes nothing.
• Approver: accepts quotes and proposals on behalf of the company.
• Payer: pays invoices and can promise a payment date or dispute an invoice.
• Requester: opens support tickets and service requests, and places orders where you allow it.
• Admin: manages the other people from their own company.

A typical example: at a client that buys maintenance from you, the operations manager is the Approver, the finance officer is the Payer, and two site engineers are Requesters. Each one sees a home page with only what waits for them.

Decide what each company sees

Not every customer needs every section. A one-off project customer needs invoices, the proposal and the project's progress. A maintenance customer needs tickets, service requests and estimates to approve. A wholesale buyer needs orders and the statement.

Start with a small default set for new companies, usually invoices, the statement and support, and widen it per company when there is a reason. Fewer sections mean a cleaner home page and fewer questions about what a screen means.

Make sign-in painless

Customers will not remember another password, and you do not want to reset one every week. A sign-in code sent by e-mail works better: the person types their address, receives a short code, and is in. Nothing to forget, nothing to share.

For a customer who only wants to pay one invoice, even that is too much. A secure link to that single invoice, which expires and which you can withdraw, lets them pay from their phone with no account at all.

Roll it out in four weeks

Week 1: clean your contact data. The portal is only as good as the e-mail addresses behind it. Check that every active customer has the right people with their own addresses, not a shared info@ mailbox. This is also a good moment to merge duplicates; our post on one customer record explains why.

Week 2: pilot with five friendly customers. Pick customers who answer the phone and will tell you the truth. Give them access, ask them to pay one invoice and accept one quote through the portal, and note every question they ask.

Week 3: fix what confused them. Usually it is wording: the invitation e-mail, the name of a section, what "Statement" means in their language. Adjust, then write a three-line explanation you can paste into e-mails.

Week 4: invite everyone and change your habits. Add the portal link to your invoice e-mails and e-mail signatures. When someone asks for a copy, reply with the link once, kindly, instead of attaching the file again.

Who answers portal messages

A portal creates a new place where customers write to you. Decide before launch who reads those messages every day, and how quickly you answer. A message about an invoice should go to finance; a message on a ticket to support. If nobody owns the queue, customers learn that writing in the portal is pointless and go back to e-mail.

Disputes and promises to pay deserve special care, because they change how you chase money. A dispute should stop reminders for that invoice until it is resolved; a promise should hold reminders until its day. Our guide to promises to pay and payment plans covers how to handle both.

Suppliers can use the same portal

The same idea works on the buying side. Suppliers can answer your requests for quotation, confirm or change purchase orders, send delivery notes and documents, and see when their bills will be paid. That saves your purchasing team the same "Could you send me…" e-mails in the other direction, and it feeds the checks described in our post on three-way matching.

How to measure whether it works

After two months, look at a few simple signals:

• How many customers signed in at least once.
• How many "send me a copy" e-mails your team still answers each week.
• How many quotes were accepted in the portal, and how long acceptance took compared with before.
• How many invoices were paid from the portal or from a pay link.

You do not need perfect numbers. If the e-mails went down and acceptance got faster, it is working.

How to do it in Kluvan

The Customer portal is one private place, in your organisation's name and colour, where the people of your customer and supplier companies see their records, pay, approve and ask. Kluvan runs online, so there is nothing to install for you or your customers: the portal opens in any browser and is built for phones.

• Switch it on and give access. An owner switches on Customer Portal in Settings → Apps. Then open Portal → Overview, select Give access, find the company and tick the sections its people see. See give a customer or supplier access.
• Add people with roles. Each person gets one or more of the roles Viewer, Approver, Payer, Requester and Admin, and signs in with a code sent to their e-mail. See add portal people and choose their roles.
• What customers see. A home page with what needs their action, then invoices with their balance, the statement, support and service, proposals and agreements, projects, orders, bookings, subscriptions and shared documents, depending on the sections you opened. See what your customers see.
• Payments. A Payer can pay all or part of a Books invoice online through your own Paymob account, and a single-invoice pay link works without an account. Both are in early access today.
• Disputes and promises. A Payer can dispute an invoice or promise a payment date; with Collections on, they land on the customer's case. Your team answers messages, disputes and promises from Portal → Requests, or from the Inbox when it is on: see answer portal messages, disputes and promises.
• Suppliers. Supplier companies answer requests for quotation, confirm purchase orders, send delivery notes and follow their bills.

Portal people do not take paid seats. The Customer portal is sold on its own and is included in the Sales & Customer Care and Service Business bundles and in Kluvan One; see pricing for your country.

Two limits worth knowing: the portal's top bar shows your portal name, not your logo, and portal people always sign in with an e-mail code.

Start with five customers this month. If they stop asking for copies, you will know what to do with the rest.