In this article:
- Invite Clients to Client Portal
- Explore the Client Portal
- Add Connections to the Portal
- Bulk Send Client Portal Invites
Invite Clients to Client Portal
The Client Portal is how you share files, client requests, and send other information back and forth with your clients.
Before you begin sharing those things, your contact needs access to the portal.
Canopy Tip!
We recommend inviting contacts to the client portal as soon as they are onboarded. If you don’t, no biggie. Canopy will remind you to invite them if you attempt to send anything their way.
You invite a client to the client portal using the email address you have on their file.
It’s important to remember that Clients cannot make their portal - they have to be invited with their email address to get portal access.
To invite a client to the client portal:
- Click on a Client’s Record.
- On the left-hand side, click the + button next to Client Portal.
In the Client Portal invite window, you have several options before inviting this client.
- First, Confirm the client and client email address - this will flow into this window from whatever email they have in their record.
- Next, You have the option to add another individual with their email. They will also have access to this portal.
- If doesn't have to be a current contact either. It can be someone outside of your contact list.
- Last, you can leave a personalized message if you choose to.
- You have the option of using an email template here as well. If you have a template you like to use for onboarding, you can drop that here. You can also use one of these preset templates stored in Canopy.
There are various ways to communicate here, but we recommend creating a template that explains and instructs your clients on how to exchange info here.
Now you’re ready to send!
Explore the Client Portal
Let’s take a quick look at what the invitation looks like.
In the email, they will see your message and a button to create their account.
After clicking Create Account, they can create a password using the email address to which the invitation was sent.
They will start on the Home tab when they first log in. The portal is laid out so your client can see several tabs for:
- To-do: shows a list of all tasks assigned to them.
- Files: shows all of the files kept on the account.
- Billing (if applicable): shows outstanding balances and lists all of your invoices and payment history
As you add files, those will appear under Recent Files and a client can upload any relevant files by selecting Add a File, on the Files tab.
Lastly, they can navigate to their user settings at the bottom, by selecting their initials.
They can edit their information or find resources to help them use the portal.
Canopy Tip!
As a best practice, you might share this link with them in your client portal invitation email and as part of your onboarding.
Add Connections to the Client Portal
In some of your cases, you might have more than one user—or contact—linked to a client you just sent a portal to. This might be spouses, business partners, or family members.
Let’s do another example of a client portal where a spouse is linked.
Click on the main client and select the + button for the portal.
In the client portal invite window, you'll see that it’s showing the main contact, Daisy Buchanan, and her spouse, Tom Buchanan.
This means that Tom, who is linked to Daisy's contact account, can be invited to Daisy's client portal, as long as he has provided an email address!
Keep this in mind! Even if Tom Buchanan is not active (and therefore not a billable contact), he can still be invited to Daisy's client portal.
This way, Tom can still provide information as part of the portal to-do’s.
Bulk Send Client Portal Invitations
You may want to send multiple clients portal invites at once. Let me show you where you can quickly and easily manage your Client Portal users.
- Click on Clients in the global navigation bar
- Then click on Manage Client Portals
- Here you can see all users with and without client portal access.
- Lets select Without Client portal to view who is not using one.
- By selecting multiple clients you will notice at the top I have the option to send invites. Here you can send a bulk invite just like we did before. Note you can not send invitations to any clients without an email address.
So stop stressing and start sending