What your clients see in the portal
The portal is your client's own view of their work with you. Everyone you invite from a client sees the same things, and only that client's things. It carries your branding when your workspace has its own address and a plan that includes branding (Unlimited or Enterprise). See Branding.
To check it for yourself, open the client's People tab and choose View as … on one of their users.
The pages
- Overview — Hours remaining in large type, a bar of used, left and expired hours, each block of hours with its expiry date, their five latest entries and their latest invoices. Hourly clients with nothing on account don't see the hours panel.
- Messages — their one conversation with your team. Only shown when client messaging is on. See The inbox.
- Time — their timesheet for any date range, filterable by project, with a total marked Billable work only. They can export it to CSV.
- Invoices — every invoice you've raised (never drafts), with status, due date, total and what's outstanding. They can open the PDF, pay online, see payments and credit notes, and export the list.
- Statements — every statement of hours you've sent them, to open on screen or download as CSV. Only shown once they have one. See Send clients a statement of their hours.
- Files — the files you've shared with them and the ones they've uploaded, by project and folder, to open, download or download all as a zip. Only shown when your plan includes client files or they already have files to see. See Share files with a client.
- Buy hours — your hour bundles and retainer plans, to buy or subscribe to without asking you. Not shown to Hourly clients.
- Plan — their current plan, where they can change it, cancel it, resume it and manage saved cards. Hourly clients only see it while a plan they already have is still renewing.
They can also change their own name, password, timezone and notifications from the menu under their name.
What they never see
- Running timers, non-billable time, and time on hidden or internal projects. See What clients can see. The exception is a statement of hours: it lists every billable entry that used their hours, including entries on hidden projects and with no project.
- Rates, amounts or costs on the timesheet. Money only appears on invoices.
- Files you haven't shared, deleted files, and files on hidden or internal projects.
- Your tags, internal notes in messages, other clients, or anything in your own app.
What they can change
Clients can't edit time or invoices. They can upload files for you on Files (see Share files with a client), and delete files they uploaded themselves. What they can do with money:
- Buy an hour bundle. It raises a real invoice, and the hours are added when it's paid. See Top-ups.
- Subscribe to, change or cancel a retainer plan. You get an email when a client cancels or moves to a smaller plan.
- Add, remove or choose a default card for their plan.
- Pay open invoices.
These need Stripe connected. See Connect Stripe.
Every person you invite from a client can do all of this. There's no approval step and no view-only access, so invite only people who should be able to buy hours and change the plan. See Invite clients to the portal.