Customer Portal
The Customer Portal is a self-service site, separate from the internal AdmCloud system, where your customers log in with their own user to check their account statement, pay their invoices, view and create quotes or sales orders, follow up on their service requests and contracts, and download files you shared with them. It cuts down on "where's my order?" or "how much do I owe you?" calls and emails, because the customer checks it directly, any time of day.
What is it and what is it for?
The Customer Portal is a slimmed-down version of AdmCloud meant to be used directly by your customer's contact person, not by your own team. They log in with the email and password you assigned them, on the same AdmCloud sign-in screen: the system detects that the user is a customer contact and automatically takes them to the portal instead of the internal system.
Each contact only sees information for their own company (customer): their invoices, their quotes, their service requests, and so on. You control exactly what each contact can see and do through individual permissions (see "Key fields" below), so you can, for example, give one contact read-only access to the account statement and give another one permission to also create sales orders.
How to give your customer access, step by step
- Open the customer's record and go to their Contacts tab. If the contact doesn't exist yet, create it first with their name and email.
- Click Grant access next to the contact, in the Customer Portal access column. The system sends them their sign-in credentials.
- Set their individual permissions (view only, create quotes, create sales orders, view service, etc.) from the portal contact's edit screen, based on what you want that specific contact to be able to do.
- Fill in the customer data the portal needs for sales features: a default payment term, currency and price level. Without these three, the customer won't be able to create new quotes or sales orders, even with the permission turned on.
- Revocable at any time: you can remove a contact's portal access with the Remove access button, without deleting the contact.
What your customer can do in the portal
| Section | What it lets the customer do |
|---|---|
| Home | A summary with their total and overdue balance (by currency, if they carry more than one), their sales rep's contact card, the count of service requests pending approval or in process, and their active or expired service contracts. |
| Statement | The detail of their open invoices and notes as of today, with days overdue, and a direct way to pay them if your company has card payments enabled. |
| Credit invoices, cash invoices, cash receipts and credit notes | Read-only lists of each document type, with their own filters (location, sales rep, date) and printing. |
| Credit card payments | Pay one or more invoices by card and review the history of payments already made from the portal, with their receipt. |
| Items | A catalog of items priced at that customer's own price level, plus available stock if your company chooses to show it. |
| Quotes and sales orders | View their existing quotes and sales orders, create new ones by picking items from the catalog, and authorize or reject the ones pending their approval. |
| Service requests | Create a new service request, view existing ones grouped by stage (pending approval, in process, in quality review), change priority or cancel them, depending on their permissions. Requires the Customer Service module to be active. |
| Service contracts | View their active service contracts, their term and the services included. Requires the Customer Service module to be active. |
| Work orders | View the work orders generated from their service requests or contracts. Requires the Customer Service module to be active. |
| Projects | View the open projects linked to their company, with their status and dates. |
| Files | Download the attachments you explicitly marked as visible in the Customer Portal, from any of their documents. It opens from Documents > Shared Files in the menu or from the portal's home page. |
| Employees | For customers that are themselves labor contractors: view and, with the right permission, print the record of the employees they've assigned to you. Requires the Payroll/Billing module to be active. |
Requirements to create quotes and sales orders
For a contact to create a new quote or sales order from the portal, besides having the matching permission, these conditions must be met on the customer record:
- The customer must have a default payment term, currency and price level configured.
- At least one item must exist in the company's catalog.
- For sales orders, if you configured a window of days in the month during which portal orders are allowed, the customer can only create them within that range.
If any of these conditions isn't met, the new-quote or new-order button doesn't show up or stays disabled, even with the permission turned on.
Key fields
| Field | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Portal access (contact) | Turns on or removes, per contact, the ability to log in to the Customer Portal. |
| Allow view sales | Lets the contact view the customer's invoices, quotes and sales orders. |
| Allow view accounts receivable | Lets the contact view the account statement, cash receipts and pay by card. |
| Allow view service | Lets the contact view service requests, contracts, work orders and employees (where applicable). |
| Allow create quotes / Allow create sales orders | Turns on the new-quote or new-sales-order buttons, subject to the customer having a payment term, currency and price level configured. |
| Allow create service requests | Turns on the new-service-request button. |
| Allow authorize quotes / sales orders | Lets the contact approve or reject the quotes and sales orders left pending the customer's authorization. |
| Allow browse price list | Turns on the Items section, priced according to the customer's price level. |
| Allow see attachments | Turns on the Files section, showing attachments marked as visible in the portal. |
| Allow view work orders / Allow view projects | Turn on the Work Orders and Projects sections, respectively. |
| Allow create users | Lets that contact view and add other contacts with portal access, on behalf of their own company. |
| Payment term, Currency and Price level (on the customer) | Default data used by any quote or sales order created from the portal; required to be able to create new documents. |
| Sales rep (on the customer) | When assigned and the contact can view sales, their photo, name, phone and email show up on the portal's home page. The phone is the Mobile Phone on their employee record or, if there's none, Phone 1 (with its extension) or Phone 2; never their Personal Phone. |
Additional features depending on your setup
- Show balances by currency: if the customer has invoices in more than one currency, the portal's home page can show a total and an overdue balance per currency, instead of a single consolidated total.
- Quote status and authorization: shows each quote's status and, if the contact has the permission, the buttons to approve or reject it directly from the portal.
- Credit card operator payments (Cardnet or another): redirects the customer to the payment processor to collect their invoices, when your company has a card operator enabled for the portal.
- Payment links (PayPal or others): shows alternative payment buttons on invoices, if your company has them enabled.
- Custom instructions for service requests: help text you defined in your company's configuration, shown when creating a new request.
- Group service request types: organizes the request-type dropdown by category, if your company turned this option on.
- Hide the assigned consultant/technician: if your company prefers, the name of the technician responsible for a request can be hidden from the customer.
- Visible stock in the catalog: the available-stock column on Items only shows up if your company chooses to display it in the portal.
Availability and permissions
- The Customer Portal itself is available on every AdmCloud plan, starting with the Billing plan; it's turned on customer by customer and contact by contact, with no global activation needed.
- The service requests, service contracts and work orders sections only show up if your company has the Customer Service module active (Enterprise edition).
- The Employees section (for customers that are labor contractors) only shows up if your company has the Payroll/Billing module active (Enterprise edition).
- Credit card payments require your company to have card payments enabled and, for operator payments (Cardnet or another), a card operator configured and active for the portal.
- Each individual permission (view sales, view accounts receivable, view service, create quotes/orders/requests, authorize, etc.) is granted per contact, not per whole customer: two contacts from the same company can have different access.
Tips and common mistakes
Fill in the customer's payment term, currency and price level before granting access. If the contact logs in to the portal and the new-quote or new-order button doesn't show up, this is the most common cause: one of those three fields is missing on the customer record.
Don't confuse "Allow view sales" with "Allow view accounts receivable." They're independent permissions: one controls invoices, quotes and sales orders; the other controls the account statement and payments. A contact may only need one of the two.
An attachment doesn't automatically show up in the portal, even if the contact has the view-attachments permission: you must explicitly mark it as visible in the Customer Portal from the document where you attached it.
Removing a contact's access doesn't delete their information or history. It only stops them from logging in to the portal; you can grant access back at any time.