Working with clients

Half the effort of client work is telling the client what is happening. A client project takes care of most of that: they sign in to your own site and see the state of the job, comment where you let them, send you files and pay what they owe.

None of it is public. A client sees one project, only after they have accepted an invite, and only the parts described here.

Making a project a client project

Turn on Client project when you create it, or later under Settings then Billing and budget, and pick the Client contact. That contact is the person you will bill, and they are added to the project's client list automatically.

Adding and inviting clients

A project can have more than one client on it. The people from the client's side who need to see it, not just the one who signs the invoice.

Open the project, go to Settings, and find the Clients card.

1. Under Add a client, pick a contact.
2. Leave Can comment ticked if they should be able to reply on tasks, or untick it for read-only.
3. Click Add client.

Every client on the list can always view the project. Can comment is the only thing you toggle, and you can change it at any time from the tick box on their row.

To invite someone, click the envelope on their row. The Portal column then tells you where each person stands:

• Not invited means they have been added but no email has gone out.
• Invited means the invite has been sent and is waiting.
• Linked means they have accepted and can sign in.

The bin removes a client's access. They stop seeing the project immediately.

What the invite looks like

Your client gets an email with a link to a page on your own site, styled like the rest of it. What they see there depends on where they already stand:

• If they have no account, they choose a password and click Accept invite, which signs them straight in.
• If they already have an account with that email, they are told so and sent to sign in. An invite gives access, it never resets an existing password.
• If they are already signed in as the invited person, they get a View project button and no password step at all.

What your client sees

Once signed in they land on Your projects, a card per project they are on, each with its status, due date and a progress bar of tasks done.

Opening one gives them a read-only report:

• Milestones, with their dates and whether each is complete.
• Tasks, ticked or not, with due dates. Each one is clickable.
• Billable time, a table of hours and amount per task with a total at the bottom. Only billable time appears here, so internal hours stay internal.
• Documents, covered below.
• Invoices, with a Pay button on anything still owing.

Clicking a task opens it on its own, with any files your team attached to it and a comment thread. If you gave that client permission to comment, there is a box to write in. If you did not, they can read the thread and nothing more.

Taking files from your client

The Documents block on their project report has an Upload a document button. Anything they send lands in the project's files as a page of its own, and appears back in their own list so they can see what they sent and when.

The same block lists documents that have been shared with them, with an Open link on each. Nothing in a project's files reaches a client on its own: a document is only visible to them once it has been shared with them specifically. Opening one is handled through a temporary link created at the moment of the click, so no document address can be forwarded, bookmarked or guessed.

If nothing has been shared and they have sent nothing, the block simply invites them to upload something.

Getting paid

Invoices raised from the project show on the client's report with their state in plain words: awaiting payment, overdue, paid, and so on. Anything still owing carries a Pay button that opens the invoice page.

Raising the invoice in the first place is covered in time tracking, and everything that happens to it afterwards lives in Finance.