Customer portal setup
Turn on portal logins, invite a customer's people from their customer page, and choose which request notifications customers get.
Do this when a fleet customer wants their own secure sign-in to see work history, invoices, and PM status — beyond the simple share link you can already text them. Portal logins are per-person, each with a role and optional unit scoping, so a fleet manager and a driver see different things.
The Customer Portal settings page has no card on the main Settings grid yet. Reach it by going to Settings, then adding /customer-portal to the address — the full path is /settings/customer-portal. Only owners and managers can open it.
Turn on portal logins
Open the Customer Portal settings page at /settings/customer-portal and switch on Login portal enabled. This turns customer sign-in on for your shop. While it's off, nobody can sign in, you can't invite people, and everyone keeps getting links that open the account without signing in — see Each person's link.
Pick the Default role for new users. This is pre-selected whenever you invite someone. Most shops choose viewer.
Decide on Allow self-registration. Turn this on to let someone who's viewing a share link claim or create their own login. Leave it off if you want to hand out every login yourself. Once anyone at a customer has signed in, its links can't be used to register any more; new people are invited by the customer's fleet admin or by you.
Choose the Request notifications. Toggle On submit, On scheduled, and On declined for the events you want customers told about, then pick the Channels — Email, SMS, or both. SMS opt-out and quiet hours are always respected.
Click Save settings.
Invite a customer's people
Portal logins are added from the customer's own page — one login per person, so each gets their own access.
Open the customer and find the Portal access card. It's on the customer detail page, marked with a people icon.
Enter the person's email, pick a role, and click Invite. They get an invitation to set up their login. Their row shows their status and, until they sign in, not yet signed in.
Scope a driver to specific units if needed. Click Units on their row, choose Assigned only, check the vehicles they should see, and click Save units. Leave it on All units for anyone who should see the whole fleet.
Manage access over time from the same row. Use the role dropdown to change what someone can do, Suspend to pause a login temporarily, Reactivate to turn it back on, or Revoke to remove it when someone leaves the customer's company.
Each person's link
Emails and texts you send a customer — estimate approvals, receipts, invoice emails, PM reminders, the fleet PM summary and status updates — can carry a link that opens their whole account (balance, invoices, units and estimate approval) without signing in. Each link belongs to the person it was sent to. A text to the customer's number carries the main contact's link.
- When that person signs in to the portal for the first time, their links stop opening the account. Old ones in their inbox open the sign-in page, and new messages to them link to the sign-in and then straight to the page the message is about.
- Everyone else at the customer keeps their links until they sign in themselves.
- An invite nobody has accepted changes nothing, so a mistyped email can't cut anyone off.
- Suspending, revoking or removing a person stops their links working straight away ("This link doesn't open the account anymore"), and they aren't sent new ones. If you reactivate or invite them again, they get a new link; the old ones stay closed.
- When an address changes on the customer or a contact (or the contact is deleted), links already sent to the old address stop working; the next message carries a new one. A portal user's links stay with that person whatever their email becomes.
- With Login portal enabled off, nobody can sign in, so everyone's links keep opening the account (except people whose access you took away).
- Links sent before per-person links go to the sign-in page as soon as anyone at the customer has signed in, and stop working if anyone's access is taken away.
- Pay-by-text and pay-by-email links are separate and keep working without a login.
The customer's Portal access card shows each person: under their name it says Links open without sign-in, Links go to sign-in or Links don't work. Others who get links lists people who were sent a link but have no portal login, starting with the main contact.
The button at the top of the customer page copies the main contact's link (Copy main contact's link), or Copy sign-in link once the main contact signs in. Use Turn off the no-login portal next to it to stop every no-login link already sent to that customer; people who sign in keep their access, and new invoice and PM emails still link to that document only.
What the portal roles mean
In plain terms — the full detail lives in the permissions matrix:
- Fleet admin — runs the whole account, including inviting their own people.
- Accounting — sees and pays bills.
- Manager — approves work and books service.
- Driver — sees only the units you assign them.
- Viewer — can look, can't touch.
Where customer requests land
When a portal user asks for service, that request lands in your Requests inbox in the sidebar, with a badge for anything new. Staff who can triage — advisors, managers, and owners — schedule, decline, or close requests from there. The customer is notified according to the Request notifications you set above.
What happens behind the scenes
Customer portal logins are a completely separate identity from your staff logins — inviting a customer's person never adds them to your Team Members or gives them any access to your shop's back office. Unit scoping is enforced on the customer's side: a driver set to Assigned only simply can't see the trucks you didn't check. And customer notifications always honor SMS opt-out and quiet hours, so turning a channel on never overrides someone who has opted out.
Troubleshooting
There's no card for it on the Settings grid yet. Go to Settings, then change the address to end in /settings/customer-portal. You need to be an owner or manager to open it.
Check three things: Login portal enabled is on for your shop (when it's off, the sign-in page says the shop doesn't offer customer sign-in), their row on the customer's Portal access card isn't Suspended, and they're using the exact email you invited. If they were only ever sent links, they'll need an invite (or self-registration turned on) to get a real login.
That's expected once the person the link was sent to has signed in to the portal: their links lead to the sign-in page. If someone else opened a forwarded link, they need their own invite from the Portal access card (or from the customer's fleet admin). If the page says the link doesn't open the account anymore, that person's access was suspended or removed.
Open Units on that person's row, choose Assigned only, check just their vehicles, and click Save units. A login left on All units sees the customer's whole fleet.
Make sure the matching toggle is on — On submit, On scheduled, or On declined — and that the right Channel (Email or SMS) is checked on the settings page. SMS also respects the customer's opt-out and your quiet hours, so a text may be held for those reasons.