Customer Portal in Zoho Billing

Customer Portal allows your customers to track all the transactions that have taken place between them and your business. Bid goodbye to lengthy emails and collaborate efficiently like never before.

Once you set up the customer portal, you’ll be able to:

Customer Portal Settings


Invite Customers to your Portal

To give access to your customers, you need to enable the portal for each customer individually. If that customer has contact persons, you will have to provide access to the contact person associated with that customer as well. Once they log in to your portal, they can view the estimates, invoices, statement of accounts, projects and time entries you have sent them.

To configure the portal access for a customer:

Your clients will then be able to log into your portal and view the invoices, estimates and also download customer statements.


Working in the Customer Portal

The following are the modules available in the Customer Portal. Let’s see how your customers can use it.

Home

The Home or Dashboard is the first screen that your customers see when they login to the customer portal. It gives them an overview of the transactions that took place between you and your customers. They can view the following details on the dashboard:

Apart from the above details, the home page also displays your customer’s account details, their contact persons, and your organization’s contact details.

Customer portal home


Transactions

Your customers can view the status of all the invoices and estimates they have received, as well as the payments made in the past.

Estimates

Your customers can view a list of the estimates they’ve received from you. If they are satisfied with the price, they can take your business forward by clicking the Accept button that is visible when you open the estimate. They can decline an estimate for a better offer by clicking the Decline button in the top.

The client can also filter the list to display a particular type of estimate by clicking the Show drop-down above the list.

Accepting Estimate in customer portal

The estimate can be forwarded to a different email id from the customer portal and can be downloaded as well. Just click the More icon on the top right corner to perform these actions.

Accepting Estimate in customer portal

Insight: You can always rework on the declined estimate by clicking on the ‘Edit’ option provided in your Zoho Billing account ​to make an offer your clients clients can’t resist and update them.

Invoices

Customers can view the list of invoices sent by you in the portal. If the invoice is unpaid, they can choose to pay instantly by clicking Pay Now. They can also filter the list to display a particular type of invoice by clicking the drop-down above the list

Instant Pay for an Invoice

Your clients can choose to forward the invoice to an email address and also download the invoice in the form of PDF or print the invoice by clicking the more icon on the top right corner and selecting the respective options.

If your clients have any remarks and would like to discuss that with you, they can use the comments box to add them as comments. You can also add comments from your end and have an official record of the conversation.

Your clients can make payments by choosing a mode of payment. Various payment gateway options can be given to the customer at the time of creating ​an invoice.

Payment Gateway screen

Card Payments

For making payments using Credit/Debit card, customers can enter their card number, CVV, expiry date, billing address and the country to make payment. They can also save the cards and use them while making payments for upcoming invoices.

ACH Payments

In order for customers to make ACH payments, you need to enable Allow this customer to pay via his/her bank account option for your customers in the Other Details section in the customer creation screen.

Insight: Customers can also choose to save their account details for future transactions by checking the Use this account for future transactions option.

Payments Made

In the Payments Made module, your customers will be able to view the payments made by them to your invoices.You can also list the payments based on invoice payments and retainer invoice payments and sort it based on the date and amount.

PaymentsMade

The receipts can be downloaded as PDFs by clicking the Download PDF button and can be printed by clicking the Print button on the top.

PaymentsMade


Projects

If you had enabled the Allow customers to view projects and timesheets option in the portal settings (gear icon > Preferences > Customer Portal), an additional module will be made available in your customer’s customer portal.

The Projects module in the customer portal will list all the projects created for your customer.

ProjectsList

To check more details of a particular project, they can click on a project name. They can view the following details of the selected project:

ProjectsList

Timesheet Approval

If you had enabled Client Approval in your org and in a specific project, a module named Timesheets will be displayed on the left sidebar. This module will display all the client approvals sent to that customer. They can accept or decline client approvals and manage them. They can see the total hours spent on a project, when it was received, and it’s status.

Customers can click on a particular approval to view its details. If satisfied with the time entries, they can approve the submitted approval by clicking the Approve button. If not, they can Reject it and provide the reason. They can also communicate with you through the comments.

Timesheet Approval

Bulk Payments

The customer portal’s dashboard will display the total amount for Outstanding Invoices. Select Pay Now to view the number of invoices for which the amount is due.

Pay Now Button

To view more details of the outstanding invoices, click on the hyperlink below the Total Amount.

Invoice Payment Details

You can then proceed to make the payment for all your outstanding invoices using a Credit Card or through any one of the associated payment gateways.


Statements

Your customers can view a detailed Statement of Accounts consisting of all the transactions between them and your company. They can also have their statements printed or downloaded as PDFs.

Statements of all the trasactions

Get Notified

The ‘Viewed’ Notification

Once your clients have viewed your estimate or invoice, you will be notified about it with a ‘​Viewed’ icon on the specific estimate or invoice on your Zoho Billing account. You will be notified on the bell icon as well.

Viewed notifcation

To get notified, you will have to enable Send me an email notification for every activity that takes place in the portal from Preferences > Customer Portal.

Viewed notifcation

Comments

Your clients can comment in the customer portal about the estimate or invoice they receive. This feature comes handy when clients ask for a better price on your estimate rather than declining it.

Client comment in Customer portal

You can check and reply to the comments made by the client on the specific estimate or invoice from your Zoho Billing account. Check the Display in portal box to make your reply visible in the customer portal.

Your clients can view your reply in the customer portal.

By Mail

A notification email will be triggered to your email account if your client

Insight: You should have enabled Send an email notification to my contacts when I comment on transactions from the Preferences > Customer Portal.


Client Details

Update Account Details

If your customers have changed their personal or company details, they can update it in the customer portal. Here’s how:

They can also change their address by clicking the pencil icon next to the address.

Account Details

Insight: All the changes made here will be updated in your customer’s corresponding details in your Zoho Billing organization.

Edit Card Details

Customers can view their card details in the customer portal if:

Customers can edit their card details anytime. Here’s how:

Change Password

To safeguard their transactions, customers can regularly change their password for the customer portal. Here’s how:

Insight: The password changes only for the specific contact person using the customer portal.

Other Actions

Send Email

Customers can contact you directly from the portal by sending an email to your registered email address in Zoho Billing. Here’s how:

Send Email

Write Review

Gauge your customer’s satisfaction with your business by asking them to write a review. You can market or publicize positive reviews and identify areas of improvement from the constructive criticism. Here’s how your customers can write a review:

Insight: When a customer submits a review, it will appear in Zoho Billing in that contact’s Overview page under Client Reviews

Logout

To logout from the customer portal, customers can click Logout from the left sidebar.


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