Customer Portal

Customer Portal is an online platform which helps you to connect and share the transactions directly with your customers. All the transactions that you create for a customer will be available in your customer’s customer portal where he can view them and perform other actions depending on the transaction. Also, your customer will be able to make payments for the invoices directly from the customer portal. If your customer changes his location and there is a change in your customer’s address, he will be able to update his address in the Customer Portal which will be reflected in Zoho Invoice. Also, you will be able to request a review from your customer about your company

Enabling Customer Portal

Before your customer can use the Customer Portal, you have to enable Customer Portal for them in Zoho Invoice. You can enable Customer Portal for your customer only if you’ve added their email address to their details. There are multiple ways to enable a Customer Portal. You can enable it either when you create a customer as mentioned above or later, from the Customer Details page.

To enable Customer Portal from Customer Details page:

• Go to the Customers module.
• Select a customer for whom you want to enable customer portal.
• Click the Enable Portal button or click the enable link next to the Portal Status.

• Select the email address for which you want to enable customer portal in the pop-up.
• Click Set Portal Password and enter a Portal Password for the customer.

• Click Save to send an email with the invitation link to the selected email address.

Client Review

Customer feedback is an essential process for any organization. It helps you understand what your customers think about your company. The customer review feature in Zoho Invoice allows your customers to rate and comment on your organization’s products or services. Who wouldn’t love a positive word of mouth?

• Enabling Client Review
• Disabling Client Review
• Client Review Report

Enabling Client Review

You can enable the client review option in the Portal Preferences. To enable Customer Portal:

• Click the Gear icon in the top-right corner of the window.
• Select Preferences.
• Click the Branding tab and select the Portal Settings sub-tab.
• Check the Enable customer review for my services option.
• Click Save.

Once you enable client review option in Zoho Invoice, you can request a review from your customer. To do that, kindly follow the steps below:

• Go to the Customers module present in the left sidebar and select the customer from whom you wish to request a review.
• Click the Request Review button present on the right bottom of the window.

• Edit the email content in the email draft page and click Send. Immediately, an email will be sent to your customer asking them to rate your service.

• Your customers can rate your service from the dashboard of their customer portal.
• All they would have to do is to rate your organization’s service on a scale of 5 stars; add a few words about your service, and click the Submit Review button.

• As soon as the customer rates your service, you’ll receive a notification in Zoho Invoice.

• You can view the reviews from your client in the Customer Details page of the customer. Also, you’ll be able to comment on their feedback. Also, you can share your customer’s feedback on Twitter.

Apart from requesting review from the Customers module, you can request review from your clients while you manually record a payment.

Disabling Client Review

If you don’t want to request reviews from your customers, you can disable the option. To disable:

• Click the Gear icon in the top-right corner of the window.
• Select Preferences.
• Click the Branding tab and select the Portal Settings sub-tab.
• Uncheck the Enable customer review for my services option.
• Click Save.

Client Review Report

Zoho Invoice also provides a separate report to display the list of client reviews that you’ve received from your customers. To access this report:

• Click the Reports module on the left sidebar.
• Click the Activity dropdown and select the Client Review report.
• Select the date range for which you wish to see the client reviews, and click the Run Report button.
• This will show you the list of client reviews for the selected time period.

Portal Preferences

Portal Preferences allow you to configure the settings of the Customer Portal. Let’s look into how best we can change the Customer Portal settings to best reflect your business to your customers.

To go the portal settings:

• Click the Gear icon in the top-right corner of the window.
• Select Preferences.
• Select the Branding tab and click the Portal Settings sub-tab.

Field Names	Description
Portal Name	An unique name for your customer portal which will be used in the portal URL as shown below the Portal Name field.
Banner Message	Enter a message that you want to display at the top of the Home page.
Send me an email notification for every activity that takes place in the portal	Check this option to receive an email when customers add or decline estimates, add comments and make payments.
Allow customers to forward documents from portal	Check this option to allow your customers to forward the invoices and estimates to another person. If they forward, that person will be added as a contact person in the contact.
Send an email notification to customers when I comment on Invoices/ Estimates	Check this option if you want to send an email to your customer whenever you add a comment.
Enable customer review for my services	Check this option to allow you to request a review from your customers who are in Customer Portal.
Allow customers to view projects and timesheets	Check this option to allow your customers to view the Project Name, Description, Billed and Unbilled Hours, Logged Time and Fixed cost of the project.
Allow customers to edit their information	Check this option to allow your customers to edit their Billing and Shipping addresses, custom fields and contact details.

After making the necessary changes, click Save.

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