Inviting clients to their portal

Clients and contacts

In Clientwharf, a client is the company or person you do work for. A contact is an individual at that client who can sign in to the portal. One client can have several contacts, for example a marketing lead and a founder who both review work.

Every client has its own private portal. A contact can only see the portal of the client they were invited to, never your other clients.

Add a client

1. Open Clients at /app/clients and select Add client.
2. Give the client a name. Clientwharf creates a short web address for the portal from that name.
3. Optionally add internal notes. Notes are only visible to your team.

Your plan includes a number of active clients. If you no longer work with a client, select Archive on the client's page. Archiving closes that client's portal and the client no longer counts toward your limit. The client and its projects stay in your workspace, and you can select Restore client at any time.

Who can manage clients

On Agency, Agency Plus and Scale, only owners and admins can add, edit or archive clients and invite or remove contacts. Members keep working on the projects. On Solo, Freelancer Pro and Studio, every team member can manage clients and contacts.

Invite contacts

1. Open the client and, under Invite a contact, enter their email address and, ideally, their name.
2. Select Send invitation. The contact receives an email from Clientwharf on behalf of your workspace, with a link to their portal.
3. When they open the link, they sign in with a magic link: a single-use sign-in link sent to their email. Magic links expire after 15 minutes.

Contacts do not need to create a password. Next time they visit, they request a new magic link from the portal sign-in page.

Your email address needs to be confirmed before you can send invitations. If the invite option is not available, check your inbox for the confirmation email.

If a contact did not get the email

• Ask them to check spam or quarantine folders for an email from Clientwharf.
• Confirm that the email address on the contact is spelled correctly.
• Select Resend invite next to the contact on the client's page.

Some companies filter emails from services they have not seen before. If emails keep going missing, ask the contact's IT team to allow messages from clientwharf.com.

Remove a contact

If someone leaves the client's company or should no longer have access, select Remove next to them under Portal contacts. They lose access to the portal right away. Their past comments and approval decisions stay in the project history with their name, so the record stays complete.

What contacts can do in the portal

Inside the portal, a contact can:

• View the client's projects, files and previews, and download files.
• Read the updates timeline and leave comments.
• Approve work or request changes when you ask for an approval.
• Respond to requests, including attaching files.
• View and download quote and invoice documents you have shared.
• Choose which emails they receive, from the account page in their portal.

Contacts cannot see your internal notes, your team settings, other clients or your billing.

Preview what clients see

Team members can preview a client's portal with Open portal on the client's page. Use this to check what is visible before you invite a contact, or when a client asks where to find something.

Portal address

Each portal has its own address that includes your workspace and the client. On Studio plans and above you can use a custom portal subdomain, and on Agency Plus and Scale a custom domain. See branding your portals.