Please note: you can use the customer portal by means of an add-on in your package.
What is a customer portal?
The customer portal within TimeChimp can be used to provide customers with access without requiring a license or password. This can be useful when a customer wants to view and/or approve hours, view invoices or budgets.
Creating the portal
Step 1: Click on the gear icon
Step 2: Go to customer portals
Step 3: Click on +New customer portal
Customer portal settings
Under the 'General' heading, you select the client for the client portal and you can set its language.
In 'Settings', you can indicate which data your client can see in the client portal. For example, you can choose to only display registered hours without the description. Do you work with a budget? Then you can also share this with the client by setting 'Budget' to 'Yes'.
Please note: The budget type 'Total costs' is not displayed in the client portal because it concerns internal costs. All other budget types are displayed.
Under 'Projects', indicate which projects belonging to this client should be visible in the portal.
Please note: if you make 'Invoices' and 'Quotes' visible in the client portal, all invoices/quotes for this client will be visible, not just those of the specific project you make visible.
Under 'Access', you can add contacts to this client portal. They will receive a link which they can use to view the client portal.
Please note: the client portal is only accessible to the contact persons who have been added to the client portal. They log in using a two-factor authentication code.
Do you have different contact persons for different projects at one client, and is it not desirable for these different contacts to be able to see all projects? Then create multiple client portals.
If you create a project including all employees and then create the client portal, all employees will be visible in the 'employee' filter of the client portal. Even if you remove employees from the project afterwards, the employees will remain visible in the filter.
Approval by the customer
Do you want the client to approve the hours? Then ensure that the 'Approval' app is activated in app center and that the 'approval workflow' is set to internal → external, external → internal, or external.
The 'Approval' setting will only appear in the client portal settings once you have completed the above steps.
When the hours are submitted, a message is automatically sent to the client's email address. You can customize this message as desired via the 'Approve' app. Please ensure that the 'approval workflow' includes External.
Generating a new link for the client portal
Easily generate a new link in the client portal by following the steps in the video. This ensures you always have access to a valid link, even if a previous user no longer has access. This keeps shared links up to date and prevents confusion with removed individuals. This makes the process more secure and efficient for all users.
