Overview
After your customers accept their Customer Portal invitation and sign in, they can handle a lot on their own. This article walks through what they see in each part of the portal, so you know what they can do without help from your team.
In the Customer Portal, your customers can:
Manage their payment methods
View upcoming and completed visits
View and sign proposals
View and pay invoices, one at a time or several at once
View, create, and comment on requests
Filter what they see by property
Things to know
Each branch has its own Customer Portal URL. If a customer has properties in more than one branch, make sure they sign in at the right URL. Their email address and password are the same for every portal they can access.
Your Aspire account must have electronic payments turned on before customers can pay in the portal.
Customers can only use the payment types you accept in your Customer Portal settings.
Profile icon settings
From the profile icon, customers can manage their payment methods, reset their password, see which version of the portal they're using, and sign out.
Manage payments
Under Manage Payments, customers can add a payment method and set a default payment method.
Important: Your Aspire account must be set up to accept electronic payments before your customers can pay in the Customer Portal. For more information, visit How to Set Up Electronic Payments in Aspire.
The payment method types your customers see depend on what you accept and have set up in Administration.
Saved payment methods display on this screen. To add a new one, customers select Add Payment Method.
Adding a card payment method
If you accept card payments, customers can add a card to their account and save it for future payments.
Adding an ACH payment method
If you accept ACH payments, customers can add a bank account.
In the Routing/Account Number field, customers enter their routing number and account number separated by a forward slash (/).
Important: The Routing/Account Number field can't include spaces or any special characters other than the forward slash.
To learn more about Aspire's electronic payment partner, visit the Fiserv partner page.
Electronic receipts
Once a customer has saved a card or ACH payment method, they can choose to get payment receipts by email. To do this, they turn on the email receipts toggle.
Note: Electronic receipts require electronic payments to be turned on for your Aspire account.
Customer Portal side menu
Property filter
The property filter lets customers choose which properties' information they see. By default, all of a customer's properties are selected. To see one property or a group of properties, they select the dropdown and choose from the list.
Note: The properties a customer selects apply across the whole Customer Portal.
Current balance
Current Balance shows the total of all due invoices for the properties selected in the property filter.
Tip: Current Balance includes credits applied to invoices. It doesn't include unapplied credits.
Proposals
Proposals you share with customers by emailing or printing them in Aspire display in the Proposals section.
Viewing a proposal
All contacts on the property can view proposals. Only the Primary and Billing contacts can sign them.
Customers can use the Show dropdown to view All, Pending, Accepted, or Rejected proposals.
Important: Proposal statuses in the Customer Portal don't match the statuses in Aspire. When a customer signs a proposal, its portal status changes from Pending to Accepted, so the customer knows their signature was applied. Your team still needs to mark the opportunity as Won in Aspire. A Rejected proposal in the portal matches a lost opportunity.
To see more detail, customers select a proposal from the list.
The proposal details screen shows the proposal as a web page, which is easier to read on a phone.
If you've set up the portal to show service details, each service's details display here. If not, this screen shows one total for the estimated services.
The service contact on this screen is the sales rep on the opportunity. The service contact's name and email address always display. Their phone number displays only if you've turned it on in your service contact settings.
Signing a proposal
Only the Primary and Billing contacts on the property can sign a proposal. To sign, the customer selects View Proposal.
The proposal opens as a PDF.
The customer selects Sign to open the Electronic Signature window.
If the proposal includes optional services, they display in this window with checkboxes. Customers can select optional services to add them, and their cost, to the approved proposal. This works for both Work Order and Contract opportunity types. The proposal screen also updates to show which optional services the customer selected.
After the customer signs, the proposal status changes from Pending to Accepted. The sales rep on the opportunity gets an email that the proposal was signed. They also get an email when a customer signs a change order.
Keep these rules in mind:
Customers can sign proposals in Delivered status.
Customers can only view proposals in In Production status.
To see which proposals are signed without opening each opportunity, add the Electronic Signature display column to the Opportunities list.
Visits
Viewing visits
In the Visits section, customers can see completed visits and upcoming visits for the next 30 days.
Customers select a visit to see more details.
Visit details include the visit date, scheduled services, visit notes shared in the portal, and the service contact, who is the sales rep on the property.
Showing visit notes in the portal
When you add a visit note to a work ticket visit, select the Shown in Portal checkbox to show that note to your customer in the portal.
Invoices
Viewing invoices
Invoices you've published to the Customer Portal display in the Invoices section. All contacts on the property can view and pay invoices once they've accepted their portal invitation.
Customers can use the dropdown on this screen to view All, Due, Paid, or Pending invoices.
The list shows each invoice's balance, property, and service. When a customer selects an invoice, the invoice details open as a web page.
The invoice details show the balance, services and visit details, the service contact, the property, and a link to the original proposal.
Note: The due date in the Customer Portal is based on the invoice's net terms.
Paying an invoice
To pay one invoice, customers select Pay Invoice to go straight to payment, or View Invoice to see the invoice as a PDF first. They can also select Pay Invoice from the PDF.
If you've turned on Accept Partial Payments, customers can pay the Full Balance or enter an Other Amount to pay part of the balance.
Saved payment methods display in this window. Customers can also select Add New Payment Method before they pay.
Paying several invoices at once
Customers can also select more than one open invoice and pay them together in one payment.
On the Invoices screen, the customer selects Select, checks each invoice they want to pay (or uses Select all), and selects Pay selected. A bar at the bottom of the screen shows how many invoices are selected and the running total. The Make a payment window then shows the total, the number of invoices, and their saved payment methods. For the full customer steps, visit Viewing and paying an invoice.
Important: A multi-invoice payment is all or nothing. It's charged as one payment for the combined total. If it doesn't go through, none of the selected invoices are marked paid, and the customer has to try again. Expect questions from customers who assume part of the payment went through.
What your customers can and can't do
They pay the full balance of each invoice they select. Partial amounts aren't available in a multi-invoice payment.
Partial payments are still available when a customer pays one invoice. If you've turned on Accept Partial Payments, the Full Balance and Other Amount options still display when a customer pays one invoice.
They can select invoices from more than one of their properties, and they can use the property filter to narrow the list.
There's no limit on how many invoices they select. The maximum card and ACH amounts you've set apply to the combined total. If a selection is over the limit, the customer is asked to clear some invoices.
Selections stay checked when they change the property filter or the invoice status dropdown. Invoices that are already paid or pending can't be selected.
If invoices have convenience fees, each invoice's fee is added together and shown as one amount in the Make a payment window.
After they pay, each invoice shows Pending for a few minutes while the payment processes, then Paid.
If they've turned on email receipts, they get one receipt that lists every invoice in the payment.
What you see in Aspire
A multi-invoice portal payment shows as one entry in the Electronic Payment Log. Opening it lists each invoice in the payment. You can also filter the log to show only Customer Portal payments. For details, visit Process and Manage Electronic Payments.
Note: There's no setting to turn multi-invoice payment on or off in your Customer Portal settings.
Requests
Customers can view requests in the portal. In Aspire, requests are called issues. All contacts on the property can view, create, and comment on requests.
Customers only see issues that have Include Client selected when the issue is created or edited in Aspire.
Customers only see comments marked Public.
Customers can add comments and attachments to a request, or create a new request for any of their properties.
When a customer creates a request, the account owner on the property gets an email, and the request appears in the account owner's Activities module.
Note: You can turn requests on or off for customers in your Customer Portal settings.