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Client Portal
Give clients secure, white-labeled access to their documents, messages, and tasks.
The Client Portal is the side of Accupe your clients actually see. Sign-in does not use an email address and a self-chosen password: clients enter a Client Code and a PIN that your firm issues, and there is no email field on the login screen at all. You send and reset that access from the client’s own profile, so you control exactly when someone gets in.
The portal can carry your firm’s logo, colours and web address rather than looking like generic software, and per-client feature toggles let you decide which sections a single client sees, independently of everyone else. Clients land on a Workspace Home built around what needs their attention. For one-off document collection there is also a Secure Deposit Box: a login-free page where anyone holding a valid Client Code can drop off files.
Client Code and PIN, not email and password
The branded portal login has exactly two fields: a Client Code such as CLI-465, generated automatically for every client, and a numeric PIN of 4 to 10 digits. There is no email field, no forgot-password link and no way to self-register. Your firm issues both credentials, which means you decide precisely when somebody can get in, and you can replace their access at any moment from their record.
That design removes a whole class of support problem. Because a portal slug only recognises its own firm’s client codes, a client cannot accidentally sign in to another firm’s portal by mistyping an email address. It also changes the recovery route from what people expect: a signed-in client who has forgotten their PIN uses “Request a password reset” at the bottom of Workspace Home, which emails them nothing and instead sends an in-app notification to your admins and managers, linking straight to that client’s profile so you can issue a fresh PIN.
Issuing and resetting access are the same action
On the client’s Details tab, the Client Portal Access section shows whether they are Account Active (green) or Pending Registration (amber), and the Send portal access panel below it either creates the login or resets it. Type a PIN of 4 to 10 digits, or press Generate for a random six-digit one. Two things have to be in place first: your firm needs a Client Portal URL set in Settings, Firm Details, and the client needs an email address on file. Missing either produces a specific error rather than a silent failure.
The PIN is displayed once, in a copyable chip, and cannot be shown again. If the email could not be sent you see “Email not sent. Share this PIN securely with your client.” and it is on you to pass it on another way. A “Portal access last set” line persists on the panel afterwards, so you can always see when access was last issued. Sending is rate limited to 30 sends per hour per user, which matters if you are provisioning a large batch in one sitting.
What a client sees, and what you can hide
Clients land on Workspace Home: four KPI tiles for documents, pending signatures, active tasks and unread messages, a single next-action callout, an identity verification card and a recent activity feed merging their files, signatures and tasks by date. The callout is deliberately ordered rather than arbitrary. It checks for a pending e-signature first, then a failed identity check, then an unread message, then an identity check that has not been started or has expired, and only after all of those, an open task.
Three of the five portal sections can be switched off for one client without affecting any other, from the Portal Settings tab on their record (the last tab, after Audit Log): Documents, Messages and eSign History. Each toggle saves the moment you flip it, with no separate save step, and all three default to on for records that predate the feature. Turning Messaging off is enforced on both sides, so the server rejects a send with “Messaging is not enabled on your portal” rather than merely hiding the menu item. Workspace Home and Task Status have no toggle at all.
Branding, and the login-free Secure Deposit Box
Branding lives in Settings, Firm Details: a logo, a square sidebar icon, and three colour pickers for Portal BG, Portal Text and Brand Primary, with a second set for a dark variant. Setting your slug also produces a downloadable portal QR code in your brand colour, useful on business cards and office signage. A custom domain such as portal.yourfirm.com is Elite only and points at www.accupe.com by CNAME record, with a Verify DNS button beside the field. Elite also white-labels the automated emails clients receive when you send them portal access, carrying your own logo and brand colour with a small “Powered by Accupe” footer.
Alongside the full portal, every firm has a Secure Deposit Box at your portal address with /documentupload on the end. It asks only for a Client Code, never a PIN, and it is upload-only: files go in, and nothing can be browsed or downloaded from it. Each file uploads separately, up to 25 MB each, so one failure does not lose the rest of the batch. It suits one-off collection from somebody you do not want to provision full portal access for, and because it asks for only one credential it should be treated as a lower-security convenience rather than a substitute for the portal.
What people come here to do
- Understand how clients sign in. Two credentials your firm issues, no email field, and what happens on a client’s first login.
- Send or reset a client’s access. The prerequisites, the PIN you set or generate, and the hourly limit on how many you can send.
- Put your firm’s branding on the portal. Logo, three colour pickers, a dark variant, the QR code and the Elite-only custom domain.
- See the portal from the client’s side. Workspace Home, the ordered next-action callout, and the five sections a client can reach.
- Hide a section from one client. Three switches on the Portal Settings tab, saved instantly and enforced on the server as well.
- Collect files without provisioning a login. A login-free drop-off page that accepts a Client Code alone, up to 25 MB per file.
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Things that catch people out
Task Status cannot be hidden from a client
There is no toggle for it and no per-task visibility setting to fall back on, so every task tied to a client’s jobs appears in their portal automatically. If a piece of work should not be visible to them, do not attach it to one of their jobs.
The PIN is shown exactly once
Copy it before you close the panel. Sending access again is the only way to produce a new one, and doing so replaces the existing PIN immediately whether or not the client has used it.
There are two invitation mechanisms, and only one is branded
The older “Send Email Invite” box sends a link to a general signup page where the client picks their own password, and its sign-in afterwards is the general login screen rather than your branded portal. Unless you have a specific reason for it, use Send portal access.
A dark portal link is per link, not per visitor
Nothing in the portal reacts to a client’s device or browser theme. If you want somebody to see the dark version you have to add ?t=dark to the URL yourself before sending it.
Two prerequisites block sending access
Without a portal slug you get “Set your portal link in Settings > Firm before sending portal access.” Without an email address on the client record you get “This client has no email on file. Add an email address first.” Both are hard requirements, not warnings.
Where to go next
- Inbox & Messages. Portal messaging is one thread per client, and the toggle that hides Messages also blocks sending server-side.
- Documents & Vault. Which individual files a client can open is decided per file, separately from the portal section toggle.
- eSignatures. eSign History is a portal section, and a pending signature is the first thing Workspace Home puts in front of a client.