CRM (Basic): Inviting clients
Though inviting clients is possible during import, most TaxDome firms prefer to do it after everything is set up and ready. Here, find out your options for granting clients portal access (either in bulk or individually) and sending invitations, determining if the clients already have access and how to resend invitations if needed.
Before you start
Granting clients portal access is different from inviting them to the portal. When you grant your clients access by turning on the Login contact toggle, you can add a personalized message to an email invitation. This could be done at any point later.
Once a client receives an email invitation to their TaxDome portal, they will need to activate the account. The client clicks on the link in the email, then creates a password.
Note the following before inviting your clients to the Client portal:
- Always invite your test client first to test all client portal features yourself. Find out more about testing accounts.
- Adding portal access in bulk will apply the same settings to all contacts linked to your selected accounts. For example, if one account has two contacts, and you grant the portal access in bulk, both of them will receive the invitations.
- If you want to grant access to the selected account contacts, do so individually via the client profile.
- You can configure your portal to allow certain actions—such as viewing, signing, uploading documents, paying invoices and completing client requests—without requiring portal access.
Add portal access
You can add Client portal access and invite your clients either in bulk or individually for specific clients:
In bulk for all contacts
To add Client portal access in bulk, go to Clients > Accounts from the left menu bar and follow these steps:
1. Filter your account list by clicking Filter, select Last login, then choose Offline. You will see only the clients without portal access.
2. Choose the clients, click More Actions, then select Edit login, notify, email sync.
3. Select Enable for all contacts from the drop-down to the right of Login to enable portal access. Select the other contact toggles if needed. Learn more about contact toggles.
4. Select the Send invitations checkbox.
5. Add a message for the invitation email ( optional).
6. Click Save to invite your clients in bulk. Invitations will be sent to all contacts of selected accounts.
Individually for selected contacts
Sometimes, you don't need to enable portal access for all users of the accounts; this way, you can do it right from the client profile for selected contacts. To do so:
1. Navigate to the Info tab of the client profile (available once you’ve created an account).
2. If you’ve already linked the account to one or more contacts, you’ll see them in the Contacts section. Turn on the Login toggle next to each contact to whom you want to give portal access.
3. To add a custom message to your invite, type in the Personalized message field in the pop-up, then click Send.
Note! If one contact is linked to several accounts, you will need to give portal access to each of those accounts separately. They will then be able to switch between accounts once they log in.
Send invitations to users pending activation
The user is considered pending activation if:
- The Login toggle was turned on, but the notification hasn't been sent
- if the notification has been sent but the user hasn't logged in yet
You can always check if the user is pending activation in the Info tab of the client profile. Click the three-dots icon to the far right of the user's email, then click Send invitation to send/resend the email.
Another way to define users who have yet to activate their accounts is to go to Clients > Accounts from the left menu bar, then select the Pending activation tab.
Here, you’ll also see...
- Email: the email address of the person who hasn’t activated their account yet. A red exclamation mark next to it means the address is invalid.
- Account(s): the name of the account. If a user has several accounts, they are all displayed.
- Invite sent: the date the invitation to activate the account went out. Click the up-down arrow to sort the column by date.
- Invited by: the name of the person (either the team member or client) who has invited the person.
If an invite was sent but the user hasn't accepted it yet, you can resend an invitation: select the checkboxes to the left of the users, then click Resend to select. You can also use the Pending activation tab to find clients for whom the Login toggle was turned on but invites were not sent. Sort the list by the Invite sent column and select the accounts for which the column is empty, then click Resend to selected.
You can also cancel the invitations if they are no longer needed. To do this, click Cancel invites to selected. This way, the user cannot log in using the link in the invitation email.
Do my clients have portal access?
You can easily check if the client has been invited to use their portal by navigating to Clients > Accounts from the left menu bar. The ID column in your account list indicates whether the client activated their account.
- Green means the client account is active, i.e., it has at least one user that can log on. Accounts pending activation appear active, too.
- Beige means the client account is offline. It exists on TaxDome but does not have users who can log in (no invites have been sent yet).
If you want to check if the specific contact has portal access, go to the Info tab of the client profile. The client doesn't have an access if:
- The Login toggle is off
- The Login toggle is on, but it is still pending activation (the invite was sent but not accepted by the client)
