Customer Portal
Customer Portal allows your customers to keep track of all the transactions that have taken place between them and your business. Bid goodbye to lengthy emails and collaborate efficiently like never before.
Working in the Customer Portal
- Login to the Customer Portal
- Dashboard
- Estimates
- Subscriptions
- Invoices
- Payments Made
- Projects
- Customer Details
Enable Customer Portal
To enable Customer Portal for your organization, navigate to Gear icon > Organization Profile and click on Enable Customer Portal button.
Customer Portal Settings
Follow the steps below to enable the Customer Portal for your Zoho Subscriptions account.
- Sign into your Zoho Subscriptions account.
- Navigate to Gear icon > Organization Profile and click on Change Portal Settings available next to Portal URL.
- In the screen that follows, enter the name of the portal.
- You can enter a welcome message in the space provided for Banner Message. This message will be shown to your customers when they log in to the portal.
- Enable the checkbox against Send me email notification for every activity that takes place in the portal if you wish to receive email notifications for every activity that your customer does in the portal.
- Enable the checkbox against Allow customers to forward documents from portal if you wish to let your customers forward documents. Please note, the people whom they forward the document to will be added as contact persons in the contact information for that customer.
- Enable the checkbox against Send an email notification to customers when I comment on Invoices if you wish to have an email sent to your customers whenever you add a comment for any transaction.
- Enable the checkbox Enable customer review for my services if you wish to receive review from your customers to know how happy they are with your organization’s services.
- Enable the checkbox Enable Customer Portal for customers automatically if you want to enable Customer Portal automatically for the customers who subscribe via hosted payment pages.
- Enable the checkbox Allow customers to edit their information to permit your customers to edit their billing/shipping address and contact details.
- Enable the checkbox Allow customers to view subscriptions to allow your customers to view their subscriptions and filter invoices with respect to subscription.
- Enable the checkbox Allow customers to cancel the subscription immediately to allow your customers to cancel their subscriptions immediately from Customer Portal.
- Enable the checkbox Allow customers to cancel the subscription at the end of term to allow your customers to cancel their subscriptions at the end of current term from Customer Portal.
- Enable the checkbox Allow customers to view projects and timesheets if you want to give your customers access to the time logged for each project/task.
Once done, click on Save.
Enable Customer Portal automatically
You can enable Customer Portal automatically, only for the customers who subscribe via hosted payment pages.
To enable Customer Portal automatically,
- Navigate to Gear icon > More Settings > Preferences > Branding > Portal Settings and enable the checkbox Enable Customer Portal for customers automatically.
Invite Customers and Contact Persons to the portal
To give access to your customers, you need to individually enable the portal for each contact person associated to a customer. Once they log in to your portal they can view the invoices you have sent them, all on their own. You can collaborate and discuss with your customers on subscriptions and invoices.
The steps to enable the portal for your contact are as follows,
- Sign into your Zoho Subscriptions account.
- Click on Customers tab and select the customer that you want to enable the Customer Portal for.
- In the customer detail page on the right hand side, click on More to view more actions. In the list, click on Configure Customer Portal.
- In the pop-up, select the contact persons for whom you want to give the portal access. You can also, enter the password for the portal. If not, your customer will create a password upon accepting the invitation.
- Once you click on Save, Zoho Subscriptions will send an email to your customers inviting them to the portal.
- On clicking the Accept Invitation link, Zoho Subscriptions will open up another page where your customers can create a password to log into the portal.
Your customers will be able to log into your portal and make payments to invoices and view subscriptions.
Working in the Customer Portal
Your customers can login to the Customer Portal using their email address and the password they created in the previous step.
Dashboard
The first thing that your customer will see upon logging into your Customer Portal would be the dashboard which displays important details such as, outstanding invoices and customers’ account and your organization’s details.
Estimates
If integrated with Zoho Books, your customers can view a list of the estimates they’ve received from you. If they are satisfied with the price, they can take your business forward by clicking on the Accept button.
customers can also decline an estimate for a better offer by clicking on Decline in the More drop down that is visible once the estimate is selected.
P.S: You can always rework on the declined estimate by clicking on the Edit option provided in your Zoho Books account to make a re-offer for your customers.
Subscriptions
Your customers can view the list of subscriptions under Subscriptions and the plan name, subscription creation date, amount and status of the subscriptions will be displayed. Clicking on any of the subscriptions will display detailed information related to that subscriptions.
Incase of an offline subscriptions, the customers can pay for it in the Invoices section by filtering the plan.
Canceling a subscription
A subscription can only be canceled from Customer Portal, if the cancel subscription option is enabled for them in the portal settings.
To enable the cancel subscription option for your customers,
- Navigate to Gear icon > More Settings > Preferences > Branding > Portal Settings and enable the Cancel Subscription option using the checkboxes.
- You can choose to allow the customers to cancel the subscription either immediately or on the next renewal using the checkboxes provided.
For your customers to cancel a subscription from Customer Portal,
- Log into the Customer Portal and go to the Subscriptions tab.
- From the subscription list, Click on the subscriptions that has to be canceled.
- In the subscription details page next, click on the Cancel button at the top-right corner to cancel the subscription.
Invoices
Your customers can view a list of invoices in the Invoices tab.
If the invoice is unpaid, they can choose to pay instantly by clicking on Pay Now. The customer can also filter the list to display a particular type of invoice by clicking on the drop-down above the list.
Invoices can be printed, downloaded as PDF’s and can be forwarded to other contacts by your customer from the options provided inside the More drop-down.
Payments Made
The customer can keep track of all the payments made for invoices.
Projects
If you had enabled the Allow customers to view projects and timesheets option in the portal settings, an additional module will be made available in your customer’s Customer Portal.
The Projects module in the Customer Portal will list all the projects created for your customer in Zoho Books.
Customer Details
Customer can update and edit their personal details, company details and change their password using the Customer Portal.
Contact Details
The Contact Details section will display the details of their merchant. The customer can email or review you by clicking on the Mail and Review respectively, based on the Portal Settings.
My Company Details
The My Company Details option can be used by customer to edit their personal and company details like name, contact number, billing and shipping address and card details.
To edit the card/bank details,
- Click on the edit button next to the card/bank details that has to be updated.
- In the credit/bank details page next, your customer can update their card/bank details.
Note: Your customers can only update their card/bank details and not add a new card or bank account through Customer Portal.
Change Password
Customers can change their Customer Portal password by clicking on Change Password button at the bottom-left.
