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You invite a portal contact from the client record, not from your team settings. Open the client, scroll to Portal access, enter their email, and send the invite. That is the only place a portal invite can start, because a portal contact must belong to a client company.

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Why the invite starts on the client record

A portal contact is not a general login. Everything they can see is derived from the company they belong to – their projects, their invoices, their comments. A portal login with no client company would have nothing to show and no boundary to enforce. So the rule is built into the server:
A client invite with no client company is rejected. So is a client company on a non-client invite. You cannot send a portal invite from the Invite teammate dialog in team settings – the role list there excludes Client on purpose.

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Before you start

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How to invite a client contact

1

Open the client

Go to Clients and click the client company – for example Bluebird Coffee.
2

Find the Portal access section

Scroll to Portal access. It sits below the client’s details.The section explains itself: Invite this client's contacts to the portal and choose which of their projects they can see. New contacts get access to every project of this client automatically.
3

Enter the contact's email

Type the address in the Contact email field. The placeholder shows the expected shape, [email protected].
4

Send the invite

Click Invite contact. The button reads Sending… while it works.You get a toast confirming Invite sent to [email protected].
5

Share the link, if you want to

A Latest invite link block appears with the invite URL. Click Copy invite link to put it on your clipboard and send it yourself.
The role is fixed. You do not pick it – a contact invited here is always a Client.

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What happens next

  1. The contact appears under Contacts with an Invite pending badge.
  2. When they accept, they get a login and move up into the contacts list with their name and email.
  3. On accepting, they are automatically given access to every current project of that client.
  4. They land on /northwind/portal the next time they sign in.

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Choosing which projects a contact sees

Once a contact has joined, their card shows a checkbox for each of the client’s projects. Tick to grant, untick to revoke. The change saves straight away – there is no separate save button. If the client has no projects yet, you see: This client has no projects yet. Assign a project to this client to grant access.
You rarely need these checkboxes. Access follows the project’s client automatically. Use them when one contact should be kept off a specific piece of work.

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Example

Priya Raman is setting up the Bluebird Coffee portal at Northwind Studio.
1

Open Bluebird Coffee

Priya goes to Clients → Bluebird Coffee.
2

Invite Ruth

Under Portal access she types [email protected] and clicks Invite contact.
3

Ruth accepts

Ruth clicks the link, signs in, and gets access to Website Redesign and Monthly Retainer – both Bluebird Coffee projects.
4

Priya narrows it

The Monthly Retainer work is sensitive this quarter, so Priya unticks Monthly Retainer on Ruth’s card. Ruth now sees only Website Redesign.

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Options and settings

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Permissions

The whole Portal access panel only renders if you hold client.manage. Someone without it does not see the section at all.

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Common questions

No. The Invite teammate dialog excludes the Client role. A portal contact must be tied to a client company, so the invite has to start on that company’s record.
Yes. Invite each address in turn. Every contact gets their own login and their own project checkboxes.
Yes. A staff member can be added without one, but a portal contact cannot – the email is how they reach the portal. Trying it returns A client contact needs an email address, because that's how they reach the portal.
Yes. An outstanding invitation counts toward your seat total, because an open invite is access.
The invite form is hidden. You see: The client portal is turned off, so contacts can't sign in and no new ones can be invited. Existing access is kept and can still be removed below. An owner or admin can turn it back on in Settings → Apps.

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Troubleshooting

What clients can see

Exactly what is visible once they are in.

Portal projects

How project access is decided.

Remove portal access

Take a contact’s access away.

Client contacts

Contacts on a client record.

Seats and billing

Why a portal contact costs a seat.

Pending invitations

How open invites work.