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The client portal is a separate, read-only door into your workspace for the people who pay you. A client contact signs in and sees only their own company’s projects, the deliverables you shared, the comment threads on those deliverables, and their invoices. They never see your rates, your costs, your margin, your team’s other clients, or anything internal.

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What the client portal is

Your workspace is two products behind one address: A person with the client role is sent straight to the portal when they sign in. They are refused everywhere else in the app, because the client role holds zero internal capabilities.
The portal calls your business “your group” in its own wording – for example, Your group hasn't shared any projects with you. That is deliberate. It reads naturally to an outside contact.

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Why it exists

Clients ask the same three questions over and over:
  • Where is my project up to?
  • Did anyone see my feedback?
  • What have you invoiced me?
The portal answers all three without you writing a status email, and without giving anyone a login to your internal numbers.

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What a portal contact can do

See their projects

Only projects that belong to their own client company and are shared with them.

Review deliverables

One card per client-visible task, with a status of To do, In progress or Completed.

Approve a deliverable

A one-click approval that notifies your group and is recorded.

Comment and upload

Post a comment on a deliverable and attach a file.

Read their invoices

A read-only invoice list and a live invoice view.

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What the portal looks like

The portal has its own simple chrome. There is no sidebar and no internal navigation. There is no search, no theme toggle, no settings page and no notification centre in the portal.
There is no per-client branding. The portal shows the TimeTracker wordmark, not your logo or your client’s logo.

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How access is decided

A portal contact sees a project when two things are true:
  1. They are a portal contact of the client company that owns the project.
  2. The project is shared with them.
Sharing is mostly automatic. When a project belongs to a client, every portal contact of that client is given access. Moving a project to a different client moves the access with it. You can also untick a single project for a single contact. Read the full rules on what clients can see.

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Portal contacts use a seat

A portal contact is a login like any other. Every active portal contact counts toward your workspace seat count, exactly like a staff member.
On the Free plan a workspace includes 3 people in total. That total counts staff, portal contacts and outstanding invitations together. Inviting a portal contact on Free is blocked, because the Client portal is a Pro feature in the first place.
See seats and billing and /billing/seats.

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Plan and app requirements

The Client portal is an app you can switch on or off, and it is a Pro feature. Two different things can hide the portal, and they are not the same:
  • The app is switched off. Contacts can no longer sign in. Their comments, approvals and uploads are kept. An owner or admin turns it back on in Settings → Apps.
  • Your plan does not include it. The app stays visible in your settings with an upgrade prompt: Client portal is a Pro feature.
See apps and modules and plans and features.

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Example

Northwind Studio runs the Website Redesign project for Bluebird Coffee. Maya Ellis opens the Bluebird Coffee client record and invites Ruth Castillo as a portal contact. Ruth accepts, signs in, and lands on /northwind/portal. She sees two cards – Website Redesign and Monthly Retainer – because both projects belong to Bluebird Coffee. She does not see Harbor Logistics – Mobile App, or Fenwick Legal – Brand Refresh. She does not see Sarah Lin’s 100billablerateorher100 billable rate or her 45 cost rate. She sees the deliverables Northwind marked client-visible, and the invoices Daniel Okafor issued to Bluebird Coffee.

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Permissions

The client role itself holds no capabilities. See roles and capabilities.

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Common questions

A portal contact counts toward your seat total the same as a staff member. The Client portal is a Pro feature, so you need a Pro workspace to invite one at all.
Yes, in different workspaces. Someone can be a Member of your workspace and a portal contact of another. The space switcher lets them move between the two.
No. A portal contact can only reach projects owned by their own client company, and only invoices for those clients. Everything else returns an access error that does not even confirm the item exists.
No. The invoice view is read-only. There is no pay button and no online payment step in the portal.
Contacts stop being able to sign in. Their comments, approvals and uploads are kept, and everything comes back when you switch it on again.

What clients can see

The exact list of what is visible and what is never visible.

Invite a client contact

How to give a client access, and why it starts on the client record.

Portal permissions

Which roles can manage portal access.

Client contacts

Contacts on a client record.

Apps and modules

How switching an app off differs from a plan limit.

Seats and billing

How people and invitations are counted.