Turning on Customer Portal access for a customer

The Customer Portal lets a customer's contacts sign in to view their account online, and access is controlled per customer. To turn it on, click Edit on the customer page to open the Edit Customer window, find the Customer Portal field, choose Enabled, and click Save.

To turn it off, set it back to Disabled and save. When portal access is enabled, the customer page shows a Portal pill beside the customer name so you can tell at a glance. Two things determine whether that pill shows as on: the customer must have portal access enabled, and they must also be Active.

So an inactive customer won't show portal access as on even if it was enabled. When you enable portal access for a customer, Essential also grants portal access to that customer's current non-deleted contacts. You can still turn access off or on for individual contacts from each contact's Edit form.

Turning it on at the customer level makes the portal available for that account, but contacts still need their own portal access, an email address, and a role before they can sign in.

If you don't see the Customer Portal field at all, the Customer Portal may be turned off for your business - anyone whose role can manage portal settings can turn it on and select Save in Settings > Customer Portal - or your role may not have access to it. If you need portal access controls for your work, contact your business's administrator to review your role.

Where to find it: Customer page, Edit Customer modal, Customer Portal field; Portal pill

Related guides

• Give a contact access to the customer portal

• Create a customer

• What the customer page shows

• Making a customer active or inactive

• Merge or split customer accounts

• Saving a customer's payment methods