Your first portal workflow

This walkthrough follows a small agency from recorded hours to a client invoice. Use fictional clients and work in your evaluation environment.

Start with the installation guide and sign in as the provider owner. This workflow uses Timesheets, Invoices, and the Invoice Timesheets bridge. Configure email delivery before inviting someone or sending an invoice.

1. Add your client

Open Clients at /clients and create a client organization. Complete its billing details and add a contact. Enable Timesheets for project work and Invoices for the client's invoice access.

Your agency is the provider organization; the customer is a client organization. People join those organizations as members. Keeping them separate is what gives the client its own portal view.

For the first pass, leave client timesheet access disabled. You can add a client reviewer after the internal workflow works.

2. Prepare a small project

Follow timesheet workspace setup: create one billable activity, one project for your client, and a default hourly rate for the person recording time. Enable time registration for that person.

Choose whether internal review is required. If it is, assign an approver before submitting a week.

3. Record and approve time

Open /timesheets, add an entry for the project, and submit the week. You can enter time manually or use the timer.

If internal review is enabled, the assigned approver reviews the submission at /timesheets/internal-approvals. Otherwise, submitted time is approved automatically. See record and submit time and approve timesheets.

4. Try the client's perspective

Invite a test client member and follow client access. Use a separate browser profile for the client account so you can compare the provider and client views.

Choose View to let authorized client members inspect shared time. Choose Review if the client must approve or dispute time, and assign a reviewer from the client organization. Complete any required client approval before creating an invoice from that time.

Check that the client sees the relevant supplier work, and that the same client cannot access another client's records.

5. Create the invoice

Complete sender details and currency/VAT defaults at /admin/invoices/settings. At /admin/invoices, choose New invoice, then Create from timesheets.

Select the period, client, and project. Review the approved billable entries, captured rates, grouping, VAT, and dates before saving the draft. A free-form invoice is also available and does not require Timesheets.

Follow create and manage invoices to issue and send the invoice to a test recipient. Draft invoices are not part of the client's received invoice list.

6. Check the result

With the client's Invoices module, supplier access, and viewer permissions enabled, open /invoices as the client. Confirm that the issued invoice and PDF are available. Record a test payment as the provider and check the resulting balance.

You have now exercised the workflow from both sides: the agency records and bills work, and the client accesses what has been shared with it.

Make it your own

Next, customize the portal, explore reporting, or create a feature layer for another business workflow. Service Requests is an example extension if you want to study a smaller implementation first.