Customer Portal - Getting started

1What the portal is #

The Customer Self Service Portal is a separate web application your customers sign in to. They see their invoices, ledger account and pending and overdue bills, browse the products published to them with stock, place orders, pay online, confirm deliveries, raise support requests and ask to change their details. Portal Administration, inside the ERP, is your side of it: what arrives from customers, who may sign in, what they may see, and how the portal behaves.

Everything a customer does becomes an ordinary ERP record:

2Where to find help #

• On every screen: the Help panel on the right - what the screen is for, step by step, the fields, the rules, the keys, and If something does not work, the messages that screen can show with why and what to do.
• The manual: at the foot of this page, every portal administration screen in detail, plus Portal Settings, the Support Desk and Stock Availability.
• The help search box: type a word from a message or a field and it finds the screen and the section that explain it.

3Where things are - Portal Administration #

Customer Portal in the menu opens the Portal Administration hub. Each tile opens a screen; a number on a tile is work waiting on you and clears as you deal with it.

4First-day setup (administrator) #

1. Settings > Mail Accounts: set up a default mail profile and press Send test - the portal's invites are sent through it.
2. User Roles (Admin): give Customer Portal Admin to whoever runs the portal. A new role takes effect at the next sign-in.
3. Portal Settings > Company settings: the voucher types, what customers may do, the ordering rules, pricing, online payment and the notification addresses (see Portal Settings below). Nothing reaches customers until the features are on.
4. Terms & Privacy: replace every [PLACEHOLDER] in the seeded terms and privacy notice, have them read by your lawyer, and Publish.
5. Portal Catalogue: put customers into customer groups and publish products to each group. The default is nothing, not the whole item master.
6. Portal Users: create a login for each person at a customer, allocate the portal, company, branch and customer account, Save (F5) and Send invite.

5Keys on the portal screens #

On the desks Enter moves to the next field, and Ctrl+Enter starts a new line in Remarks and in the reply box.

6Portal Settings - what customers may do #

Company settings are the defaults every customer follows; Customer overrides record only what one customer does differently. Save (F5) saves the tab you are on; Reload (F3) reads it again. The portal reads the merged answer on the customer's next request, and every switch is checked again by the server - hiding a button is a courtesy, the refusal is the control.

Documents

• Sales Order voucher type - what portal orders are saved as. Ordering cannot be on without it.
• Receipt voucher type - what a portal payment's draft receipt is raised as. Online payment cannot be on without it.
• Invoice voucher to print and Bill format - the invoice layout customers can download. Leave the format blank and the portal offers no download; a voucher with no custom report set up cannot be printed by the portal.
• Status for new portal orders (blank = the voucher type's default) and Status on delivery confirmation (blank = leave the status unchanged).

What customers may do

Switches: Place orders, See stock, See the price list, Confirm deliveries, Raise support requests, Ask to change their details. Show stock as Indicator (in or out of stock) or Exact (the quantity), and Low stock below.

Ordering rules

• Minimum order value / Maximum order value - "The minimum order value cannot be more than the maximum."
• Delivery lead days and Order cut-off time - the customer is told when to expect the order, and that orders after the cut-off are worked from the next day.
• Over credit limit and With overdue bills - Allow, Warn or Block; Overdue grace days. Block refuses the order on the portal; Warn is not enforced by the server.
• Allow ordering beyond stock and Approve portal orders automatically.

Pricing

The portal quotes what the ORDER will be priced at, from the Sales Order voucher type's own pricing source, price type and party-rate flag - change those in Voucher Manager. Price type override and Pricing source override change what the portal displays; Show MRP, Show discounts and Prices include tax change how. Quantity-based scheme and slab discounts are named, not computed, so the portal never shows a figure the invoice would contradict.

Online payment

• Accept online payment, Allow part payment of a bill, Allow payment without choosing bills (on account).
• Settlement / bank ledger - the ledger the receipt debits. Required with online payment.
• Gateway name (Razorpay), Minimum payment / Maximum payment, and this company's merchant credentials - Key ID, Key Secret, Webhook Secret, Currency, Gateway API base URL, Checkout script URL. A stored key shows only as configured or not set; a blank box keeps the saved value. The callback address to give the gateway is shown on the screen.
• Payments are offered only when the switch is on AND the credentials are filled - the page warns when they are not.

Presentation and notifications

Portal title, Currency symbol, Support email and Support phone, Statement history (months), the Terms, Privacy and Refund policy URLs, and the addresses told of new orders, tickets and payments (Notify orders to, Notify tickets to, Notify payments to).

Customer overrides

Search a customer (Portal logins only and With overrides only narrow the list). Each switch - Portal access, Place orders, Online payment, See stock, See the price list, Support requests - is Use company setting, On or Off; blank means follow the company, which is not the same as Off. Also per customer: price type, invoice voucher and bill format, sales executive, order value limits, the credit and overdue actions, Allowed payment methods, the Default delivery address and remarks. Save customer saves it; Clear all overrides returns the customer to the company settings. Setting Portal access to Off suspends the customer: the portal refuses at sign-in with "Portal access for your account has been suspended. Please contact your supplier."

7Portal Users - the customers' logins #

A portal user is a customer's login. It is a different thing from an ERP user: it lives in its own tables, has its own password, cannot open the ERP, and does not use an ERP user licence.

Creating a login

1. New (F3). Under Who they are: Login name (unique across every portal login), Display name, E-mail (one address belongs to one login - resets go to it), Mobile, Status, Remarks.
2. Which portals they may use: tick the portal; one is where the login lands.
3. What they can reach, per portal: the companies, the branch or branches in each (no branch means no branch - never all), and the Customer account the login buys as. Only live customer accounts are listed. Without an account the login signs in but is nobody - no company is offered to it.
4. Save (F5): "Portal login '...' created. It cannot sign in until an invite is sent and a password is set."
5. Send invite. The customer sets their own password from the link, and nobody at your end ever knows it.

• You can give only the companies and branches you hold yourself; companies granted by someone with wider access show greyed and are left untouched.
• Several people at one customer can each have a login pointing at the same account.

Invites, resets and passwords

• An invite link lasts 72 hours; a Reset password link lasts 2 hours. Issuing a new link spends the old one. The link is e-mailed and also shown once on screen - copy it then; only a hash is stored. If the mail cannot go (no e-mail on the login, no mail account, no portal address configured) the screen says why and the link is still shown.
• Set password is for a customer who cannot use a link: it writes a temporary password (Suggest one makes one easy to read out). The customer must choose their own at the first sign-in and cannot reach any screen until they have. Read it out or hand it over; never e-mail it. Setting a password signs the login out everywhere and spends any live link.
• A login with no password shows Invited; one holding a password you set shows Temporary password.

Locked, disabled, signed out

• Locked happens by itself after too many wrong passwords and clears on its own; Unlock clears it now.
• Disable this login is your decision and does not clear; it also signs the login out everywhere.
• Sign out everywhere ends every session without changing the password - the right move when a device is lost.
• Remove login deletes it for good (Remove permanently / Keep it); a login that already has documents cannot be removed - disable it instead.

Sign-up requests

When open, requests (firm name, GST number, contact, e-mail, mobile, address) wait under Sign-up requests (n) on Portal Users. Approve needs the company and the customer account to link ("Choose the customer account to link. A portal login with no account can see nothing."); it creates the login as Invited and can send the invite. Reject sends nothing to the customer.

8Portal Catalogue - what each customer may see #

A customer sees on the portal exactly what has been published to them, and nothing else. Publishing is to a customer group, so everyone at that customer sees the same list and a new contact inherits it.

1. Pick the customer group on the left (or create one with New group).
2. Who this reaches lists its customers and how they came in - On the account (the ledger's own group), Group member, or both. Add / remove edits the member list; a customer whose account carries the group cannot be unticked here - change it in the account master, because the same group drives custom rates and discounts.
3. Tick On the portal against each item (filters: search, group, category, brand, Published only, Include inactive items). Tick all listed / Untick all listed tick the rows on screen.
4. Save (F5) writes the ticks you changed; Discard changes or Esc throws them away.

• Select ALL ... matching applies to everything the filters match - often more than the grid has loaded - and writes at once after asking.
• A group with nothing published sees nothing. Publishing reaches nobody until a customer in the group has a portal login; the panel says so.
• A published item is still hidden when it is inactive or not visible in the branch the customer signed into. What the portal shows as available is physical stock less reserved and blocked - see Stock Availability.
• Nothing here changes prices.

9Portal Orders #

A portal order is already a Sales Order voucher when it arrives, narrated "Placed from Customer Portal.". The order is priced again from the customer's catalogue, checked against the ordering rules, given the Status for new portal orders unless orders are approved automatically, and the Notify orders to address is told. This desk adds your side: who has looked at it, whether the stock is there, and what was decided.

1. The page opens on the last three months. Not yet looked at narrows to orders with desk state New.
2. Click an order: every line shows the free stock beside the ordered quantity; lines you cannot fill are tinted and marked short.
3. Decide either or both: Move the voucher to (the order's status in the books, from the statuses you are allowed to set) and Desk state (New, Acknowledged, Rejected), with Remarks.
4. Save decision (F5). Clear (Esc) drops the selection.

• The voucher status is changed through the ERP's own routine with its own checks - a refusal (permission, a rule on the voucher type, a closed period) shows the database's message and nothing is saved. The customer sees the status on the portal.
• The desk state answers "has anybody looked at this?" and belongs to this desk alone.
• Generate Invoice (with the Linked Transactions licence) loads the ticked orders into a sale invoice on the voucher screen in a dialog; only orders that reach a saved invoice are marked Billed. A Rejected or Cancelled order cannot be invoiced - change it first.
• This desk never edits lines, prices or quantities; amend the order on the order voucher.

10Deliveries & Discrepancies #

When goods arrive, a customer can confirm it on the portal (if Confirm deliveries is on) and say, line by line, what was short or damaged. The invoice's status can move to Status on delivery confirmation.

1. Rows with a discrepancy sort to the top. Click one to see every line, the customer's note and Value at issue - the short and damaged quantities at the invoiced rate.
2. Move it to Under review while you check, then Resolved or Rejected - both need Remarks. Record the Remedy: None, Credit note, Replacement, Accepted or Recovered from carrier.
3. Tick Open a support ticket and link it to this report to start a conversation the customer can see; the ticket number shows here afterwards.
4. Save decision (F5).

• States: Open (reported, nobody has looked), Under review, Resolved (settled with the customer), Rejected (not upheld). A confirmation with nothing wrong starts as Resolved.
• This screen raises no credit note and moves no stock - raise the document in the ERP.
• Awaiting customer confirmation turns the list into the invoices customers with a login have not confirmed, oldest first - a call list.

11Online payments, Draft Receipts and the books #

A payment travels through five states:

Approving a draft receipt

1. Open Draft Receipts (Show: Pending, Cleared, All; Portal payments only is on by default; Branch in the ERP edition).
2. Click a draft. Set Status to Approved and pick the Head of account - the bank or cash ledger the money actually reached. It is compulsory.
3. Approve & post (F5): "Approved. Receipt ... was posted." The payment is marked Posted and the bills it paid are settled.

• Approval runs the ERP's own draft-approval routine under your own Approve permission; the Status list shows only the statuses you may set.
• An approved draft is final - correct a mistake on the posted voucher.
• Cancel draft needs a reason in Remarks; nothing is posted and the payment goes back to Paid. A zero-amount draft should be cancelled, not approved.

Payments and Reconcile

• Paid but not posted narrows to the payments that took money but have not reached the books.
• Reconcile (F4) re-checks every payment at Paid or Received, finds those whose draft has since been approved, and stamps the receipt on them. It never posts anything. "Nothing to reconcile" means the drafts are genuinely still waiting.
• A payment stuck at Paid with no draft usually means Portal Settings has no receipt voucher type or no settlement ledger. Check the gateway reference against the gateway's dashboard, and write what you found in the Reconciliation note - Save note (F5).
• The amount lives only in the payment record - the customer's browser never states it - and the gateway's confirmation arriving twice still gives one receipt.

12Support Desk #

Customers raise support requests on the portal (if Raise support requests is on); each is a ticket numbered SR-00001 with a running conversation. Tickets are created on the portal, never here.

1. The queue opens on live work (Open and In progress). Tickets awaiting our reply come first; the chip shows how long the customer has waited and turns red after a day.
2. Click a ticket to read the conversation. Set Assigned to (an employee ledger account; it saves at once).
3. Type the reply and press Send reply (F5) - it appears in the customer's portal straight away. Then set status to resolves or closes in the same step.
4. Turn on Internal note (F4) for something only your team can read - the composer turns amber and the button becomes Add internal note (F5). A note does not count as answering the customer.

• Statuses: Open, In progress (a reply to an Open ticket moves it there), Resolved, Closed; Reopen on a resolved or closed ticket. The customer can close or reopen a ticket, and a customer reply to a Resolved ticket reopens it.
• Messages cannot be edited or deleted; a reply is up to 4000 characters.
• Find (F2) jumps to a ticket by number, customer or subject. The queue shows up to 500 rows - narrow it with the filters.
• The Support Desk is checked against the Service module on the licence, where the rest of the portal area uses Customer Portal.

13Access & Requests #

Change requests

A customer cannot edit their own details on the portal - with Ask to change their details on, they send a request. Pending requests sort to the top. Approve records that you agreed; it does not change the ledger - make the edit in the customer master. Reject needs a reply, because the customer reads it. A request is decided once.

Sign-in history

A customer who says "it won't let me in" almost always has a refused sign-in with its reason in Recent sign-ins - read that first. Failed (30d) on the logins list is the same, per customer.

Suspend and restore

Suspend / Restore switch portal sign-in off and on for logins made the older way, as ERP users with portal login allowed. It stops new sign-ins only - a session already open lasts until it expires. For logins made on Portal Users, use Disable this login there, or set Portal access Off under Customer overrides.

14Terms & Privacy #

Two documents, each versioned: the terms a customer must accept before using the portal, and the privacy notice, which they can read at any time but are not asked to agree to. Pick the document in the toolbar.

1. Open the draft (the seeded version 1 is a template). Edit the Title, the preamble and the sections - Heading, Key and plain-text Body (a blank line between paragraphs; a line starting with a hyphen and a space is a bullet). Add section, reorder with the arrows.
2. Save draft (F5). Nothing reaches customers yet.
3. Fill in every [PLACEHOLDER] - while any remain they are listed in an amber strip and Publish is refused.
4. Publish... makes the draft the version customers see and retires the one before it.

• A published version cannot be edited or deleted - customers accepted those exact words. New draft from this copies it to the next version number to change. Only one unpublished draft at a time.
• Once terms are published, a customer sees only the terms until they are accepted; each new published version has to be accepted again. The acceptance is recorded with the date, the customer, the login, the person's name and the network address, and nothing edits it.
• Leave In force from blank. A future date takes the current version down at once and leaves no terms in force until that date.
• The seeded text is a starting point, not legal advice - have your own lawyer read it.

15What the customer sees #

• After signing in the customer picks the company and branch (or it is picked when there is only one) and can switch later. A company is offered only when the login has a customer account and a branch there, and the account is active.
• A feature switched off is refused by the server too, with its own message - for example "Online ordering is not available on your account."
• A customer can change their own password; a forgotten one is reset by you from Portal Users.

16Who sees what #

17Where to see more #

• Stock Availability (Portal Administration tile; Inventory menu): Physical Stock, Reserved, Blocked and Net Available per item - the only figure you may promise. It reads the same figure as the portal catalogue, the order check and the Orders desk, so the clerk on the phone and the customer on the portal see the same number. Filters: As on, search, group, brand, Nothing free only, Hide items with no movement, Include inactive items; Refresh (F3).
• Portal orders are Sales Orders and portal payments become receipts - they appear in the ordinary sales, order and accounts reports.
• There are no separate portal reports: the desks' own filters and header counts are the portal's registers.

18Moving from the older portal logins #

• Portal logins used to be ERP users with Allow Customer Portal Login, linked through the ledger's Has Login ID. Sign-in still checks the new portal logins first and falls back to those older ones, so customers can be moved one at a time.
• Turning the old portal-login switch off is the last step, once the new sign-in is proven.
• Parts of Access & Requests and the Portal logins only filter on Customer overrides still look at the older link.

19Common messages and what to do #