Bespoke client portal development for trades and service businesses.
Bespoke client portal development gives your clients one branded login to see job status, documents, quotes and invoices, approve work and ask questions, without ringing the office. We build each custom client portal around what your clients actually need to know, drawn live from the systems you already run.
Fixed quote before we start. One-off build fee, then ongoing management from go-live.
A client portal that shows clients what you already know.
A client portal, or customer portal, is a secure area of your website where each client logs in to see their own information: what is happening with their work, the documents that belong to them, what they owe and what needs their decision. Everything in it already exists somewhere in your business. The portal puts it in front of the client before they have to ask.
A bespoke portal starts from your clients’ questions rather than a template’s screens. A landlord wants every property on one page. A clinic patient wants the next appointment and a receipt. A commercial client wants the certificate for each site. We design the portal around those questions and connect it to the systems that hold the answers.
Signs your clients need a portal.
Client portal software such as SuiteDash, Copilot or Clinked, and the portals inside job tools, suit many businesses. These are the signs yours needs one shaped to how you work.
The same question, all day
Clients ring and email to ask where their job, case or order is up to. Each answer means someone stops work, looks it up in another system and replies by hand.
Documents in five inboxes
Quotes, certificates, reports, drawings and invoices go out as attachments. When a client loses one, the office goes digging through sent mail to find it again.
Approvals that stall
A variation, a proposal or a treatment plan waits for a reply that is buried in an email thread, and the work stops until somebody chases it.
Clients with several people
A landlord, a facilities manager and an accounts team all want different things from the same account, and you send each of them a separate update.
A portal that is not yours
Your job tool has a portal, but it shows that tool’s screens and brand, and it cannot show anything that lives outside it.
Service that looks less organised than it is
The work is good and well run, but from the client’s side it feels like waiting for emails. A clear view of progress would show the care that goes into it.
What goes into a bespoke client portal.
Most portals combine several of these parts. Discovery decides which ones your clients need first, and management lets you add the rest later.
One login, four very different portals.
These are illustrative examples, not client projects. They show how the same parts take a different shape in each kind of business.
A property maintenance company
Each landlord or managing agent logs in to see every property they own, open repairs by status, photos before and after, and compliance certificates with renewal dates. Tenants report faults through a simple form that lands in the job system with the address already attached.
An electrical contractor doing compliance work
Commercial clients see every site, the inspections due and done, and each condition report or certificate as a download. Remedial quotes sit next to the report that raised them, and approving one books the work.
A private clinic
Patients see upcoming appointments, complete intake forms before their first visit, read their treatment plan and download receipts for insurers. Clinical notes stay in the clinical system, and the portal shows only what the clinic chooses to share.
A design or marketing agency
Clients see project timelines, review and approve work in rounds, find signed contracts and invoices, and check retained hours used against their plan. Feedback stays attached to the piece of work it is about.
Connected to the systems behind it.
A portal is only as good as the information under it. We connect it to the tools you already run, and we never rebuild accounting or payroll. We check what each tool’s API exposes during discovery.
Each client sees only what is theirs.
Every portal user has their own login, and every screen checks who is asking before it shows anything. Access follows the roles you set: a client administrator can invite colleagues, a tenant sees one address, a contractor sees only the jobs assigned to them. When someone leaves a client organisation, their access goes with a click.
You decide what the portal shares. Internal notes, costs and margins stay internal; documents become visible to the client only when you publish them. The portal records logins, downloads and approvals, so you can see who opened a report and when a quote was accepted.
Your clients’ information belongs to your business under UK GDPR, and you can export it at any time. Ongoing management keeps the portal patched and monitored after go-live, which matters for any system that holds client data.
From the questions clients ask to a portal they use.
A portal build follows the same five stages as all our bespoke software: discovery, a written scope with a fixed quote, a build in stages, go-live, then ongoing management.
For a portal, discovery starts with your inbox and phone log. We list the questions clients ask most, the documents they request again, and the approvals that hold up work, then trace where the answer to each one lives today.
The first milestone is usually status and documents for one group of clients, because it removes the most chasing calls. Approvals, payments and requests follow once clients are logging in. If the portal needs a proper client record behind it, we can build a bespoke CRM alongside it.
A fixed quote, and your data stays yours.
Every bespoke client portal has a one-off build fee, fixed in a written quote after discovery, plus monthly management from go-live covering hosting, monitoring, updates, fixes and small improvements. The cost does not climb every time a client gets a login. The full pricing model sits on our bespoke software page.
A licence to use it
Scalepoint keeps the code and you hold a licence to use it, with the option to buy the code out later.
The code becomes yours
Once you pay the build in full, you own the code.
Your data is always yours
Your client records and documents belong to your business under UK GDPR, and you can export them at any time.
Common questions about client portals
How much does a bespoke client portal cost?
It depends on scope, so we quote after discovery rather than publish a price. A portal that shows status and documents from one system costs less than one with approvals, payments and several integrations. Your written quote fixes the build fee before you commit and sets out the monthly management fee in the same document.
Our job tool already has a portal. Do we need a bespoke one?
Often not. If the portal inside Joblogic, Commusoft or simPRO shows clients what they need, use it. A bespoke client portal makes sense when clients need information from more than one system, when different people at a client need different views, or when the portal needs to follow steps that your job tool does not have.
Can clients pay invoices through the portal?
Yes, where your payment provider supports it. Clients see the invoice from Xero or QuickBooks and pay by card or Direct Debit, and the payment shows in your accounts as it would normally.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. We build it to work in a browser on a phone, tablet or desktop, so clients do not need to install anything, and it carries your branding rather than ours.
Who owns the portal and the client data?
Your client data is always yours, and you can export it at any time. Code ownership is agreed per project in writing: by default Scalepoint keeps the code and you hold a licence with the option to buy it out, or the code becomes yours once you pay the build in full.
What happens after go-live?
Ongoing management starts from go-live with every build: hosting, monitoring, security updates, fixes and small improvements. Portals hold client information, so keeping them updated and monitored matters as much as building them well.
Bring us the last ten emails asking for an update.
We will show you which of them a portal would answer before the client had to ask, and what it would take to build.
More on bespoke software.
Every kind of software we build, and how a project runs
Learn more →The client records a portal reads from
Learn more →Approvals and handovers that run on your rules
Learn more →Your numbers from every system in one view
Learn more →The jobs and certificates a portal shows clients
Learn more →Quotes your clients can accept online
Learn more →