Client access is managed from the project's Team page, alongside your own staff and the trades. That is deliberate: access is a fact about a job, not a fact about a person, and the same homeowner may be on one of your jobs and not another.
Access and invitation are two separate steps
This trips people up more than anything else in the portal, so here it is precisely.
Granting access creates the relationship: this contact can see this job. It does not send anything and the client does not know about it.
Sending the invitation emails them a link to set a password and sign in.
A client who has access but has never been invited cannot sign in. Nothing is broken; they simply have no way in yet. If a homeowner says the portal is not working, this is the first thing to check.
The two are separate so you can set a job up completely, review what the client will see, and only then let them in.
What the client gets
The invitation is a link that lets them set their own password. You never see or set it.
If it expires, or goes to a spam folder, or they change email address before using it, resend the invitation. Resending issues a fresh link rather than re-sending the dead one.
Before you invite
The portal shows a curated view of the job, and it is easier to check that view before the client is looking than after. Check:
- Which documents and photos are visible to them.
- Whether the schedule is in a state you are happy for them to see.
- Whether any selections are waiting on them, which is usually the reason you are inviting them in the first place.
See what your clients can see for the full picture of the boundary between their view and yours.
More than one person
Households are rarely one person. Both partners can have their own access with their own sign-in, and that is better than sharing one login: approvals are recorded against whoever actually made them, which matters if a selection is later disputed.
Add each as a contact on the client, then grant and invite each individually.
Removing access
When a job finishes, you can revoke access without deleting the person. Their history stays on the job (approvals, selections, messages) and they simply stop being able to sign in.
For the wider argument about why homeowners get a portal at all, see client experience.