The customer portal

Every contact in BidCraft has their own customer portal — one link your client opens on their phone (no login, no app to download) that becomes home base for the whole job. It's a clean, tabbed page branded to your business: their proposal to sign, a live schedule of when you'll be on site, the progress photos you choose to share, their payment milestones, and your phone and email so they can reach you.

The best part: the portal reads your client's mind. Before they've signed, it's all about the proposal and why they should hire you. While you're building, it's the schedule, photos, and payments. When you wrap, it asks them for a review. Same link the whole time — it just knows where things stand.

It replaces the "what's the status?" text chain and doubles as a quiet salesperson while a proposal is still out.

The tabs

Across the top (or along the bottom on a phone) your client sees up to five tabs. Tabs only show up when there's something in them — a brand-new lead won't see a Photos tab, and a client with no invoices won't see Payments.

• Home — always there. A friendly dashboard that changes with the job (see below).
• Schedule — a month calendar of when you'll be working, plus a "crew on site now" badge. Shows once the job is booked and you've shared dated tasks.
• Photos — the progress and finished photos you've chosen to share, newest first.
• Payments — their deposit and milestone invoices with a Pay button on anything owed.
• Documents — every signed proposal and change order, openable any time.

If a client has more than one project with you, a small project switcher lets them flip between them; Documents and Payments still reach across all their projects.

How Home changes with the job

While you're still selling (proposal not signed yet), Home is your pitch: "Your proposal from {your business}" with the total and a big Review & sign button that takes them to the proposal. Right under it is the Questions? Contact card (see below), then your trust badges, an About-the-owner section with your headshot and story, and a scope preview.

While you're building (signed and in progress), Home becomes a status board: where the job stands, what's next, a "crew on site now" chip when your team is clocked in, a visual project timeline, and a short latest-activity feed (newest update, shared photo, or payment) that deep-links into the right tab.

When the job's done, Home turns into a warm thank-you with your headshot, a review ask (a one-tap Google review button plus "record a quick video review"), a teaser strip of the finished photos, and their documents.

Jobs that get canceled or refunded quietly fall back to just Home and Documents. No schedule or photos.

The schedule tab

Once a job is booked, your client can see a real calendar of when you'll be on their house — the days you're working light up, and an "on site now" badge appears while your crew is actually clocked in on their job ("Mike on site since 8:14 AM"). Below the calendar is a friendly "up next" list of the next few work days.

They only ever see day-level timing and first names — never task titles they shouldn't, never your internal scheduling, never who's assigned to what beyond a first name. And you control whether the Schedule tab and the on-site badge show at all (see Settings below) — some contractors would rather not broadcast an empty house.

The photos tab (you choose what shows)

Nothing is visible to your client until you say so. By default every job-site photo your crew takes stays private to your team. You share the good ones deliberately:

• On any task's Photos & notes, tap Share with client under a photo — a little eye badge marks it as shared. Tap Share all with client to share every photo on that task at once.
• On the project's 📸 Photos feed, flip the share line under any photo — or under a whole post to share the batch. See the job photo feed.
• Photos you attach to a project update are shared automatically (that's the whole point of an update).

Sharing is an owner/admin action in both places. Crew and sales can see which photos are already shared, but the call about what a homeowner sees stays with the office.

Shared photos land in the client's Photos tab, grouped by day with captions, tap-to-enlarge. It's a running highlight reel of their job without you ever handing over the messy "before we cleaned up" shots you didn't mean to send.

If you've used Future Vision on the project, the featured before/after renders sit at the top of this tab too — so the client can flip between "what my bathroom looks like today" and "what I'm paying for" without digging out the proposal.

The payments tab

Their deposit and milestone invoices, each with a status and a Pay button on anything still owed. Paying happens through the same secure checkout you already use — nothing changes about how money moves. If they've got more than one project, a small balance strip shows what's owed elsewhere.

How clients reach you

Every version of Home has a Questions? Contact {your business} card with your phone number and email. Your client can copy either one, or tap Call or Email to open their phone or mail app. It sits near the top: under the proposal while you're selling, under the next step while you're building, and under the review ask when the job's done.

The phone and email come from your Company Profile. If you haven't added a business email, the card uses your account email. Leave the phone blank and that row just doesn't show. If there's nothing to show at all, the card hides.

The portal used to have a Messages tab with a chat thread. It was retired, and the contact card replaced it. Old links that pointed at the Messages tab now open Home. To email a client yourself, use the project's Client page; see Emailing your clients from a project.

Reviews at the finish line

When a job is complete, the client's Home tab asks for a review two ways:

• Google review — a one-tap button to your Google review page (set the link in Settings; if it's blank, the button just doesn't show).
• Video review — they can record a short video review right in their browser and send it. It lands in your Portal settings for you to watch, then approve or dismiss — nothing goes public automatically.

Documents

Every signed proposal and change order, grouped by project, openable in a read-only copy any time. This is where a client goes months later to pull up "what did we agree to."

Below the signed agreements sits a From your contractor group — your insurance certificate, license, workmanship warranty, and anything else you've put in your asset library. It's kept separate on purpose: agreements are things they signed, this is paperwork you provided. It shows up even before they've signed anything, so a homeowner shopping around can pull up your COI on the spot. Set it up in Badges, credentials, and portfolio photos on proposals.

Your trust badges also appear in the About Us section, and the portfolio photos attached to that client's proposal show up as Our recent work on their Home and Photos tabs. All of it mirrors automatically — nothing to configure per client.

Branding & settings (Settings → Client Portal)

Open Settings → Client Portal (under Your business in the Settings menu of your sidebar) to shape the whole thing. Owner and admin only.

• Presentation — your tagline, owner display name, owner headshot (a friendly head-and-shoulders shot, separate from your logo), and the "get to know us" about blurb.
• Brand accent — one color drives every button, link, and highlight on the portal. Leave it terracotta or match your brand; if you pick something light, BidCraft automatically darkens it for text so it stays readable, and warns you.
• Reviews — your Google review link plus any other review links (Facebook, Yelp, Houzz) that show as pills.
• Accolades — short trust chips for the Home tab: "Licensed & insured," "★4.9 on Google," "20+ years."
• What clients can see — toggles for the Schedule tab and the "crew on site now" badge, in case you'd rather keep those private.
• Video reviews — watch, approve, or dismiss the video reviews clients submit.
• Preview a client's portal — pick any contact and open their exact portal in a new tab. You'll see a small preview banner so you know it's your view, not theirs.

Anything you leave blank simply hides. All optional.

Your proposal & pay pages match too

The proposal, change-order, sign, and pay pages your clients see (the ones at your proposal links) now wear the same warm portal look and your brand accent color. Nothing about signing or paying changed — just the paint.

How clients get to it

Two paths, same page:

1. It goes out automatically. Every proposal, change-order, and invoice email includes a link to their portal. So the moment you send that first proposal, they've got it.
2. You hand it over. On the contact's page, hit Open portal to land on it yourself, or Copy link to text or DM it.

Working inside a job? There's a Client Portal button at the top of the project screen, right next to Actions — one tap and you're looking at exactly what that client sees. It's the fastest way to sanity-check a photo you just shared or an update you just posted. If the button is greyed out, this project isn't tied to a client yet: add their email under Client info and the portal appears on its own.

Posting updates

Open any project, go to Schedule & tasks, and use Project updates to post what's new ("Walls are taped — vanity rough-in tomorrow"), optionally with photos. It shows up on the client's Home feed and Photos tab. Editing an update just updates what they see; hiding one pulls it entirely.

What the homeowner doesn't see

• Your costs, margins, or internal cost analysis.
• Photos you didn't share and tasks you didn't opt in.
• Other clients (one portal = one contact).
• Anyone's last name, assignment details, hours, or internal statuses.

The rule is simple: if you didn't explicitly share it, they don't see it.

The link is the only credential

There's no password — the link itself is the login. Treat it like one; don't paste it in a public group chat. If a client ever loses access or you want a fresh link, regenerate it from their contact page, which instantly retires the old one (and with it, access to their schedule, photos, and payments).