Set Up the Customer Portal (Customer Portal)

Last updated July 6, 2026 · Owners and admins

This article walks through switching the Customer Portal on for the first time: enable it, pick your URL, connect Stripe so customers can pay, add your branding, and choose which sections customers see. Plan about 15 minutes — connecting Stripe is the longest part and needs your business and bank details handy. For the deep, screenshot-level reference, see the full operator setup guide.

Before you start

  • Customer Portal and Stripe Connect must appear under Settings in the sidebar. If they don’t, the feature isn’t enabled on your account yet — contact support.
  • Have ready: your business’s legal name, EIN or SSN, and a bank routing/account number (for Stripe); your logo and favicon (PNG, JPG, or WebP — logo up to 2 MB, favicon PNG up to 500 KB); and your brand color as a hex code (e.g. #2e7d32).

Steps

  1. Open portal settings. Go to Settings → Customer Portal. The page is organized into tabs: General, and — once the portal is enabled — Visibility, Payments, Branding, and Support & Legal. The first time you visit, a short guided tour offers to walk you through it; press Esc or click through to dismiss it.
  2. Set your portal URL. On the General tab, fill in the Portal URL slug (your portal lives at app.landscapingsoftware.com/portal/your-slug). Use lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens only. Leave it and one is generated from your company name. Slugs must be unique — if yours is taken, a suffix is added automatically and you’ll see a note saying so.
  3. Enable the portal. Flip Enable the customer portal on and click Save settings. Until this is on, the portal returns “not found” for everyone regardless of other settings. Saving reveals the other four tabs.
  4. Connect Stripe. Go to Settings → Stripe Connect (or use the Connect Stripe button that appears on the Payments tab). You’re sent to Stripe to sign in to an existing account or create a new one. When you return, the status panel shows Charges enabled and Payouts enabled — both green means you can accept payments. See Stripe Connect explained for what these mean and when payouts arrive.
  5. Choose what customers see. On the Visibility tab, toggle each section on or off: Invoices, Payment history, Estimates, Documents, Service plans, Contracts, and (experimental, off by default) Jobs and Upcoming visits. Turning a section off removes both the menu item and the page from the customer’s portal.
  6. Set up payments. On the Payments tab (visible once Stripe is connected), turn on Allow online payment, then choose Credit and debit cards and/or US bank accounts (ACH). Optionally set a minimum payment amount, default estimate-deposit terms, and processing-fee passthrough. Details in Portal Payments and Documents.
  7. Add your branding. On the Branding tab, set your primary (and optional accent) color, upload your Portal logo and Portal favicon, and edit the login-page text (headline, description, button label, help text, footer). A live login-page preview updates as you type. Click Save settings to publish. SVG uploads are rejected — PNG, JPG, or WebP only.
  8. Fill in support and legal. On the Support & Legal tab, add your support email and phone (shown in portal footers and receipts) and, optionally, your Terms and Privacy Policy URLs.
  9. Invite your first customer. Access is granted per customer from the customer record. See Inviting Customers to the Portal.

What happens next

Your portal is live at your slug URL, but no customer can sign in until you grant them access individually and send them a temporary password. Nothing changes on the customer’s side until you invite them. Save on the settings page is all-or-nothing per visit — the tab you saved from is where you land after saving, and a success banner scrolls into view.

Tips & best practices

  • Connect Stripe before you announce anything. The Payments tab hides its options until Stripe is connected, because payment settings would silently do nothing without it.
  • Branding is company-wide; access is per-customer. You brand once, then decide customer by customer who gets in.
  • Test the whole thing on your phone with a friendly customer before rolling out — the portal is mobile-responsive and most customers use it that way.
  • Leave experimental sections (Jobs, Upcoming visits) off unless you’ve deliberately decided to show them.

Troubleshooting

  • No Customer Portal / Stripe Connect items in Settings — the feature flag isn’t on for your account. Contact support.
  • Charges enabled never turns green — Stripe is still verifying you; check your Stripe Dashboard for a requested document. Disconnect and reconnect to pull fresh status. See Portal troubleshooting.
  • Branding didn’t update — assets are cached briefly; wait ~10 minutes, hard-refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R), or re-save. Details in Portal troubleshooting.
  • “Logo failed to load” in Settings — the stored file is missing; just re-upload it. The portal falls back to a neutral text look meanwhile.

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