Contacts
Contacts are the folks you communicate with! Adding contacts gives your client's team access to the Client Portal, and allows you to ask questions and communicate easily.
There are a range of options when adding contacts for your clients. Depending on the client, you may have
Just one contact
Multiple contacts
Merged contacts with access to multiple clients in a single portal
Contact permissions
Set contact permissions under your Portal Settings > Contacts tab. Permissions are set per client contact.
There are 4 different levels of client portal access for your contacts:
Client admin
Access to all questions, files, financials, and tax items.
Access to all portal questions, even if assignable questions are on and the questions are not assigned to them.
Reassign questions to other contacts and respond to all questions.
By default client admin contacts will be shown a filtered view of questions assigned to them, but they can toggle to "all" questions to see everything.
When assignable questions is enabled, this contact will not receive automated reminders unless they are also assigned to the question.
Tax
CAN view and take action on tax returns (tax return status tracker, tax return tab, tax return files) and organizers (organizer action items from the dashboard, auto-organized organizer files).
CANNOT view or take action on e-signature requests that they are not included as a recipient on
Financial
Access to all published management reports and interactive client financials
Files:
CAN view all files made visible in the client portal (see how to make files visible)
CANNOT view items in the auto-organized "Tax return" or "Organizer" file folders
💡 Preview each contact's portal experience by clicking the preview button 👁️ to the right of their contact permissions.
Adding New Contacts
To add a client from the close page,
Navigate to the Portal Settings by clicking Portal at the top of the close
Select Add Contact
Portal Settings > Contacts
If Assignable Questions are enabled, then you will be able to assign questions to specific contacts.
If Assignable Questions are not enabled, all contacts will see all questions
If Reminders are enabled, your contacts will receive scheduled reminders about outstanding, unanswered questions.
Adding a contact from your Practice Settings
To add a contact under your Practice Settings,
Navigate to Practice Settings by clicking the gear icon at the top right of your page (admin access only)
Go to Client Portal
Click on the All Contacts tab
Choose to Add Contact
If your contact already exists in another file, you'll need to give that contact access to this file in your All Contacts settings (Practice Settings ⚙️ -> Client Portal -> All Contacts). Click into the Client(s) cell and add all applicable clients!
💡 Note: If you receive an error message when adding a new contact, check in your Practice Settings (admins only) > Client Portal > All Contacts tab to see if they're already an existing contact. Give them client access under the Client(s) column
Emailing and Texting
Select Message Client at the top of your close page to manually message your contacts.
If you have multiple contacts for a client, you can select them from the Send To picker.
Preview the contact's portal experience
To see what your clients will see when they go to your portal,
Go to Portal Settings by clicking the Portal button at the top of the close
Selecting the Preview (👁️) icon to the right of the contact
For more on what your client’s experience is like in the portal, check out Your Client's Experience in the Portal.
You cannot switch companies for merged contacts while in preview mode.
Adding Contacts with Access to Multiple Clients
If you have a contact who has multiple companies and are an admin you can give them access to all companies so they can see all their questions in one place.
How to add multiple businesses to a contact
Go to Practice Settings (⚙️ icon)
Click Client Portal
Click the All Contacts tab
Add the other clients to the contact by clicking on the Client(s) field and selecting the companies the contact should have access to.
How contacts switch between businesses in the Client Portal
Clients with multiple businesses can easily switch between businesses in the portal via the switcher tool in the top right-hand corner of the portal.
This also shows them if they have other open questions in other businesses.
Deleting Contacts
To delete a contact,
Go to Portal Settings in the close
Go to the Contacts tab
Select Actions (column) in the contact's row
Choose Delete contact
Things to know when deleting a contact
Deleting a contact does not notify the client.
Deleting a contact will remove their access to the portal (and erase any existing passwords from the system).
When a contact is deleted, all previous responses to questions will remain in the portal and show they're from an 'Unknown' contact.
Deleting a contact does not remove any questions they're assigned to in the portal.
Manually sending magic links & reset password emails
When in doubt, users can manually send fresh magic links as well as reset password links to their contacts under Portal Settings > Contacts > Actions.
💡 Sending a fresh magic link immediately invalidates all previously requested magic links.