Customer Portal Settings

Mostly a V1 settings reference: This guide documents the configurable V1 public portal. Current V2's Online self-booking controls are documented in their explicitly labeled section below. Other V2 customers sign in to the authenticated customer account and open Invoices, or use the secure invoice link sent by email; V2 does not expose the public invoice-number/email lookup toggle described below.

The customer portal is a public-facing page where your customers interact with your business online. They can view proposals, request estimates, pay invoices, leave reviews, refer friends, and book services. Go to Settings --> Portal to configure it.

Enabling the Portal

The customer portal is enabled by default when you create your CE Pro account. Your portal URL is:

app.cleanestimate.pro/portal/your-slug

The slug is your unique business identifier, set during onboarding. It appears in all portal links.

To disable the portal entirely:

1. Go to Settings --> Portal.
2. Toggle the Portal Active switch to off.
3. The portal URL returns a "not available" message to anyone who visits it.

To re-enable, toggle the switch back on. Your configuration and branding are preserved.

Tip: The portal slug cannot be changed after initial setup. Choose a short, recognizable slug that matches your business name or abbreviation.

Customizing Portal Branding

The portal uses your default company branding. If you have multiple brands configured, you can select which brand appears on the portal.

What Branding Controls

• Logo -- Displayed in the portal header and on all portal pages.
• Company Name -- Appears in the page title and header.
• Accent Colors -- Applied to buttons, links, headings, and interactive elements.
• Contact Information -- Shown in the portal footer and contact sections.

Changing the Portal Brand

1. Go to Settings --> Portal.
2. In the Branding section, select a brand from the dropdown.
3. The preview updates to reflect the selected brand.
4. Changes save automatically.

If you need to create a new brand first, go to Settings --> Brands and add it there. See the Managing Brands article for details.

Configuring Portal Features

The portal offers customer-facing feature controls. Each can be independently toggled on or off.

Post-job Suds Club (Current V2)

The main V2 Settings page includes Offer Suds Club after completed residential work (independent from invoice Pay offers). A teammate with Manage invoices can change it. The setting defaults off and controls only the residential Suds Club action on an eligible protected completed-job Work card. It is separate from the invoice payment-offer master switch and the invoice Suds Club switch; changing it does not add a second action to invoice detail or change invoice payment.

When enabled, the server still withholds the action unless it can resolve the exact residential job/invoice/property lineage, a valid configured plan and price, and a charge-ready Stripe connection. Commercial work keeps its custom proposal request, and exact-work rebooking uses the separate control below. This web setting makes no native mobile UI change.

Exact-work prepayment (Current V2)

The main V2 Settings page also includes Let customers prepay when rebooking the exact completed work. A teammate with Manage invoices can change it. The setting defaults off and is independent from both the post-job Suds Club control and the existing invoice Pay offer sequence.

When enabled, an eligible customer making a new Rebook this exact work request explicitly chooses Pay after the next service or Prepay this exact work; no charge choice is preselected. CE Pro withholds prepay unless Stripe is configured, the connected account can accept charges, and the frozen issued-invoice total is inside provider bounds. Pay later remains available without a charge. A controlled prepay failure before acceptance discards the uncommitted browser command, refreshes server truth, and reopens the payment choices without changing an accepted server order or payment; an accepted prepayment stays prepay-only. Neither choice schedules an appointment, and this web setting makes no native mobile UI change.

Proposals

When enabled, customers can request secure proposal and estimate links by entering the email address tied to their record. CE Pro emails matching live links for that workspace instead of rendering the customer record directly in the portal response.

Proposal lookups stay scoped to the matching provider workspace and only reuse live customer records for that portal. If a secure proposal or estimate link is temporarily unavailable because customer-link signing is not configured yet, the email still includes a fallback support note for that item. If email delivery itself is temporarily unavailable, the portal now shows a retry message instead of claiming secure links were sent.

Estimate Requests

When enabled, a form is available where customers enter their contact information, property details, and service needs. Submitted requests create a new lead in your pipeline with the source tagged as "Portal."

Invoice Payments

This toggle and invoice-number/email lookup apply to the V1 portal only. In V2, send the invoice from the web Invoices workspace; customers pay from their authenticated Invoices page or its secure email link.

When enabled, customers can look up and pay outstanding invoices by entering their email or invoice number. Payments are processed through your connected Stripe account.

Note: Stripe must be connected before enabling invoice payments. See the Stripe Settings article for setup instructions.

Reviews

When enabled, customers can leave a star rating and written review after a completed job -- either signed in through the portal's Account page, or with no login at all on the public page at app.cleanestimate.pro/review/your-slug. Every review is saved unpublished until your office reviews it. If you have configured a Google review link (in this same Portal settings area), the public page's thank-you screen shows a Leave a Google Review button for every rating, not only high ones.

Referrals

When enabled, a public page at app.cleanestimate.pro/refer/your-slug lets existing customers look up their personal referral link by email and share it. Unknown emails are blocked, and known customers who have never used referrals before are prompted once to create their shareable code. A referral offer text field (up to 500 characters, for example "$25 off your next service") is shown on that page above the lookup form when set.

Toggling Features

1. Go to Settings --> Portal.
2. Each feature has a toggle switch.
3. Turn features on or off as needed.
4. Click Save portal settings.

Online Self-Booking (Current V2)

The main web Settings page includes an Online self-booking section. Teammates with Manage calendar permission can configure the live estimate- appointment slots that customers open from a lead-specific secure link. Other teammates can read the saved schedule but cannot change it. Saving either the self-booking schedule or the portal settings below now shows a confirmation line ("Self-booking settings saved." or "Portal settings saved.") in that same section, or the save error, instead of only reloading the page.

When the Booking Widget toggle (below) is on, this section also shows one line reporting whether the public booking page actually offers a slot: Booking page is live at /book/your-slug when everything it depends on is in place, or Booking page is on but offers no slots, followed by the specific unmet condition — no active default location, online self-booking turned off, no weekly hours that currently open a slot within the booking window and minimum notice, or no active team member at the default location with Run sales appointments permission — and where in Settings to fix it.

Configure:

• Online self-booking — turns lead scheduling links on or off
• Appointment duration — 30, 45, 60, 90, or 120 minutes
• Minimum notice — prevents customers from booking too close to the current

time

• Booking window — controls how many future days customers can see
• Weekly hours — turns each weekday on or off and sets its opening and

closing times

Times use each lead location's timezone. Select Save self-booking settings after making changes. An invalid enabled day whose closing time is not after its opening time is rejected.

When a customer books, CE Pro:

1. Rechecks the exact configured slot against live lead appointments and any

scheduled or in-progress job assigned to the candidate's crew.

1. Keeps a qualified, active assigned lead owner exclusive. If the saved owner

is no longer an eligible appointment executor, V2 uses the ordered pool of active teammates with Run sales appointments permission and access to that location.

1. Atomically reserves the member/crew capacity so two customers cannot take

the same resource's time.

1. Saves the structured estimate-visit date, start, end, assigned teammate, and

schedule revision on the lead. It does not guess a tenant-specific pipeline stage.

1. Records one durable lead.appointment_booked event. A retrying worker sends

the transactional confirmation email when the client has a usable email method. Before delivery and through provider acceptance, it rechecks the exact appointment schedule revision and the original customer, property, and location. The email method and address selected when a delivery attempt starts are frozen and revalidated through provider acceptance. An address changed before the first attempt can be selected, but an in-flight attempt cannot be redirected. A delayed event cannot confirm a visit the office has since moved or reassigned.

Current V2 links are created manually from the lead detail page; the tenant- configurable automation engine and [lead.booking_link] merge field remain V1 parity work. The raw link is shown only when it is created. Replacing it makes the prior link stop working immediately, and every link expires at the end of the configured booking window. The customer link always opens as a standalone public scheduling page, including when the visitor already has an active CE Pro session. Reassigning the lead to another customer or service property revokes the old link. Archiving the customer or service property also makes the link unavailable. Deactivating the lead's office location also makes both availability and booked details unavailable. A booking attempt locks the exact customer and property state through commit and rechecks link expiry plus minimum-notice and booking-window eligibility after any lock wait. Confirmation delivery locks the exact active location, customer, property address, location timezone, workspace name, and selected email destination through provider acceptance. It locks and rechecks transactional email consent at that final boundary, so a revocation prevents the provider call. If another office tab replaces a link, the first tab removes its stale one-time URL as soon as it reloads the lead.

Self-booking link vs. the Booking Widget below: The current V2 scheduling link above reserves an appointment for an existing lead. The embeddable Booking Widget below is a separate, shipped V2 feature that lets anyone request a new estimate from your own website with no existing lead and no login. The one gap: there is no [lead.booking_link] automation merge field, so an automation cannot insert a link to either tool into a message.

Booking Widget

The booking widget is an embeddable estimate request form that you can add to your own website. It provides the same functionality as the portal's estimate request form but runs directly on your site.

Enabling the Booking Widget

1. Go to Settings --> Portal.
2. Scroll to the Booking Widget section.
3. Toggle the widget to Active.
4. Copy the embed code snippet.
5. Select Save portal settings; a confirmation line appears in the Online

self-booking section above, along with the readiness line described there.

Embedding on Your Website

Paste the provided code snippet into your website's HTML where you want the booking form to appear:

<iframe
  src="https://app.cleanestimate.pro/book/your-slug"
  width="100%"
  height="600"
  frameborder="0"
  title="Request an Estimate"
></iframe>

The widget adapts to the width of its container. It uses your portal branding for a consistent look.

Widget Behavior

• Customers fill out their name, contact information, property address, and service needs.
• On submission, a new lead is created in your pipeline with the source tagged as "Booking Widget."
• The customer sees a confirmation message.
• You receive a notification (email and/or SMS, depending on your notification settings).

Review Requests

Review requests are automated messages that encourage customers to leave a review after a job is completed.

How Review Requests Work

1. A job is marked as complete in CE Pro.
2. CE Pro sends an automated email or SMS (based on your automation settings) with a link to your portal's review page.
3. The customer clicks the link and submits a review.
4. If the customer gives a rating of 4 or 5 stars and you have a Google Review URL configured, they are prompted to post the review on Google.

Configuring the Google Review URL

1. Go to Settings > Portal.
2. Find the Google review link (optional) field, just below the Customer Reviews toggle.
3. Paste the direct HTTPS Google review link for your Business Profile.
4. Click Save portal settings.

To find your Google review link:

1. Search for your business on Google Maps.
2. Click your business listing.
3. Click the "Write a Review" button.
4. Copy the URL from your browser's address bar.

Only Google-owned review links are accepted here. Non-Google or non-HTTPS URLs are ignored for safety, and the portal still captures the internal CE Pro review even if the public Google link is unavailable.

Review Request Timing

Current V2 sends one fixed review request two hours after a job first reaches Complete. The timing and number of requests are not configurable in Settings > Automations because that workspace has not been ported. V1's configurable review-request sequences remain automation parity work.

How Customers Access the Portal

Direct customers to your portal through any of these channels:

• Direct link -- Share the portal URL on your website, social media profiles, or Google Business listing.
• QR code -- Generate a QR code for the portal URL and print it on business cards, door hangers, yard signs, or vehicle wraps.
• Estimate and invoice emails -- Links to the portal are automatically included in estimate, proposal, and invoice emails sent from CE Pro.
• SMS messages -- Include the portal link in text messages to customers.
• Website embed -- Use the booking widget to embed the estimate request form directly on your website.

If the same email address exists under more than one provider, CE Pro hides the shared customer dashboard, estimate list, and message history until the customer opens a direct signed link from the correct provider. That prevents account history from being mixed across different companies.

Holiday Lights Portal Tab

If your account has the Holiday Lights module enabled, the portal includes an additional tab where customers can view their holiday lighting proposals and designs. This tab appears automatically when the module is active. No additional configuration is needed.

Tips

• Enable only the features your customers will actually use. A simpler portal is easier for customers to navigate.
• Test your portal from a customer's perspective. Open the URL in a private browser window and verify the layout, branding, and forms.
• If you use the referral feature, mention it to satisfied customers after completing a job. Referrals convert at higher rates than cold leads.
• Make sure your Stripe integration is connected before enabling invoice payments on the portal.
• Set up your Google Review URL before enabling the review feature. Without it, reviews stay internal to CE Pro and are not posted publicly.
• Embed the booking widget on every page of your website, not just the contact page. More visibility means more leads.