Client portal access is invite-only — there's no public signup for clients. You (the contractor) decide which of your clients gets a login.
Heads up before you start: if the property manager you're inviting is already using TradelyHQ because another contractor invited them first, your invite just adds your shop to their existing login. Same email, same password they already use. They don't have to set up a new account, and you don't have to wait for them to "create one." Once a property manager is on TradelyHQ, every contractor they hire after gets onboarded with one click.
How to send the invite
- Open the Clients tab in your admin portal
- Click the + Invite New Client button at the top of the page
- Enter the name and email of their main contact (usually the facility manager or property owner — the person on their side who should run the account)
- Click Send
You send the invite straight from the Clients tab header — you don't have to open a specific client first.
What the client sees in their email
If their email isn't already on TradelyHQ, they get a welcome message with a setup link. They click the link, pick their own password, and land in their Client Portal where they immediately see the work orders you've already done for them.
If their email is already on TradelyHQ (because another contractor invited them first), they get a different email — "[Your shop name] has added you as a client. Sign in with your existing password." No new password to set, no new account to create. They log in like they normally do, and your shop now shows up alongside their other contractors.
What the main contact can do in the portal
The first person you invite for a given client becomes the owner of that client's account in your portal. Owners can:
- See every work order for their company
- Submit new work order requests (with an optional "Quote Needed" flag)
- Comment on existing work orders
- Edit the addresses and lockbox codes for their own sites
- View invoices and download PDFs for their accounting
- See the spending caps you've set on their account (view only — they can see them but can't raise them)
- See the Reports tab — spend by location, repeat issues, compliance percentages
- Invite their own teammates to the portal
What client teammates can do
When the main contact invites their facility-manager dispatchers or office staff, those people land as regular users in the portal. They can:
- See the list of work orders and open individual ones
- Submit new work order requests
- Comment on work orders
Regular users cannot see invoices, spending caps, or reports. That's owner-only on purpose — dispatchers and operations staff can handle the day-to-day without seeing the money side.
Removing a client user
Open the Clients tab, find the user you want to remove, and click Remove. Their login is deleted and that email is freed up so you can re-invite the same address later if you need to. Any requests they submitted stay in your queue — only their access goes away. If they were also a client of another contractor on TradelyHQ, removing them from your shop doesn't affect their access to that other contractor.
Can a client see my costs or margins?
No. The Reports tab in the Client Portal only shows what they paid (the invoiced amount). It does not show your tech-rate, parts cost, markup percentage, or anything internal. There's no way for the client to see your internal numbers, no matter where they click.
Invite limit
You can send up to 50 client invites per shop in any rolling 24 hours. Tech invites have their own separate 50-per-24-hour limit, so the two don't share a bucket — in practice, that's up to 100 total invites in a day across both kinds. If you're onboarding lots of clients at once and need more, contact us — we'll lift the cap.