Customer Portal: A Guide – LMN

Within this article you will find a comprehensive breakdown related to your Customer Portal needs!

Select from the list below to jump to its spot within the article!

Customer Portal Guide
Creating your "Customer" Portal Account
Customer Portal Beta Test for Contractors
Granting Customer Access to the Portal
Setting Up Portal Defaults
Setting Up Color Code Maps
Proposal Approvals
Work Requests

Customer Portal Guide

Welcome to LMN’s Customer Portal! The Portal was designed to allow you to make Payments Online, review, approve Estimates, submit Work Requests, and communicate in real-time with your Contractor.

**TIP** The Customer Portal Guide is now available in PDF and Word attachments. Scroll to the bottom of this article to download and share with your Customers.

To access the Customer Portal, the Contractor will send you a ‘Welcome Email’ to create an account.

Step 1: Create Your Customer Portal Account

Simply click the link to create your Customer Portal account to establish a login. Please note: the registration link will expire in 5 days. If the link has expired, please contact the Contractor to ask them to resend the invite. Once you click on the link, the contractor would have already added your name, last name and email ID, so those will be filled out for you already. Create a password and repeat it.

Once your account is created, bookmark to your browser for ease of use. Also note, if you have forgotten your login credentials, please click the “forgot username or password” button.

Log in to the Customer Portal to Pay Invoices Online, view Estimates, and submit Work Requests. If applicable, you may add additional Portal users to your account and provide the same or modified access. Setup your Profile by enabling email notifications to receive an alert if an Invoice or Estimate has been published to your Portal.

Step 2: Pay Invoices Online

In order to make Payment Online, you will need to add a Payment Method. You will find this option under the Profile tab. **TIP** Once a Payment Method is added, you can setup auto-charge for recurring monthly invoices.

Click Add New Payment Method to add your desired credit card and/ or ACH payment. **Please note: check with your Contractor if they accept ACH

To make a Payment against an Invoice that has been published to the Customer Portal, click the Invoices tab and select the applicable Invoice. Once viewed, you can download the Invoice for your records and click Checkout. Select Payment Method and select Pay Now.

Setup Auto-Charge

In your Customer Portal Account, select Profile and Add New Payment Method, and select Use for auto-charge.

Enter the limit you want to authorize for auto-charge(s) to your card and Save.

Step 3: Review, Approve and Comment on Proposed Work

To review, approve, request change, or comment on an Estimate proposed by Contractor, click the Estimates tab:

Step 4: Have a Work Request? Easily submit Work Request(s) to your Contractor right within the Portal

To submit a Work Request, click Requests >Submit New Request and fill in the required details of your request:

Customer Portal Guide Attachment.pdf

Customer Portal Guide Attachment.docx

Creating your “Customer” Portal Account

As a customer, your contractor will invite you to the Customer Portal so you can view jobsites information and pay invoices. After an invite has been sent, you will receive an email with a link to use to activate your portal.

To activate your portal:

Go to the link provided in your email invitation
Go Register Account
Click Register Account
Add your name, email, desired username, and password and add the registration code to the field provided. Click that you accept the Terms & Conditions and click Create Account
This will take you back to the main screen, where you can use your Username and Password created in step 3 to login

Dashboard

Your Dashboard will provide you with an at-a-glance view of your last 10 visits. The information found here includes:

Photos
Jobsite Name/Address
Task the crew worked on
Time of visit

Jobsites

The Jobsites section will give you in-depth information on the jobsites associated with your portal. Here, we have three tabs which you can navigate through:

1) Jobsites

Will give you a map view of any jobsites associated with your portal.
This map is color-coded to specify when crews were last onsite at your property.
Navigating the map:
- When the header is white, it means those results will not be displayed
- When the header has a colored background, it means those results will be displayed
- Set the circle to the desired space, using the edges to adjust the size
- The jobs shown on the right hand menu are the jobs in your selected area

Click on the headers at the top of the page to narrow down your pins on the map
Click on set radius to zoom in on a specific area on your map
Search by customer name, address, etc to see a specific jobsites

Reviewing your data from the map:
- Visit Details: Will show you the date and time(s) while the crew was onsite
- Services & Materials: Will show you any services completed or materials applied while the crew was onsite
- Visit Photos: Will show you any photos taken by the crew while onsite

Click on a pin on the map, or a job from the right-hand menu to see the specifics for the last 5 visits
Click the date tabs to navigate between these visits for more information
The information available depends on your permission level, but might include:

2) Visit Details

Will show you all visits for jobsites associated with your portal, based on date range.
Adjusting your search:
- Default will be for the last month

Use the start and end dates to change your search result
Search for a specific address or task completed

Select the visit you’d like more information on by clicking on the line in your search results
The information available depends on your permission level, but might include:

Visit Details: Will show you the date and time(s) while the crew was onsite
Services & Materials: Will show you any services completed or materials applied while the crew was onsite
Visit Photos: Will show you any photos taken by the crew while onsite

3) Visit Schedule

Will show you all scheduled work for jobsites associated to your portal, based on date range.
Adjusting your search:
- Will default to next three future months

Use the start and end dates to change your search result
Search for a specific address or task scheduled

The information available here:
- The status of your scheduled work. Options are as follows:
- The date the work is on the calendar for.
- The name of the jobsites associated with your account.
- The task scheduled for your jobsites for the date specified.

Visit Status:
Scheduled Date:
Jobsite Name:
Task:

To print this information, click the Print button on the right

Invoices

The Invoices section will allow you to view current and past invoices. Here, we have two tabs which you can navigate through:

1) All Invoices

Will show you all invoices for jobsites associated with your portal, based on date range.
- The list includes invoice status, date, number, total amount, and invoice balance.
- You also have the ability to search by jobsite or invoice number (top-right section in this tab)

2) Payment History

Will show you all payments associated with invoices in your portal, based on date range.
- The list includes payment date, method, total amount, jobsite, and invoice number.
- You also have the ability to search by jobsite, transaction, or invoice number (top-right section in this tab)

Users

As an Admin user, you can add and edit users on your portal.

To add a new User:
1. Click the +User button
2. Add your user’s email address and pick the user type
3. Click Apply to send an invitation

User Permission Levels

Admin
- Can do everything, except for delete the last Admin.
- Can access: Timeline (dashboard), Jobsites tabs, Profile, Invoices, Users.
- Can't access: Can't create Admin Level accounts, can't assign Admin Level to existing accounts, Can't downgrade Admin Level accounts.

Accounting and Billing
- Can access: Timeline (dashboard), Jobsites tabs, Profile, Invoices.
- Can't access: Users.

Basic
- Can access: Timeline (dashboard), Jobsites.
- Can't access: Profile, Invoices, Users.

Profile

The Profile tab is where you can change your password and add payment methods.

Change your password

Click the Change Password button
Type your Current Password in the fields provided
Type your new Password in the fields provided - note: your password must have one lower case letter, one uppercase letter, one number, and one special character.

Add or Edit Payment Methods

We will only support one credit card per user - if we feel the need to increase this, we will reevaluate. Customers can also add a credit card on the fly.

In the future, we will have a pre-authorize option “Pre-authorize up to $X”. Customer will enter their comfortable value here for future pre-auth. This will allow contractors to charge automatically for all enabled customers.

Click Add Payment Method
Add Payment Method
Click Save Payment Method

Customer Portal Beta Test for LMN Contractors

In order to better understand what your customers will see in the Customer Portal, we recommend that LMN contractors test it for themselves. This beta test will allow you to take a glimpse at the information that is visible to your client base as you have it set up.

Invite Yourself to the Customer Portal

To get things started, create yourself as a contact within the CRM.

CRM > Contacts > +New. Create your company as an Internal Contact using your business information and email address
Click on your name within CRM contacts to ensure details are correct, and then navigate to the Customer Portal tab to Invite yourself. **TIP - Scroll down to the bottom of this article to learn how to enable the Customer Portal on behalf of your Customers by adding their Credit Card & setting up autopay for payment processing**
Once Invite is sent, open the email sent from LMN Customer Portal and click the registration link to Create Your Account:

Fill in the required information, check off the agree box and then click CONFIGURE ACCOUNT
Click SIGN IN and enter your Customer Portal Username/ password. **Please note, these are not the same credentials that you use to log into LMN**
Log into your customer portal to see what your customers would see using your Portal Defaults. These settings can be changed at the Customer Level under the Permissions tab.

Publish/ Email an Estimate to the Portal

Create an Estimate (or copy an existing one and link to your Internal Customer) to Publish to the portal. Check your Inbox for email notification and the option to view attachment and/ or log into Customer Portal
Log in to the Customer Portal to view, comment, approve, reject Estimate(s)

Publish an Invoice to the Portal

Please note, a Merchant Account is required to Publish Invoices to the Customer Portal.

Next, create a Job (or copy an existing one and link to your Internal Customer)
Activate the Job for Invoicing. The easiest test Invoice example is to create an Invoice Contract, however, you can test Per Visit and Hourly by setting up and punching into, then submitting Timesheet
From the Invoice Generate tab, >run (+Invoice) the test Invoice(s)
To Publish to Customer Portal, go to Invoice List, select the invoice(s) and click Update Invoices to SEND/PUBLISH INVOICES in bulk or one at a time
View Published Invoice (s) in the Customer Portal. Add a Payment Method and test making a payment of i.e $1 against the Invoice.

Enable the Customer Portal on behalf of your Customer and manage Credit Card Payment Methods and autopay within the CRM Contact

Skip ahead with the Beta Test and set yourself up for the Portal automatically without creating a Portal account to start. Follow the instruction below, you can Invite Yourself to the Portal without accepting the invite! This will allow you to Beta Test Payments faster and invite customers to sign up for the Portal to pay Invoices, without ever logging into the Portal. Down the road, should they wish to, they can activate their Portal account to view Invoices, Submit Work Requests & view 'select' Jobsite Activity.

To start, activate the Customer Portal on behalf of your Customer and send Invite. The Customer (You, for Beta Testing purposes) will receive an email that they have been invited to the Portal but are not required to log in
Once Invite is sent, go to Portal Users and click +Add Payment Method
Fill in the required fields to manually add your Payment Method for Beta Testing purposes. All transactions that you process, can be voided and/ or refunded
Now that a Payment Method has been added, you can send the Approved Invoice to the Portal and make Payment by running the card on file. For effort-free monthly recurring Invoices, we recommend enabling autopay that will allow you to automatically process payments via Payment Runs.

For more information on Customer Portal features, log into the Academy Online - Learning Plan 9.0

Granting Customer Access to the Portal

With the Customer Portal, you can grant your customers access to view jobsite information and pay invoices. To complete setup, follow these steps:

Go to CRM > Contacts
Select the customer you wish to set up
Along the top of your screen within this customer account, click on the Customer Portal tab
Click the "Activate Customer Portal" button
On the Confirm Portal Activation screen, click Yes
Under the Permissions tab, make any changes to data configuration of the portal account - once complete, click Save Portal Settings
After you have configured what you want your customer to see, click the "Send Customer Invite" button
- Add the emails for the customers you would like to invite to this specific account’s portal. Note: If you click the +Add button, that will automatically fill in the contact's email, first, and last name for you!
- As a rule of thumb, we typically suggest inviting your main point of contact. They will have the opportunity to add their colleagues/family/friends from the portal, specifying user permission levels there
After the invite has been sent, your customer will receive an email with a link to activate their portal (Note: they will need to act fast as these links will expire in 5 days, due to security purposes).

Setting Up Portal Defaults

Before you begin granting access to the portal, go to Settings > Account > Portal & Payments to determine what you will show the majority of your customers. You will be able to adjust portal options at the customer level as well if you have a customer who requires more or less access than your default settings.

Show Scheduled Dates + Info
Show your customers when you are scheduled to be onsite. Will show scheduled visits and status.
Show Actual Dates + Info
Provide your customers with a variety of options so they can see what is happening on their job site. This information will be driven by your field employee’s timesheets. Note: we recommend you notify your field employees of what information will be shown to customers in the portal. It will be important that your crews send accurate timesheet data as it becomes present in the portal in real-time, as soon as it’s selected on a timesheet.

Show GPS Location

Do not show GPS locations
Show GPS location of punch in time
Show GPS location of punch out time

Show Crew Notes

Show Weather Notes

Show Equipment Notes

Show Punch In Time (Punch out will automatically be shown by default INTERNAL: we do this because we want the map to show more recent status - will look like the contractor is more responsive)

Show Services Completed

Show Timesheet Photos

Show Timesheet Photo Comments

Setting Up Color Code Maps

Color code Service Maps
This section can be accessed under Settings > Account > Portal & Payments. It allows you to determine what color pins show on your customer's maps, giving them an at-a-glance look at when their properties were last serviced. Based on the time of year or type of customer, you might want shorter time periods for snow season and longer time periods for the green season.

You will fill in the space provided with the time frame in hours

Very recently serviced
Recently serviced
Not recently serviced

Proposal Approvals

In this article, we are going to show you how your customers can review and approve their proposals through the Customer Portal. This exciting new feature is going to help you communicate better with your customers as they can review proposals, request changes, and ask questions in real-time.

If you'd like to review a video tutorial on this process from both your view in LMN and your customer's view in the Portal, please click HERE.

Once your customer is logged into the portal, they can click on estimates on the left-hand side.

This is where your customer will be able to see all the estimates that you have published to the Portal along with the status of those estimates, creation date, when it was last modified, the estimate description, and the version number.
To review: Click on one of the existing estimates.

On the estimate page, your customer will see the estimate details right at the top of their screen.
They will be able to view the estimate that you have shared with them by clicking View Proposal.

From here, the estimate will be downloaded as a PDF document and your customer can review the proposal that you have created.

If you have uploaded files or photos for your customers to view along with their proposal, they will be able to see those documents under the Attachments section.

In the proposal History section, they will see when the proposal was shared and whether any changes have been requested with the respective date and time.

The comment section is perfect for communicating with your customer. For example, if your customer has a question they wanted to ask you about the proposal, they can type it into the comment section which will be sent to you directly.

The biggest action here is the option to Approve, Reject, or Request Change on an estimate.

If your customer clicks to reject the estimate (which we hope doesn’t happen), then they have the option to select a reason why and add a comment which will be sent to you to review.

If instead, they request a change, they can simply add a comment as to what that change is.

If the customer has reviewed the proposal and they are happy with the pricing that was presented – they can go ahead and click on the approve button.
Here they can enter their name, the system stamps the date and they can digitally sign to approve the estimate. If they have any comments that they want to send back to you –ADD “looks good, when can you start”, then they can add those here.
Once they click the confirm button, you will receive an email notification with the proposal attached, to let you know that you have an approved estimate from this customer.
The customer portal will also update with any comments made as well as the customers signature so that there is a full record of the approval process.

It's that easy! We're confident that this update will improve customer relations as well as the turn-around time on communication when sending out proposals.

Work Requests

In this article, we are going to show you how your customers can make Work Requests through the Customer Portal. This exciting new feature is going to will help create upsell opportunities you might have missed in the past.