LMN Customer Portal: Admin/Contractor Guide

For an in-depth look at the Customer Portal through your Customer's POV and step-by-step instructions to share with your customers, see the LMN Customer Portal: Customer Guide article. 

In this article:

Customer Portal Testing for LMN Users

Configure Customer Permissions

Portal Settings

Estimates Overview

Request Work

Customer Portal Testing for LMN Users

As a Contractor, in order to better understand what your customers will see in the Customer Portal, we recommend that LMN Users test it for themselves. This 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.

1. In LMN navigate to CRM > Contacts
2. Click +New
3. Create your company as an Internal Contact using your business information and email address.
4. Click on your name within CRM contacts to ensure details are correct
5. Navigate to the Customer Portal tab to invite yourself.
6. Click Send Customer Invite
   💡 Tip: Below, learn how to Enable the Customer Portal on behalf of your Customers by adding their Credit Card & setting up autopay for payment processing
7. Once Invite is sent, open the email sent from LMN Customer Portal and click the registration link to Create Your Account.
8. Fill in the required information, check off the agree box and then click Create Account.
   
9. Click Sign In and enter your Customer Portal Email & Password.
   ⚠️ Note, these are not the same credentials that you use to log into LMN 
   
10. Log into your customer portal to see what your customers would see using your Portal Defaults.  These settings can be changed by going to CRM > Contacts > Customer Portal tab > Permissions > Live Map Color Set Up section in LMN. 
    💡See the Customer Portal Section of this article for more settings information.

Publish/ Email an Estimate to the Portal

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

Publish an Invoice to the Portal 

🛑 *A Merchant Account is required to Publish Invoices to the Customer Portal.*

1. Next, create a Job (or copy an existing one and link to your Internal Customer)
2. Activate the Job for Invoicing. 
   💡Tip: 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.
3. Navigate to Invoice > Generate
4. Click the + Invoice Run button to run the test Invoice(s)
5. To publish to Customer Portal, go to Invoices > Invoice List, select the invoice(s) and click Update Invoices and select Send/Publish Invoices in bulk or one at a time.
6. View Published Invoice(s) in the Customer Portal. 
   💡Tip: Add a Payment Method and test making a payment of i.e $1 against the Invoice.

🎥 Sending Invoices to you Customer Video

Enable the Customer Portal on behalf of your Customer & Manage Credit Card Payment Methods & Autopay within the CRM Contact

Skip ahead with the LMN User Customer Portal Testing 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 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 log into their Portal account to view Invoices, Submit Work Requests & view 'select' Jobsite Activity.

1. Navigate to CRM > Contacts
2. Select the Customer Portal tab. By default, when new contacts are added to CRM, the Customer Portal is turned ON.
3. Click the Send Customer Invite button.
4. On the Send Portal Invites pop-up, invite yourself by checking the box next to your name, select Permission type, and when finished, click Send.
   The Customer (You, for testing purposes) will receive an email that they have been invited to the Portal but are not required to log in.
   
5. Once Invite is sent, in the Customer Portal tab, click the Portal Users tab
6. Click the +Add button under Payment Method
7. Fill in the required fields to manually add your Payment Method for testing purposes. All transactions that you process, can be voided and/ or refunded
8. 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. 
   💡Tip: For effort-free monthly recurring Invoices, we recommend enabling Autopay- that will allow you to automatically process payments via Payment Runs.

🎥 Customer Portal Features Video

Configure Customer Permissions

As an LMN User, configure what your Customers can have access to when viewing the Customer Portal.

1. Navigate to CRM > Contacts
2. Select the Customer Portal tab. 
   ⚠️ Note: By default, when new contacts are added to CRM, the Customer Portal is turned ON.
3. Select the Permissions tab and make any changes to data configuration of the portal account - once complete.
4. When finished, click Save Changes (top right)
5. 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. 
     💡Tip: 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.
     
6. After the invite has been sent, your customer will receive an email with a link to enter their portal. 
   ⚠️ Note: Links will expire in 5 days, due to security purposes.

Portal Settings

Set Up Portal Defaults

Before you, an LMN User, begin granting your Customers 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.

Set Up Color Code Maps

This section can be accessed in LMN 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.

1. Scroll down to Live Map Color Settings
2. Fill in the space provided with the time frame in hours

Estimates Overview

Customers can review and approve their proposals through the Customer Portal. This feature will help Contractors communicate better with your customers as they can review proposals, request changes, and ask questions in real-time.

1. 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.
   
2. To review: Click on one of the existing Estimates. On the Estimate page, your customer will see the estimate details at the top of their screen.
3. They will be able to view the Estimate that you have shared with them by clicking View Proposal.
4. Estimate will be downloaded as a PDF document and your customer can review the proposal that you have created.
   
5. Uploaded files or photos for your customers to view along with their proposal, will be visible under the Attachments section.
6. In the History section, Customers will see when the Proposal was shared and whether any changes have been requested with the respective date and time.
7. The Comments 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.

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

   Reject	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.
   Request Change	If instead, they Request Change, they can simply add a comment as to what that change is.
   Approve	If the customer has reviewed the Proposal and they are happy with the pricing that was presented – they can go ahead and click 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 e.g. “looks good, when can you start” Once the Customer clicks 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.

🎥 Estimate Approvals Video

Request Work

Below, see how a Customer can make Work Requests through the Customer Portal.

1. To begin, the Customer will need to log into the Customer Portal and click on the Requests tab.
2. Then click the + Submit New Request button.
3. Next, the Customer will add in information about the request they are making – for example, maybe they need an irrigation head replaced because it was damaged from cutting the lawn.
   They can:
   • Mark that request as Urgent Request
   • Choose their Jobsite
   • Enter Request details.
   • If they have any photos of the property or the area where the work is required, they can upload photos.
4. Once they’re ready, they can click the Submit button and the request will now be forwarded to you in your LMN account in the To-Dos tab!

🎥 Work Requests Video

Need more help?  Contact our Support Team by email at lmn-support@granum.com, through Live Chat, or by phone at (888) 347-9864

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