Portal Overview

The Customer Portal is a web app where your customers—pool owners—view their service history, manage billing, and communicate with your team. It's separate from your Chisel Tide dashboard and gives customers self-service access to their account information without needing to call or email you.

How customers access the portal

Customers sign in using magic link authentication—similar to the passwordless approach used for business users. They enter Your email or phone, receive a link, and click it to sign in. The magic link expires after 15 minutes. If a person can access more than one customer account, the portal shows Switch account so they can move between those accounts after sign-in.

This authentication is completely separate from your team's sign-in. Customers don't have access to your Admin Dashboard, and your staff doesn't have access to the Customer Portal.

The six portal tabs

The portal is organized into six main areas, each accessible from a bottom tab bar:

Health

The Health tab is the portal home. It shows customers their pool's current condition at a glance: a health score with status badge, trend indicator, and the last time readings were updated. Below that, a chemistry strip displays recent measurements for pH, free chlorine, alkalinity, temperature, and salt.

Before the first service visit, customers see a welcome message explaining that their pool health and service story will appear once their first visit is complete.

Work Orders

Customers view and respond to work order quotes here. The tab shows all work orders organized by status: All, Needs action, Active, and Done. When a customer opens a quoted work order, they can Approve, Approve & sign electronically, or Decline. Customers can also view photos, signatures, and activity history for each work order.

For more on the work order lifecycle and how customers interact with quotes, see Work Orders.

History

The History tab shows customers their complete service record—every completed, skipped, or cancelled visit. Each visit entry includes photos and notes from your technicians, giving customers visibility into what happened at each stop.

Messages

Customers use this tab to send messages to your service team. It provides a direct communication channel for questions, requests, or concerns without requiring a phone call or separate email thread.

Billing

Customers view and pay invoices, manage saved payment methods, and configure autopay. They can also view any active payment plans. This tab requires you to have Stripe connected to accept online payments.

Account

Customers update their contact information here: phone number, alternate phone, and preferred contact method (email, text message, or phone call). The Account tab also provides shortcuts to notification settings, autopay configuration, and saved payment methods—each linking to the appropriate section in Billing.

Key customer capabilities

Through the Customer Portal, your customers can:

• Monitor pool health — View their pool's health status and chemistry readings from recent visits

• Review service history — See photos and notes from every completed visit

• Approve or decline quotes — Respond to work order quotes without a phone call

• Communicate with your team — Send messages through the portal

• Pay invoices — View and pay outstanding invoices online via credit card or bank transfer (ACH) when available

• Set up autopay — Authorize automatic payments for recurring invoices

• Manage payment plans — View installment schedules for payment plans you've set up

• Update contact preferences — Change phone numbers and preferred contact method. Switch among multiple accessible customer accounts when applicable

What you control

As the service provider, you manage the customer's experience from your Admin Dashboard:

• Portal access — Enable or disable a customer's ability to sign in

• Service history visibility — Customers see visits you complete on their routes

• Work order quotes — You decide when to send quotes for customer approval

• Payment options — Autopay and payment plans require you to connect Stripe

Preview the customer portal

You can preview what a customer sees when they sign in to the portal without leaving your admin dashboard. Open any customer record and click View Portal as Customer in the Customer Portal card. The portal opens in a new tab with a read-only session that lasts 15 minutes.

The preview shows the real portal — not a static mockup. You can see the customer's health, history, work orders, messages, and billing tabs exactly as they appear to the customer, but you cannot make changes. Portal write actions are blocked during a preview session.

Next steps

• Set up Stripe billing to let customers pay invoices and enable autopay

• Learn about work orders to understand the quote approval workflow customers use