Dubsado Client Portal: A Complete Guide for Business Owners
If you're looking for a way to simplify your business operations and improve client communication, the Dubsado client portal may be just what you need.
This tool allows you to manage all aspects of your client relationships in one place, from invoices and contracts to email communication.
In this guide, I'll show you how to get started with the Dubsado client portal and make the most of its many features.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. This comes at no additional cost to you.
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What is the Dubsado Client Portal?
The Dubsado client portal is a place to store all your clients' documents and information. It’s a great place for your client to find everything they need on their project and communicate with you.
Inside the Dubsado portal your clients can see:
Invoices
Appointments
Projects information
Personal information they’ve provided to you (name, address, phone, email, etc.). They can edit their information inside the portal.
Email threads
Contracts - once they are sent to the client
Proposals - once they are sent to the client
Forms and questionnaires - once they are sent to the client
Shared task boards
There are a few things that will not be visible to your client in the portal, those are: notes, to-do lists, call logs.
For your clients to log into the portal, send them a direct Dubsado login link or you can embed a login link in your website.
A client portal can be password protected or not, and you also can set the password for the client.
Activating the Client Portal
You need to activate the client portals for each new client in Dubsado. This can be done through a workflow or you can activate it manually.
To manually activate a client portal, go to the clients project:
Beside the Portal section, click on the drop down arrow.
Click ‘Activate’.
Done! The portal is active. Click on the drop down arrow again.
Click ‘View’ to see the portal OR click ‘Send’ and a canned email will pop up with the client portal link and password. You can customize this email before sending it out.
Setting up and customizing the Client Portal
Dubsado gives you the ability to customize your client portal with your branding. It gives your clients a seamless experience as your branding is consistent across all touchpoints.
To customize your client portal, in your Dubsado account go to ‘Settings’ (gear icon) at the top right of your screen. Then select ‘Portal’ on the left hand menu.
Inside the Portal Settings you can edit the following settings:
Portal Welcome Message: write your own welcome message or hide it. Hiding the welcome message is useful if your banner already has text in it.
Portal Projects Label Override: this is useful if you don’t want it to say ‘Project’ inside the portal but something else instead.
Portal Specific Logo: you can upload a different logo or hide it. If you don’t upload a different logo, Dubsado will use the logo uploaded in your brand settings.
Uploading a portal specific logo is helpful if you want to display a different logo in your portal. It's helpful if you have a dark banner and need to upload a white logo for it to be visible.
You can choose to hide your logo if you don’t want it to appear in the portal. You can do this if your banner design already includes your logo in it.
Portal banner: upload your Dubsado client portal banner for desktop. The banner size for desktop is 1800 px x 200 px. You can create a client portal banner in Canva and upload into Dubsado.
Keep in mind that the right hand size of the banner can get cut off on some devices. Make sure that anything that you want your clients to see is on the left hand side of the design.
Portal Mobile Device Banner: upload your Dubsado client portal banner for mobile. The banner size for mobile is 700 px x 400 px.
Portal Banner color: this color will be visible if you do not upload a portal banner. In this case your banner will be made of this solid color plus your welcome message and logo. It is also the color of the inbox tab in your portal.
Portal Banner Font Color: this is the color of the portal welcome message text and the ‘Logout’ button.
Portal Summary Header Color: this is the color of the four summary tabs seen in the portal. The summary tabs are: Business Info, Unread Emails, Incomplete Forms, Open Invoices.
Portal Summary Header Font Color: this is the color of the text used in the different tabs. Make sure there is enough contrast between the header + portal banner color and the header font color. This helps the text to be visible.
Designing a Dubsado client portal banner
To add your own branding to your client portal you can design a Dubsado client portal banner image in Canva.
You can customize the client portal banner for different types of devices. I recommend creating a separate banner for desktop and mobile.
Desktop banner: In Canva create a custom size design of 1800 px x 200 px. Since the design gets cut off on the right side on some devices, keep the most important design elements on the left side of the banner. This is to make sure they are always visible to clients.
Because this banner size is wide and not very tall, background images will get cut off. It works best to use a pattern as a background image OR to use several smaller images in the design.
Mobile banner: Create a custom size design of 700 px x 400 px.
Once your banners are ready, download the images from Canva as a .png or .jpg. Then use an image compressor tool like TinyJPG or Website Planet to compress your images before uploading into Dubsado.
Let’s Make Dubsado Work for You!
🌟 Get 30% off your first month or year of Dubsado with my code EMAKATIRAEE
🎨 Check out my time-saving Dubsado templates
📅 Let’s chat! Book a free Discovery Call to get your Dubsado running smoothly
Adding the Dubsado client portal to your website
There are two ways to connect your Dubsado client portal to your website.
In the top left menu, go to Settings (gear icon) → in the left hand menu click ‘Portal’ → Links and Embed Code.
Portal link: this is a direct link to your Dubsado client portal. You can place the link in your website menu or another location in your site. When people click on the link it will take them to your client portal URL. Clients with an active portal and password can log in.
Portal embed code: add this piece of code into a code block on your site. A Dubsado client portal login will appear in that spot on your website. It’s not an external link to Dubsado. Instead your client portal will appear within your website.
Tutorial: How to customize your Dubsado Client Portal
Here is a quick tutorial to customize the settings of your Dubsado Client Portal. I'll go over how to create a client portal banner in Canva.
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