Customer Account Link
The Account link is a secure, no-login web page you send to a customer so they can view their account themselves — their jobs, quotes, invoices and statement across all of their sites, in one place.
It works like a courier tracking link: the customer opens a single link, with no username or password. The link is account-level — it spans every site the customer owns. This is different from CleverAlert, which is the customer's site-level app; the Account link is the account-wide, read-only view.
For security the link is an opaque, hard-to-guess code, it expires after 30 days, and you can revoke it at any time.
Share an account link
- Open the customer from the Customers page.
- In the header, click Account link.
- The dialog's To field defaults to the customer's billing email (you can change it, or enter one if none is on file). You can also CC extra recipients — type addresses, or one-click any suggestion: the billing email on file, the customer's contacts, or CleverAlert app users connected to the customer's sites. Contacts tagged Statements & account links are pre-ticked as CC, and the Always button on a contact row saves that tag for future sends.
- Click Create & email link. CleverOps generates the link and emails everyone included a branded "View your account" message.
Everyone on the email receives the same link, so every recipient can open the account view. Only CC people who should see the whole account.
Once a link is active, the dialog shows it with these controls:
- Copy -- copy the full link to paste into WhatsApp, an SMS, or another email.
- Resend email -- send the same active link again. The same recipient picker appears here too: To defaults to whoever originally received the link, and you can change it or add CCs before resending.
- WhatsApp / SMS -- text the link instead of emailing it. The dialog offers every mobile number on file for the customer and pre-selects anyone tagged for statement texts; anyone who replied STOP cannot be messaged. It sends the same active link, so revoking still kills every copy at once.
- Revoke link -- immediately invalidate the link. The previous link stops working at once; create a new one to share again.
- Views and last opened -- how many times the link has been opened and when, so you can see whether the customer has viewed it.
- Expires -- the date the link stops working (30 days from when it was created).
Anyone with the link can open the account view, so treat it like account information — the email tells the customer not to forward it. If a link is shared too widely, Revoke it and create a fresh one.
What the customer sees
The account view is branded with your company logo and details. Its tabs:
- Overview -- current balance (owing or in credit), overdue total, and counts of open jobs, open quotes and unpaid invoices, plus a list of their sites. A customer on a payment arrangement also sees it here -- see Payment arrangements below.
- Jobs -- service jobs across all their sites, with status, scheduled date, site and whether each has been invoiced.
- Quotes -- their sales quotes; opening one shows the full quote with line items and totals.
- Invoices -- their invoices, with status, totals and outstanding balance (an unpaid invoice past its due date shows Overdue); opening one shows the full invoice, plus any supporting documents that went out with it -- the job report, a standing worksheet, a one-off annexure -- each as its own download. Drafts are never shown.
- Statement -- the running account ledger (invoices, payments and credits) with a current balance, plus Export CSV and Print.
- Pay -- pay outstanding invoices online (when Netcash Pay Now is configured), see your banking details, and upload a proof of payment — see Getting paid below. Any payment arrangement sits at the top of this tab, explaining why the monthly collection is less than the full outstanding balance.
- Guarding -- only for a customer whose sites carry rostered guard posts (the Roster module): the posting sheet, one month at a time and per site — who stood which post each day, the shift, the evidence the control room holds (booked on at 05:58 from the phone or a clock, booked off at 18:02; no book-on recorded; not stood), check calls answered out of due, and a Left post flag where the officer's phone left the fence. Past days only — today's shifts are still running. It deliberately shows the officer's name and nothing else about him: no pay, grades, phone numbers or the site's fence.
- Contact us -- a form to report a fault, request new work, or raise an accounts query (it files a ticket for your team).
Invoices and quotes have a Download PDF button. It hands the customer the same branded PDF your team previews in CleverOps and attaches to their email — not a print of the web page. The on-screen view remains a quick, mobile-friendly preview, and the customer can still press Ctrl-P if they'd rather print that.
The job review page
Alongside the account view, the portal hosts the "How did we do?" page a customer lands on when your team requests a review of a completed job (from Needs attention → Review & invoice, or the job's Activity tab). It is also where the completion notice's "How did we do?" button and the automation feedback request now land. It carries your logo and brand colours, names the job, the site, the date and the technician's first name, shows the work done, and asks for one tap: All good, Please call me or Something's not right — with an optional star rating and a note (a note is asked for on Something's not right). Each answer gets its own thank-you screen, the customer can change their answer from the same link, and a View the service report link appears when your team included one. Links live for 14 days from the last send. The answer lands on the job in CleverOps immediately; Please call me and Something's not right also file a follow-up ticket for the person who asked.
Payment arrangements in the portal
When a customer in arrears has agreed a payment arrangement, a Payment arrangement section appears on their Overview and Pay tabs. Customers without one never see it.
It shows the same four figures as your own panel — the monthly instalment, the arrears covered, paid so far and still to pay — plus roughly how many instalments are left, a status pill, and each covered invoice with what remains on it. Under that, in plain words: the monthly debit collects their normal billing in full, plus the instalment towards the oldest covered invoice, those invoices stay open in the meantime, and paying more at any time finishes the arrangement sooner. If collections have been missed, it says how many, out of how many, before the arrangement ends.
Once an arrangement has defaulted, the section reads Ended and tells the customer the remaining balance is now due in full and that normal payment reminders have resumed.
The customer can see their arrangement but cannot change or cancel it. Cancelling restores full-balance collection on every covered invoice from the next run, which is your call, not something an anonymous link-holder should be able to trigger. A customer who wants to renegotiate uses the Contact us tab, which files an accounts ticket for your team.
Getting paid: bank details + proof of payment
Customers can pay two ways. With Netcash Pay Now configured, the Pay tab opens with a Pay online card: every outstanding invoice is ticked, one button pays the combined total by card or instant EFT (untick any invoice to leave it for later), and the cleared payment is recorded against each invoice automatically. Without Pay Now — or if the customer prefers — they pay by EFT and upload a proof of payment, which your team reconciles.
Set up how customers pay you
- Go to Billing → Config and open the Banking sub-tab.
- Under Payment details shown to customers, click Add method and capture your banking details -- label (e.g. "Bank transfer (EFT)"), account holder, bank, account number, branch code, account type, and a reference hint (e.g. "Use your invoice number").
- Add optional Instructions (a SnapScan / PayShap link, or any notes) and keep Show this method to customers ticked.
These details appear on the portal's Pay tab. You can add more than one method, and hide one by unticking its visibility.
What the customer does
On the Pay tab the customer first sees the Pay online card when Pay Now is configured — all their unpaid invoices with the ones to pay ticked, and a single button showing the total (e.g. Pay 3 invoices — R 1 395,00) that takes them to Netcash's secure payment page. Below that are your banking details (with a copy button for the account number) and the proof-of-payment upload: they can pick which invoice it's for, enter the amount and reference, and attach an image or PDF. Their submissions and each one's status appear underneath.
The same three things — Pay online (with Pay Now), your banking details and the proof-of-payment upload — also sit under an unpaid invoice's own link (the one in the invoice email, and the View pro-forma & pay button a customer gets after accepting a quote that asks for a deposit). There the reference is that invoice's number, and a proof is filed against that invoice automatically.
When you invoice from more than one company
With more than one billing entity in the control room, a bank account belongs to one company, so the Pay tab pairs them up instead of showing one flat list. Each company gets its own card, headed with its name:
- its unpaid invoices — with the line "These invoices were issued by … Please pay them into one of the … accounts shown here.";
- its own Pay online button, only when that company has its own Netcash Pay Now key — the tick boxes and the total cover that company's invoices only, because one card payment settles into one company's merchant account;
- its bank accounts under Pay by EFT — the accounts whose Billing entity under Billing → Config → Banking is that company. An account with no entity chosen belongs to the default entity.
A customer who only owes one of your companies sees only that company's card. A company with no bank account of its own still lists its invoices, but shows "Please contact us for the … payment details" in place of banking details — never another company's account. The Banking sub-tab warns you about any entity in that position. When nothing is outstanding, the tab shows the accounts of the companies that have invoiced that customer before (all of them, for a customer who has not been invoiced yet).
The proof-of-payment upload stays a single form: its Which invoice? list is grouped by company, and the proof is filed against the invoice the customer picks.
A control room with a single billing entity sees none of this — its Pay tab is unchanged.
When a proof is submitted, CleverOps files an Accounts ticket so your team sees it in the Tickets due block of Needs attention → Reminders — you don't have to watch the Payment proofs view.
Review a proof of payment
- Go to Billing → Payments and switch to the Payment proofs view. New uploads sit under To review.
- Click Review to see the customer, invoice, stated amount, and the uploaded file.
- Accept it -- and, when it's linked to an invoice, tick Record a payment to log a cleared payment (amount pre-filled, editable) that updates the invoice balance immediately. Or Reject it with a note.
Each proof also carries an AI document check panel: a vision model reads the upload and reports what it is (a bank payment confirmation vs. some other document entirely), the amount, date, payer and beneficiary it shows, and anything that looks off — so your check starts from a transcript instead of squinting at a screenshot. An AI check column on the list shows the verdict at a glance (AI pre-verified / AI flagged), and a Run AI check button fetches a reading on demand. Where the control room's deposit release tier is set to the AI pre-check, a passing verdict also releases the deposit-gated booking so the work keeps moving; accept/reject stays yours on every proof, and rejecting the proof that released a job re-arms its gate.
The review note does double duty: if you turn on Email payment-proof outcomes (Settings → Reminders → Customer reminders, in the Automated reminders card), accepting or rejecting a proof emails the customer the result, and on a rejection the note is included as the reason — so keep it customer-safe. This send is off by default (opt-in per company).
Online quote accept/decline from the account view is not built yet — quotes are still accepted or declined from the individual quote links sent by email.
Before they're a customer: the Getting Started link
A brand-new prospect doesn't get this Account link at all to start with — the Onboarding journey gives them a different link, branded Getting Started, the moment a deal becomes real (a new enquiry, a takeover, an add-on). It's a single opaque link the customer is handed once and reuses for the whole journey — there's no separate email or SMS carrying a signing link or an "it's ready" notice at any point; every step, from the first quote review to the day they go live, happens on that one page.
What the customer sees, stage by stage
The page tracks four macro steps — Quote → Your details → Installation → Live — and shows only what applies to them right now:
- Before a quote exists (or while a site assessment is being arranged) — a plain "we're on it" message: their enquiry is with a consultant, or a site visit is being arranged, with the visit's date appearing here the moment it's booked.
- Once quoted — their quote, reviewable and acceptable from the same page.
- After accepting — their setup steps appear one at a time: confirming their address and access notes (with an address auto-complete that drops a map pin), listing keyholders with a shared household response/duress word, signing their service agreement and any other document staff have attached, entering banking details for the debit order (either e-signing a mandate on the spot, or — on DebiCheck — adding their ID number so their bank can confirm it directly with them), and anything else staff have asked for. A step they've already submitted stays editable until staff verify it, so a typo doesn't need a phone call, and answers survive a dropped call or an accidental refresh.
- Once an install visit is booked — the date appears on the page, and a message goes out the moment it's booked or changed (never framed as an "on the way" estimate — always the real date the technician is scheduled for).
- Whenever the ball is in the company's court and there's nothing left for the customer to do — a plain "what happens next" note says so, in absolute terms rather than a promised turnaround, so silence is never mistaken for being forgotten.
- After go-live — a "You're live" message, their signed and uploaded documents in one list, and — for as long as they stay a customer — a Refer a friend card with their own shareable link.
If a customer stalls partway through with steps outstanding, they may get up to two automated reminder messages pointing back at this same link before anyone calls them.
It becomes their account page
Once the site goes live, the same link stops being a setup page and becomes the customer's account view — the identical Overview / Jobs / Quotes / Invoices / Statement / Pay / Contact us tabs described above, with everything about how they got set up (the four-step progress and their signed documents) tucked into a collapsed Setup record they can still expand. There's no second link to send once a customer goes live — the one they were given on day one keeps working for as long as they're a customer.