> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.probaseapp.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Customer payment portal
> Give customers access to view their invoices and pay online
## Overview
The customer portal is a simple, secure set of pages where customers can read their [service reports](/customers/service-reports), view their invoices, see all charges, add a tip, and pay online with a credit card. Each customer gets a unique link that you can share via text or email. No login is required — customers just open the link.
To take card payments online, you'll need to [connect your Stripe account](/billing/stripe-setup) first. Without it, customers can still view their invoices — and pay you with [Venmo](/billing/venmo-payments) if you've turned it on, or see how to reach you to arrange payment.
## How it works
1. You send a link to a customer — an invoice from the **Send invoice** screen, or a [service report link](/routes/sending-service-reports) when you finish a visit
2. Customer opens the link (no login required)
3. From any page, the header's back chevron takes them to their portal home: their invoices, and **Your visits**
4. Customer taps an invoice to view the full breakdown
5. For eligible invoices, the customer is first shown a **service review page** where they rate the service and can optionally add a tip (you can [turn this step off](/billing/service-ratings) — the tip question then moves onto the invoice page)
6. Customer pays by card (when Stripe is connected) or with Venmo (when you've turned it on)
7. Payment is processed and applied to the invoice automatically
## Share the portal link from the customer's page
You don't have to wait for an invoice to go out. Open a customer's page and, under **Pays by** on the top card, tap **Share customer portal access**.
The **Customer portal** sheet opens with:
* **The link itself**, with a **Copy link** button. Paste it into a text or an email. When ProBase sends texts for your account, a **Send text** button above it texts the link to the customer for you — see [Texting your customers](/customers/texting-customers).
* **What \[name] sees** — a preview of their portal: your business name, their name, and each invoice or service report with its status badge (**Paid**, **Partially paid**, **Unpaid**, or **Completed**). If there's nothing for them to see yet, the preview says so rather than showing an empty page.
* **Open customer portal**, which opens their page in a new tab so you can check it yourself. If you use ProBase from your home screen, it opens in your phone's browser instead of inside the app.
Tapping **Copy link** confirms with a **Link copied!** message.
Anyone with the link can open it — there's no password. Treat it like the customer's own copy of their invoices and send it only to them.
The row only appears for team members whose role allows sharing payment links. See [Roles and permissions](/team/roles-and-permissions).
## Send an invoice
Open the invoice — from **Money → All invoices**, from the customer's billing history, or from the **Charged** row on a completed visit — and tap **Send invoice**. The **Send invoice** screen lets you choose **Text**, **Email**, or **Print / PDF**, shows who it's going to, and lets you **Preview as customer** before anything goes out. Every invoice you send carries the customer's own link to this portal. See [Sending invoices and reminders](/billing/sending-payment-links) for the full walkthrough.
The link always shows the invoice as it stands right now. If you add a charge or record a payment after sending, the customer sees the updated balance the next time they open it.
## What customers see
### Every page carries the same header
Your business name sits at the top of every portal page, with a back chevron to the customer's portal home (on every page but the home itself) and a **Contact us** button.
**Contact us** opens a sheet with **Call**, **Text message** and **Email** rows, built from the business phone and email you set in [Business Profile settings](/getting-started/settings). A detail you haven't filled in is left out, and with neither filled in the button doesn't appear.
The header is hidden when the customer prints — see [Printing invoices](/billing/printing-invoices).
### Invoice list
The portal home opens with a list of the customer's invoices and service reports. Each entry shows one of the following:
**Invoices** (with a dollar amount):
* **Unpaid** — balance is outstanding
* **Partially paid** — a payment has been made but the full balance is not yet covered (shows the remaining amount owed alongside the original total)
* **Paid** — fully settled
**Service reports** (no dollar amount):
* **Completed** — a \$0 service visit from a subscription service. No payment is required; tapping it shows the service details.
They can tap any item to view details and, for invoices, complete payment.
If a customer has no invoices or service reports, they see a "You're all set!" confirmation message.
### Your visits
Underneath the invoices sits a **Your visits** section — the customer's own record of the work, with no money in it. It has two groups:
* **Upcoming** — the next visit booked for each of their services, soonest first
* **Past** — the most recent completed visit of each service, newest first
Each group's **Show more** opens the whole of it: the full schedule ahead, and the full history behind. A group with nothing in it isn't shown at all.
Each row names the service and the date. A past visit whose [report you sent](/routes/sending-service-reports) also reads **Report sent** and, once the customer rated it, their stars as text — *Aug 28 · Report sent · 5 of 5* — and tapping it opens that report.
Rows that have no report to open aren't tappable: upcoming visits, and completed visits whose report you haven't sent. Nothing of a report is shown before you've chosen to send it.
Assessment visits and [marketplace visits](/marketplace/marketplace-jobs) are never listed here, and neither are cancelled or rescheduled ones.
### Service reports
A completed visit's [service report](/customers/service-reports) is the customer's copy of the work: what you did, anything your checklists recorded, the photos, a place to rate you, and the bill if it rode along. It has a page of its own, opened from the link you sent or from **Your visits**.
When you complete a subscription service appointment at no charge (for example, a visit included in a flat-rate monthly plan), customers also see a **"Service completed"** entry in the list above. Before viewing the service details, customers are shown a quick **"How was your service?"** page where they can rate the experience and optionally add a tip. Tips on service reports work the same way as on invoices — the tip selector only appears once the customer rates, showing the three percentages you set in [Tips and gratuity](/billing/tips) plus an **Other** option for a custom dollar amount.
After rating (or if the service isn't eligible for review), they see the visit's summary — the plain-language description of the work, **What we recorded**, and the photos.
The summary is the **Customer notes** you wrote when completing the visit, drafted for you by AI Assist if you used it. It gives customers a clear, readable account of the visit without exposing your internal notes — a record of every visit, even when no invoice is generated.
### What we recorded
If you use [checklists](/checklists/overview) and mark items to include in the customer summary, those filled-in items appear under a **What we recorded** heading, grouped under the checklist they came from — readings, completed tasks, and even a customer signature (shown as **Signed by customer**).
You control which items appear when you build the checklist — see [The customer Service Report](/checklists/completing-checklists#the-customer-service-report).
### Service review
For invoices tied to a completed service appointment, customers are first shown a **"How was your service?"** page before they can pay. This gives them a chance to rate their experience, optionally add a tip, and preview the full invoice they're about to pay.
This step is on by default but is yours to control — see [Service ratings](/billing/service-ratings). With it switched off, customers skip straight to the invoice page.
The page is laid out as a single, scrolling experience:
1. **Star rating at the top.** Customers tap 1–5 stars to rate their service. No tip selector is shown until a rating is chosen.
2. **Tip selector (appears after rating).** Once the customer rates, your three suggested percentages appear as buttons — each showing the dollar amount it works out to — alongside a full-width **Other** button for a custom dollar amount. Nothing is pre-selected, so customers who don't want to tip simply leave the section untouched. The percentages come from your [tipping settings](/billing/tips), and the whole section is hidden if you've turned tipping off.
3. **Balance Due card.** Directly below the tip selector, customers see the same **Balance Due** card they'd see on the payment page — their name and billing address, invoice number and dates, line items, totals, and the balance due. They can preview exactly what they're about to pay before continuing.
4. **One card per visit.** Below the Balance Due card, each visit the invoice covers gets its own bordered card — the service name, the property address and the date, the plain-language summary of the work, **What we recorded**, and the photos in their **Before** and **After** groups. A visit with nothing to report draws no card. These always render last, beneath the balance and payment area.
5. **Floating "Continue to payment" button.** The CTA sticks to the bottom of the screen on mobile and desktop so it's always within reach.
If a customer wants to enter a custom tip amount, they tap **Other** to reveal a dollar-amount input. (If you've set tipping to **Custom amount only**, that dollar box is shown from the start and there are no percentage buttons.)
Once the customer taps **Continue to payment**, their rating is saved, the tip (if any) is added as a line item to the invoice, and they're taken to the payment page.
The **Continue to payment** button won't move them along until they've picked a rating — tapping it without stars shows *A star rating is required — please select one above.* just beneath the button.
**The stars are only asked for once.** If any visit this invoice covers has already been rated — on its [service report](/customers/service-reports), or on this invoice before service reports existed — the rating step is dropped and the page shows the tip question alone. With nothing left to ask, they go straight to the invoice.
If an invoice is not eligible for review (for example, if the customer has already rated it or already paid), they go directly to the invoice payment page.
### Invoice detail and payment
When a customer opens an individual invoice, the page is laid out top-to-bottom as:
* Your business information (logo, name, address, phone, email, and website — whatever you've configured in Business Profile settings)
* The invoice itself: the invoice number, the **Issued** date (plus the **Due** date, if you've opted into [showing overdue status](/billing/payment-terms#showing-overdue-status-to-customers)), and **Current services** — one line per charge, each with its date
* Any **unpaid balance carried over** from an earlier invoice, in its own section
* **Service notes** — one card per visit the invoice covers (when there's anything to show): the service name, the property address and the date, the description of what was done, **What we recorded** from your checklists, and the photos. These come *before* the price, so the customer reads what was done before what it cost
* The totals — subtotal, any discount, tax, total, payments applied, and **Balance due**
* The payment area, then a **Print or save a copy** link
An invoice covering a month of visits shows one card per visit, in the order they happened, so a customer can tell them apart. Photos render as a 3-column grid of thumbnails under their **Before** or **After** heading; customers can tap any thumbnail to open the full-size image in a new tab.
When a line has a quantity greater than 1, it shows the quantity and the price of each (for example *QTY 2 · \$12.00 each*). A visit included in a subscription shows an **Included** tag instead of a price.
The payment area is headed **Pay invoice**, and stays that way even when the due date has passed. By default the due date isn't shown on the customer's page at all, and nothing calls out that they're late. If you'd rather they see it, turn on **Show overdue status to customers** in [Payment terms and due dates](/billing/payment-terms): the **Due** date then appears, and past-due invoices read **Pay past due invoice**.
If you've turned the [rating step](/billing/service-ratings) off, customers land on this page the moment they tap an invoice — no **"How was your service?"** screen in between.
### How customers pay
What the payment area shows depends on how you take payments.
**You take cards (Stripe connected).** If the rating step is off and tipping is on, the customer first sees **Add a tip** — your three percentages, each with the dollar amount it works out to, an **Other** button for their own amount, and **No tip** — with a **You'll pay** total that updates as they choose. They tap **Continue to payment** to move on. (The tip question is skipped when a tip is already on the invoice, when [tipping is off](/billing/tips), or when you don't take cards.)
Then the card form appears, and a **Pay this invoice** bar with the amount — for example *Pay this invoice · \$212.25* — stays pinned to the bottom of the screen, with **Secured by Stripe** beneath it, so it's always within reach.
**You take cards and Venmo.** After the tip step, the customer sees **How would you like to pay?** with a **Card** option and a **Venmo** option. The one they used last time (or the one you set under **Pays by** on their customer page) opens first and is tagged **Usual**.
**You take Venmo only.** The Venmo block shows on its own, with the amount due, a QR code, and a **Pay on Venmo** button. There's no pinned pay bar. See [Accepting Venmo payments](/billing/venmo-payments).
**You don't take payments online.** Above the bill, the customer sees *\[Your business] will let you know how to pay.* with two full-width buttons stacked one above the other — **Call** and **Text**, each with your first name (for example **Call Callie** and **Text Callie**; if no name is on file, the first word of your business name is used instead) — and an **Or email** line beneath. They're built from the business phone and email in your [Business Profile](/getting-started/settings); a button or line you haven't filled in is left out. With neither filled in, they see *Contact your service provider to find out how to pay.* instead.
The same **Call** and **Text** pair repeats at the bottom of the invoice, under the pay heading, so a customer who reads the bill before deciding to get in touch doesn't have to scroll back up for your number. (With no business phone saved, there's nothing to repeat and the bottom pair doesn't appear.)
If your Stripe connection has a problem and the card form can't load, the customer sees *Paying by card isn't available right now.* and ProBase shows whatever else you offer — the Venmo block, or the Call and Text buttons. The pinned **Pay this invoice** bar is hidden too, so it never points them at a card form that isn't there. Check your connection under **Payments** — see [Setting up payment processing](/billing/stripe-setup).
Sometimes the card form fails to appear on the customer's own phone or browser even though your Stripe connection is fine — a weak connection or a browser hiccup, most often on iPhones. Instead of leaving the customer looking at an empty box, ProBase shows the same *Paying by card isn't available right now.* sentence and whatever else you offer, plus a **Try again** link right under the sentence. Tapping **Try again** loads a fresh card form, and the **Pay this invoice** bar comes back with it.
#### The card form
The card form is powered by Stripe and is fully PCI-compliant. Card details are never sent to ProBase — they go directly to Stripe, and the line under the pay button says so: *Card details go straight to Stripe. \[Your business] never sees your card number.*
The card fields load from Stripe a moment after the rest of the page, so the pay button only works once the card fields are ready. On a slow connection that can take a second or two.
Once tapped, the button shows a spinner while Stripe checks the card. If something goes wrong, a short red message appears just under the card fields — the reason from Stripe (for example a declined card), or *We could not process your payment. Please try again.* if the payment couldn't be attempted at all. Either way the customer can simply try again.
**Going back and forward works too.** If a customer taps their phone's Back button and then returns to the invoice, the card fields reload themselves so the form is live again. They don't need to reload the page or reopen the link.
Customers may also be asked to consent to receive text messages about their account and services. This box is optional and isn't required to pay.
### After the invoice is paid
A paid invoice leads with a green receipt — for example \*Paid $96.00 on Sep 18*, with *$80.00 invoice + $16.00 tip* beneath it when they tipped. The invoice shows a **Balance due** of $0.00, and the one button is **Print or save a copy**. There's nothing left to pay and no tip question. A customer who comes back to the link later lands here.
#### Customers can print their invoice
**Print or save a copy** opens the customer's own print dialog, so they can print a copy for their records or save it as a PDF — without asking you for one. On an unpaid invoice it's a link under the payment area; on a paid one it's the main button.
What prints is a clean invoice rather than a copy of the screen: your business letterhead, a **Bill to** block, the line items and totals, each visit's summary with its photos, and a **Pay online** QR code when a balance is still owed. The payment form, tip selector, Venmo block, and portal header are left off. See [Printing invoices](/billing/printing-invoices).
## Quote links
In addition to payment links, you can also share **quote links** with customers. A quote link lets customers view the full quote details and approve or decline it on their own — no login required.
When a quote is in **Sent** status, a customer quote link appears on the quote detail page in ProBase. Copy and share that link via text, email, or any other method. Customers can:
* Review the quote details and full pricing breakdown — base service, any additional line items, subtotal, tax, and total
* Tap **Approve** to accept the quote (the confirmation shows the full total including line items and tax)
* Tap **Decline** and select a reason (Too expensive, Found another provider, etc.)
Once they approve, the page confirms it on the spot — no login, no reply to wait on.
The line items travel with the yes: everything priced on the quote becomes a standing charge on the job it creates, so the work is billed for what was agreed without you re-entering any of it.
If the quote has a valid-until date that has passed, customers see an expiration notice and are prompted to contact you for an updated quote.
See [Managing quotes](/customers/managing-quotes) for full details including screenshots of the customer quote experience.
## Best practices
* **Send after completing work** — The [send report step](/routes/sending-service-reports) opens as soon as you complete a visit; turn the invoice switch on and the customer gets what you did and what they owe in one message
* **Follow up on overdue invoices** — Use **Send a reminder** on the invoice when following up on outstanding balances
* **Let customers bookmark it** — The link never expires, so customers can return anytime to check their balance
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