Set up CoPortal

Sign up at coportal.io with your email. No credit card required — the free plan includes 2 clients and 3 projects to get you started.

You'll receive a magic link in your inbox. Click it to log in. CoPortal uses magic links for authentication — no passwords to remember.

Head to Settings → Branding and set up how clients see you:

• Upload your logo (PNG or SVG, shown in the client portal and all email notifications)
• Set your brand colour (used for portal header, buttons, invoice PDFs, and progress bars)
• Set your business display name

Then go to Settings → Invoice & Tax and configure:

• VAT number if you're VAT-registered (auto-applied to invoices at 15%)
• Invoice prefix and starting number (e.g. INV → INV-001)
• Bank details for EFT payments (printed on every invoice PDF)
• Default deposit % for deposit invoices (defaults to 50%)
• Payment reminder intervals (e.g. 1,3,7,14 days after due date)

Go to Clients and click New client. Fill in the business name, contact name, and email address.

Once saved, click Invite to portal to send them a branded welcome email with a magic link. They click it and are logged straight into their private portal — no account creation, no password.

If you offer recurring services, build out your service item library in Settings → Services. Add items with a name, default description, unit price, and VAT toggle.

When creating a quote or invoice, click From library to pick items instead of typing them from scratch. This keeps your pricing consistent and speeds up quoting significantly.

Go to Quotes and click New quote. Select the client, add line items, and set an expiry date.

Two ways to add line items:

• Manually — type a description, quantity, and unit price for each line item
• From library — pick from your service items to auto-fill the details
• AI from notes — paste meeting notes or an email brief and let AI extract line items for you (Studio and Agency plans)

Click Send quote to email it to the client. They can accept it directly from their portal. When they accept, a project is automatically created.

Projects are where work gets done. Each project has:

• Task board — Kanban view with To Do, In Progress, Review, Complete, and Query columns
• Files — upload briefs, designs, deliverables. Toggle client visibility per file.
• Messages — threaded conversations with the client (they read and reply in their portal)
• Time — live timer and manual time entries, linkable to tasks
• Expenses — log project costs, mark billable, add to invoices
• Contracts — send contracts for e-signature directly from the project

Projects can be created manually or automatically when a client accepts a quote.

Open any project and click the Time panel. Start the live timer when you begin work, stop it when you're done — a time entry is created automatically. Or add entries manually with the + button.

Mark entries as billable, link them to a specific task, and set the hourly rate per entry. To log project costs, open the Expenses panel.

When it's time to invoice, select billable time entries and click Create invoice from selected — the invoice is pre-filled with line items calculated from your hours and rates.

Go to Invoices and click New invoice. Select the client, add line items (or use time/expense entries), and CoPortal calculates VAT automatically.

Click Preview & send to see exactly what the client receives before sending. Once sent:

• The client receives a branded email with the invoice PDF and a Pay now button
• The invoice appears in their portal
• If overdue, automatic reminder emails are sent at your configured intervals
• Record payments (full or partial) from the invoice detail page