A client portal for a contractor: what it should do, and what it should not
The 'where are we on my job' call is the most expensive call your PM takes. A client portal answers it before it is made. What belongs in one, what does not, and what it costs to build.
A project manager at a $10M contractor spends a surprising share of the week answering one question from clients: where are we. Status, schedule, the change order, the photo of the thing, the invoice. A client portal exists to answer that question before it is asked.
What belongs in it
- Job status and schedule. Current phase, next milestone, any change to the date. Updated by the PM from the field in thirty seconds.
- Documents. Contract, change orders, submittals, closeout. One place, current versions, no email search.
- Photos. Progress photos tagged by date and area. The single most-viewed page in every portal we have built.
- Change orders. Proposed, approved, signed, in one list with the dollar impact. Approval from the client’s phone.
- Invoices and payments. What has been billed, what has been paid, what is due.
- A message thread. Instead of an email chain with eleven people on it.
What does not belong
- Your internal job costing. The client sees the invoice, not the margin.
- Every daily report. Summarize; do not dump.
- Features because they were easy. A portal with four things used daily beats one with twenty things used never.
Why clients use it
Because it is faster than calling, and because it makes them look organized to their own boss. A property manager who can pull up a progress photo and a schedule in a meeting without emailing you is a property manager who hires you again.
Why PMs use it
Only if updating it is faster than answering the call. That means a phone-first PM view, with status and a photo upload in under a minute, and nothing that duplicates what they already enter elsewhere. Where the job system has an API, the portal reads from it; the PM types once.
What it costs
A client portal is a typical MVP build: login per client, the job data model, five or six screens, one integration to your existing job or accounting system. $24,500 to $45,000, live in 30 days, a few dollars a month to run. The discovery sprint tells you the exact number before anything is built.
Built for ourselves first
The Frost platform is an advisor console with branded client portals, including partner access with per-section permissions. The patterns, and most of the code, carry straight over to a contractor’s portal.
Fifteen minutes. No pitch deck.
Tell me what you build and where the leads come from today. I will tell you what I would change, and what it would cost. If it is not a fit, I will say so on the call.