Client portals: what to share, and when.

Every design project generates the same artifacts: concepts to react to, selections to approve, files to reference, invoices to pay. Run that traffic over email and it frays — attachments version-drift, approvals live in someone’s sent folder, and the invoice lands in spam. A client portal is simply one address where the project’s shared life happens. The craft is in deciding what belongs there, what doesn’t, and when each thing appears.

What to share, phase by phase

Onboarding

The signed agreement, the payment schedule, and the project brief. Putting these in the portal on day one does two quiet jobs: it trains the client that this is where the project lives, and it makes the commercial terms ambient rather than awkward — nobody has to dig out the contract to recall when the next deposit is due.

Concept and design development

Mood boards, concept presentations, and drawings — shared as they’re ready for reaction, not as raw working files. The portal’s value here is the decision record: which option the client approved, and when. A documented approval ends the “I never agreed to that sofa” conversation before it starts.

Procurement and installation

Client-facing pricing on selections, order status the client actually needs (placed, expected, delivered), and the invoices that fund the purchasing. Share outcomes, not logistics — the client needs to know the sofa arrives in March, not which freight terminal it’s sitting in.

Throughout

Conversations and invoices. Keeping project correspondence in the portal means decisions and their context stay attached to the project. Keeping invoices there means the client pays where they already are, and the studio sees what’s viewed and what’s outstanding.

What to keep internal

• Trade pricing and margins. Vendor cost, discounts, and markup are studio business. Share the client price; keep the spread internal.
• Working files. Drafts, rejected directions, and internal notes create confusion when clients browse them. Publish deliberately.
• Team logistics.Internal tasks, staffing, and scheduling chatter don’t belong on the client surface.

This is why a generic file-share makes a poor portal: it has one permission level — everything or nothing. A purpose-built portal separates the client-facing surface from the studio’s working one. (How tools draw that line differs; our StudioHaus vs Programa comparison looks at two designer-built approaches.)

When to introduce it

At kickoff, with the contract and first invoice already inside. A portal introduced mid-project reads as a process change and gets adopted by half; a portal that’s simply where the project has always lived gets used without comment. And resist requiring a second login if your tooling allows it — every additional credential costs you a percentage of client participation.

How StudioHaus handles it

StudioHaus^™gives each project a white-labeled client portal — your logo and brand colors on it, not ours — with one surface for everything the client needs: a dashboard showing the project’s current phase and next milestone, shared files and design boards, a read-only schedule of milestones, and a threaded chat with the studio’s team, so decisions stay attached to the project instead of scattering across inboxes. Sign-in is by magic link — the client clicks through from their email, no password to create or forget.

The portal also closes the two loops this guide cares most about. Approvals: when the studio sends designs or selections for sign-off, each approver — primary client, partner, the whole household — gets their own one-click review link to approve or decline with a note, and the request stays pending until everyone has decided, which is the documented decision record in practice. Money: invoices appear in the portal with their status, and the client pays by card through Stripe right there — nothing lost in spam, and the studio sees what’s outstanding. And the internal line holds by design: clients never see internal notes, margin or markup math, files marked internal-only, or anyone else’s project.