The Customer Portal is the self-service web page Biller Genie gives every one of your customers. When they receive an invoice, the email contains a button that opens the portal, where they can view what they owe, pay it, save a card on file, set up autopay, request a payment plan, and download receipts and statements. This article explains what the portal looks like, what your customers can do in it, and how to control which features are available.
What customers can do in the portal
- View open invoices. A clean list of every unpaid invoice with amount, due date, and a Pay button.
- Pay an invoice. Credit card, ACH (bank transfer), or APM (alternative payment methods like PayPal) depending on what you've enabled.
- Pay multiple invoices at once. Select several from the open-invoice list and pay them in a single checkout.
- Pay partial amounts. If you've enabled partial payments, the customer can pay any amount up to the invoice total. See Partial Payments inside Customer Portal.
- Save a card or bank account on file. One-click reuse on the next payment.
- Enroll in autopay. Customer agrees to automatic charging of future invoices from a saved payment method. See Customer-Enabled Auto Pay.
- Request a payment plan. If you've enabled payment plans, the customer submits a request that you approve before it takes effect.
- View paid invoices and download receipts. A full history view going back to when you joined Biller Genie.
- Update their own contact info. Name, address, email — controllable per-customer (you decide if they can self-edit).
Inviting your customers to the portal
Most customers reach the portal through the one-click access link in every invoice email they receive (covered in the next section). You can also send a separate invitation that lets a customer set up a permanent username and password. That's useful when a customer wants to log in directly, manage stored payment methods, or you want them ready to use the portal before their first invoice ships.
Find your public portal URL
Go to Add-ons → Customer Portal in Biller Genie. The public URL is shown there. You can share that URL on your website, in email signatures, or anywhere else customers might want to log in directly.
Don't see Customer Portal under Add-ons?
Send a personal invitation to one customer
Go to Customers → [the customer] → Customer Portal tab. If the customer has never been invited (or you want to resend), click Send Invitation. The email subject is "Welcome to the Customer Portal" and includes a link the customer clicks to set their password.
A second email is sent to confirm the email address. Once the customer clicks the confirmation link, they can log in to the portal with their chosen password.
If the customer says they never got the email
noreply@billergenie.com.See who is already registered
To check which customers have completed portal registration, run a Customer Report. See Use Customer Reports for the report fields that show portal registration status.
How customers access the portal
Customers don't have to register or create a password. Every invoice email Biller Genie sends includes a one-click access link that takes the customer directly into their portal. Behind the scenes, Biller Genie generates a secure access token per customer; the portal authenticates via that token.
For customers who want a "permanent" portal login, you can invite them to set up portal access with a username and password — this is required for some self-service actions like managing stored payment methods.
If a single person manages multiple customer accounts in Biller Genie (an accountant handling several clients, a property manager with a parent and sub-customer setup, etc.), the portal can show them all under one login via the customer-switcher dropdown. See Parent and Sub Customers for how the switcher works and how parent/sub relationships from QuickBooks shape the portal experience.
How customers sign up for a permanent portal account
If a customer wants a permanent login (rather than relying on the one-click access link in invoice emails), they can complete a short sign-up flow. The sign-up gets triggered by a welcome email Biller Genie sends after you invite them to set up portal access. The customer's experience:
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Find the welcome email. The customer locates the welcome email from
noreply@billergenie.comin their inbox and clicks "Click here to reset your username and password." - Create a username and password. On the sign-up page, the customer enters their email address and a password, then clicks Sign Up. The email address has to match the one the welcome email was sent to.
- Choose a customer profile. The customer is shown the customer profile their email is associated with; they click Continue. If the same email is on multiple customer records, they'll see the switcher described above after login.
- Confirm the email address. Biller Genie sends a confirmation email. The customer clicks "Click here to confirm your email" to verify.
- Accept the User Agreement. The customer reads and clicks I Accept on the Customer Portal User Agreement. They're immediately signed in.
Once they've completed sign-up, the customer can return to the portal anytime by logging in with the username and password they created.
Troubleshooting: customer can't log in
If a customer reports they can't sign in to the portal, walk through these four checks:
- Is the customer's status set to "Active" in your Biller Genie account? Deactivated customers can't log in. Open the customer record and check the status flag.
- Does the email address on the customer record match what they're trying to log in with? It must be an exact match (case-insensitive), and there can only be one email in the field. Fix the email on the record if it's different.
- Is the customer portal add-on still showing "Installed" in the Add-ons Marketplace? Confirm it hasn't been accidentally uninstalled.
- Has the customer tried "Forgot Password?" The fastest fix for most login problems is to send them through the forgot-password flow to reset.
If all four checks pass and the customer still can't log in, contact Subscriber Success with the customer's email address and the error message they're seeing.
Controlling what each customer can do
Most portal features are controlled in two places: Portal-level controls sit inside the wider customer-defaults stack: Setting Global Customer Defaults (account-wide baseline), Customer Type Defaults (per-type overrides), and Per-Customer Overrides (one-off exceptions).
- Customer Defaults — what's available to every customer by default (Allow CC, Allow ACH, Allow Partial Payments, Allow Payment Plans, etc.).
- Per-Customer Overrides — what's available to a specific customer (turn off ACH for one customer, allow payment plans only for a select few, etc.).
Some controls are portal-specific — they only matter when a customer actually logs in. These live in the Customer Portal section of each customer's record:
- Allow Customer to Edit Profile — can they update their own name, email, address?
- Allow Customer to Edit Payment Methods — can they add or remove cards and bank accounts on file?
- Allow Customer to Change Auto-Pay Settings — can they enroll/unenroll themselves in autopay?
- Receive Notification on Customer Edits — do you get notified when they make changes?
Branding the portal
The customer portal carries your business's branding. Your logo, colors, and business name appear in the header and the invoice templates. Configure these in Control Panel > Settings > Branding.
Stored payment methods inside the portal
Once a customer saves a card or bank account, it stays on their record and can be reused for any future payment in the portal. The customer can also designate which saved method is their autopay default. Stored payment methods are PCI-tokenized — Biller Genie never stores raw card numbers.
On the merchant side, you'll see every saved payment method in the Stored Payment Methods section of the customer record. You can mark one as the default for autopay or remove one outright (useful when a customer asks you to "delete that old card on file").
What happens when the customer pays
- Customer enters payment details (or selects a saved method) and clicks Pay.
- Biller Genie processes the payment through your configured gateway.
- On success: the invoice in Biller Genie is marked paid, the payment is recorded against your sales account, and a receipt is emailed to the customer.
- The payment syncs to your accounting software (QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop via MagicCarpet) on the next sync, so your books match Biller Genie automatically.
- On failure: Biller Genie shows the customer a clear error message, your gateway logs the decline, and the invoice stays open for retry.
Merge tags — personalizing portal invitations and links
Two sets of merge tags matter for the customer portal: the ones that drop a working portal link into your Invoice Messenger and Reminders templates (so customers can click straight to the portal from any email you send them), and the ones available in the portal-invitation email itself (when you manually invite a customer to set up a permanent portal login). See Supported Accounting-Software Integrations for how the payment, void, and refund flow back into QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop (MagicCarpet), and Xero on the sync side.
Portal link tags — used in any template
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{CustomerPortalLink}— full URL to the customer's payment portal for the invoice. Drop this in any Invoice Messenger or Reminders email template and the customer gets a one-click pay-now link. This is the single most important tag in any template that's meant to drive payment. -
{CustomerStatementLink}— direct URL for the customer to download/view their statement. Great inside the Statement reminder template so the customer can pull up a clean statement without logging in to the portal first.
Portal-invitation email tags
When you invite a customer to set up a permanent portal login (see Invite a Customer to Store a Payment Method), Biller Genie sends them a separate invitation email with its own template. That template supports a smaller set of merge tags:
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{CustomerFirstName}— the customer's first name. Renders to "Sir/Ma'am" if blank. -
{CustomerLastName}— the customer's last name. Note: this tag works ONLY in the portal-invitation context — it's not supported in regular Invoice Messenger or Reminders templates. -
{CustomerPortalLink}— the URL the customer clicks to set up their portal account. -
{DBAName}— your business's DBA (the name your customers know you by).
Customer-portal pages themselves don't use merge tags
Merge tags are only for templated messages (emails, paper mail). The customer portal pages your customers actually browse to are live web pages — they pull real customer and invoice data directly from Biller Genie at the moment of viewing, no templating involved. So you'll never edit a portal page template with merge tags — only the messages that lead customers TO the portal.
For the complete merge tag inventory shared across Invoice Messenger and Reminders templates (customer info, invoice info, late fees, currency formatting rules), see Using Reminders — Merge tags.
Frequently asked questions
Do my customers need to create accounts to pay?
No — the one-click access link in every invoice email lets them pay without registering. Account creation is optional and only needed for some self-service actions (managing stored payment methods, viewing full history). Most customers never create an account and pay just fine.
How secure is the portal?
The portal is HTTPS-only, payment data is PCI-tokenized through your payment gateway (Biller Genie never stores raw card numbers), and access tokens for the one-click invoice links are unique per customer and expire after extended inactivity. Customers who create permanent logins use strong-password requirements and optional two-factor authentication.
A customer can't access the portal — what should I check?
Two quick checks: (1) the email on their record matches the email they're trying to log in with, and (2) the invoice they're trying to access is still open (paid invoices and voided invoices don't have an open portal session). Worst case, resend the invoice via manual send so they get a fresh access link.
Can I see what my customers see in the portal?
Yes — open the invoice in Biller Genie and click View as Customer to load the portal exactly as the customer would. Useful for verifying everything looks right before you send out a big batch of invoices.