Go back to Settings → Client Portal. The card and banner are gone, the four tabs work, and a status line appears beside the page title.
The status line has three parts:
- Portal is not active / Portal is active — a grey dot means no portal URL has been set yet, so there is nowhere to send your clients. It turns green once you set and save one (21.7). While you have applied an address but not yet saved it, the line adds so — Portal is not active — save to activate, or Portal is active — URL not saved if you are part way through changing an address that is already live.
- Free tier (or Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3) — the plan you are subscribed to.
- 1 of 10 slots — how many client slots your plan includes and how many are in use, with a meter that fills as slots are taken. During the free trial there is no meter: the line reads N slots used — unlimited during your free trial until (date). On Tier 3 it reads N slots used (unlimited).
While the trial is running a banner also sits above the tabs — You’re on the Client Portal free trial until (date) — explaining that there is no slot limit for now, naming the plan today’s count would move you to when it ends, and offering View plans. See 21.3 for what happens when the trial closes.
What uses up a client slot
This is the number your plan is priced on, so it is worth being precise about. A slot is taken by a client who has portal access, or can still obtain it:
- A client with a live invitation outstanding — the slot is taken the moment you send the invitation, before the client does anything.
- A client who accepted their invitation and can sign in (Active).
- A client whose access you disabled — they can still sign in to pay invoices and view history, so the slot is still held.
A slot is not taken by:
- A client you have never invited.
- A client whose invitation expired — invitations are good for 14 days. An expired invitation releases its slot, and the link in it can no longer be used. Resending takes the slot back.
- A client whose access you revoked.
Note: Revoking access is the only action that frees a slot. Disabling a client does not. If you are at your limit and want to bring in a new client without upgrading, revoke someone else’s access first.
Two different numbers appear on this page, and they answer different questions:
- The header meter — N of 10 slots — is what you are billed against, counting pending invitations.
- N active beside the Portal Access title is adoption: how many clients have actually accepted and can sign in. It is never a slots figure.
So right after you send ten invitations the header reads 10 of 10 slots while Portal Access reads 0 active — every slot is committed, but nobody has signed in yet.
When every slot is in use, a banner appears above the tabs:
- You’ve used all your client slots — “Your current plan includes N client slots and all are in use. You can still re-send invitations to clients who already have portal access; to give a NEW client access, revoke another client’s portal access to free a slot, or upgrade your Client Portal module to a higher tier.”
- Upgrade for more slots goes to the Subscription page.
- You can still re-send invitations to clients who already have access, and still re-enable a disabled client — neither consumes an extra slot.
- An invitation that would add a portal client is refused with “Sending these invitations would exceed the 10 free portal clients included with your plan. Please upgrade to a paid Client Portal plan to invite more clients.” (on a paid tier: “…the N portal client slots included with your Client Portal plan… upgrade your Client Portal module to a higher tier…”). This banner never appears during the free trial, because no ceiling is enforced then.