Your members portal is where customers sign in to pay invoices, manage subscriptions, review documents, and get support. Before you invite anyone, it helps to understand the three building blocks that control who gets in: accounts, invitations, and member statuses. This guide walks through how they fit together.
The three building blocks of portal access
Every part of portal access comes back to these three ideas:
- Accounts: Portal access is always granted against an account — the company record a contact belongs to. A person can only be invited to the portal once their contact is linked to an account, and what they can see is scoped to that account.
- Invitations: Inviting a contact creates a portal user and sends them an email to set a password and sign in. The invitation moves through states — not invited, invited (sent, awaiting acceptance), and accepted once they sign in for the first time.
- Member statuses: Each portal user's access can be active, suspended, or revoked. Because access is granted per account, each membership carries its own status — so you can control access account by account.
Where to find this in CornerSpot
Everything about portal access lives under Members Portal → Portal Users in the dashboard. The list shows everyone who can sign in, and clicking a person opens their detail page.
1. Open Portal Users
From the dashboard menu, open Members Portal, then choose Portal Users. This is the home for everyone with access to your members portal.
2. Read the Membership and Invitation columns
Each row shows the person's Membership status (active, suspended, or revoked), the Accounts they belong to, and an Invitation state. The Invitation column tells you at a glance who has been invited, who has accepted, and who is still pending — so you always know where someone is in the sign-up flow.
3. Open a portal user to see the full picture
Click any row to open that portal user's detail page. It brings everything together: their status, their invitation, their sign-in activity, and every account they can reach.
4. Check the Status card and invitation state
The Status card shows whether the user's account is Active and exactly where their Invitation stands — when it was sent, and whether it has been accepted. If someone never received their invite, you can resend it from here.
5. Review their Memberships
The Memberships table lists every account this portal user can access. A single person can belong to more than one account, and each membership has its own status — so you can grant, suspend, or revoke access one account at a time.
How accounts, invitations, and statuses work together
Put together, the three building blocks give you precise control over who reaches your portal:
- An account is the foundation. No account, no portal access — a contact must be linked to a company record before they can be invited.
- An invitation turns a contact into a portal user. Until they accept, they appear as invited (or pending); once they sign in, the invitation reads accepted.
- A status governs ongoing access. Suspend a membership to pause access temporarily, or revoke it to cut access off — without deleting the contact or the account.
Good to know
- One person, many accounts: Because access is per membership, the same portal user can belong to several accounts, each with its own status.
- Resending invitations: If an invite is missed, resend it from the portal user's row or detail page — no need to start over.
- Suspend vs. revoke vs. delete: Suspend pauses access, revoke ends it, and deleting the portal user removes their sign-in entirely while preserving the underlying contact and history. (Deleting a portal user can't be undone.)
- Filtering: Use the membership, invitation, and account filters at the top of the Portal Users list to quickly find pending invites or suspended members.