How the Customer Portal Works

Watch the full walkthrough:

How to access it

Open any order and look at the top of the order overview. Hover the Customer Portal button (Portal in a narrower window) and its menu opens with three options. When the window is too narrow for the button, the same three options sit in the ⋯ menu:

• Copy Customer Portal Link copies the customer portal link so you can share it manually. The item shows Copied for a moment.

• View Customer Portal opens the portal page in your browser so you can see what your customer sees.

• Send Portal Link sends the portal link to every contact on the order: by email to each one with an email address, and by text to each one with a mobile number. The item reads Sending... while it goes and then Link Sent. The order's Activity Timeline records who got it and whether it went by email, by text or both.

Copy Customer Portal Link and View Customer Portal create a secure link that works for one year, ready to paste into a text message or email. Links MonuDesk sends by email or text keep working. If a family says their link doesn't open, copy a fresh link or use Send Portal Link.

Each portal link is tied to its own order: a link only ever opens the single order it was created for.

The Customer Portal button works for any order with a customer email address or a mobile number, so a family with only a mobile number gets their link by text. To add either one, edit the order.

The text reads "[your company]: view your monument details and approve online here: [link]" ("service details" on a service order). Replies to the text don't reach MonuDesk. Families reach you with the call and email buttons in the portal. If a text can't be delivered, the order's Activity Timeline shows Portal link text message not delivered with the carrier's reason.

What your customer sees

At the top left, the portal shows your company name (pulled from Settings > Company Profile), the decedent name, and the name of the team member who created the order.

If no decedent name is set on the order, the portal shows "MEMORIAL DASHBOARD" at the top with the order's current stage displayed below it. Everything else on the portal stays the same.

A colored bubble shows the current stage the order is in. Below that, the order number and your contact details: your phone number (Call us anytime), your email (Email us) and, when you have filled in Website in Settings → Company Profile, your website (Visit Website), which opens in a new tab. Without a website, no website link is shown. On a phone these sit in the footer as Call Us • Email • Visit Website, and the address under them opens Google Maps. Phone, email and address come from the order's office, or from your Company Profile where the office has none. The website always comes from the Company Profile.

The portal is written in your company's language (Settings → Company Profile → Language), whatever language the family's browser uses, and dates follow that language too.

On the right side, your customer sees a progress timeline showing all your stages from left to right. This is the tracking view.

Controlling what your customer sees

Not every stage needs to be visible to your customer. You can make stages customer-facing or internal only.

To set this up, go to Settings → Stages and click Edit stages. In the Edit Workflow Stages popup, click the pill on each stage to switch it between Customer-facing and Internal only, then click Save & Exit.

If a stage is set to internal only, your customer will not see it. Instead, the portal will show the last stage that was customer-facing. For example, if you have five internal stages after "In Production" (like "Stone Needs Repair" or "Stone Needs Sandblasting"), your customer will still see "In Production" until the order reaches the next customer-facing stage.

Stage subtext

Under each stage name on the portal, there is a line of text that your customer reads. To write your own, click + Add portal subtext on the stage in the Edit Workflow Stages popup (it reads Edit subtext once the stage has text). Type up to 120 characters, click Save next to the text field, and then click Save & Exit at the top right.

You can also start from Settings → Customer Portal: the Stage text in the customer portal card has an Open Stages button that opens the stage editor on Settings → Stages.

By default, the portal shows a blue bubble that says "We're working on this step. No action needed from you at this time."

Action required mode

Some stages need your customer to do something, like pay a deposit. For these, switch on Action required on the stage in the Edit Workflow Stages popup, click + Add action description and write what the customer needs to do, for example "Pay deposit before we proceed". The stage then lights up yellow on the portal with your text.

Moving an order into an action-required stage also emails the customer a link to their portal, so they are nudged to take the next step instead of waiting to check on their own. This needs a customer email on file and sends once per stage.

Two stages come with Action Required turned on by default:

• Quote says "A deposit is required before work can begin on your order." When MonuPay is enabled, the customer can pay that deposit online right from the portal.

• Order Balance Required (between In Production and Ready to Install) tells the customer to pay the remaining balance before installation. With MonuPay enabled, they can pay that balance online from the portal too.

You can turn Action Required on or off for any stage and customize the message. This is a powerful way to communicate with many customers at once. For example, during winter, you could add an action required message to your production stage saying "Due to snow and ice, installations are paused until late February or March."

Paying online from the portal

When your shop has MonuPay connected, your customer can pay a deposit or balance right from the portal by card, or by bank account once your MonuPay account is approved for bank payments. A Pay Now button appears next to the amount due, so a family can settle the deposit at the Quote stage or the remaining balance at Order Balance Required without calling your office.

The Pay Now button only shows when two things are true: your shop's payment account is fully approved, and the order still has a balance due. If either is not the case, the portal keeps showing the action-required message without a payment button.

Customers pay by Card or, once your MonuPay account is approved for bank payments, by Bank account, which carries a flat $20 bank payment fee that your MonuPay fee setting assigns to the family or to you. A card payment generates a receipt automatically, just like a payment you record by hand. A bank payment usually clears in 2 to 5 business days and is booked on the order, with its receipt, once it has cleared.

To ask a family for a payment, click Send Payment Link next to the Customer Portal button, tick Email, Text message or both, and click Send. The link opens the order in their portal, ready to pay. Learn more: Paying Online Through the Customer Portal

Documents on the portal

Your customer can see documents on the portal, but only the ones you mark as External.

Inside the order, go to Notes & Files. Each document has two buttons: Internal and External. Click External to make it visible on the customer portal. Click Internal to hide it.

Files you upload start as Internal, whichever category you pick, so nothing you upload reaches the portal by accident. Documents MonuDesk generates for you (quote, invoice, receipt, contract, purchase order, foundation order) are saved as External, so they appear in the portal right away. Flip one to Internal if you would rather keep it from the family. Shop tickets are the exception: they are locked to Internal and never appear in the portal.

If you switched on Only create the contract once the order is confirmed in Settings → Customer Portal, a quote does not produce a contract, so the family sees the quote only until you confirm the order. You can still generate a contract by hand at any time.

When you generate a document, the generate popup also offers a Notify the customer checkbox: tick it and the customer is emailed a link to view the document. When a document generates without a popup, a small prompt at the bottom left offers the same choice for a few moments.

An order keeps one current quote, one current invoice and one current contract. Regenerate any of the three and the new PDF takes the place of the old one, which is removed from the order, so the portal only ever shows the current copy. The replacement is labelled with its version, for example V2 Contract and then V3; the first one you generate carries no marker. Receipts and purchase orders are not replaced this way, since an order legitimately has several of each.

Editing an order can do this for you. When you save an edit on an order that already has a quote, invoice or contract, tick Update the [documents] to match on the edit confirmation and MonuDesk regenerates those documents with the new figures. The new version replaces the old one in the customer portal, so the family sees the updated figures. Leave it unticked and the stored documents keep the old figures.

Telling the customer about a file you uploaded

When you add files to the Files card in Notes & Files, MonuDesk offers to tell the family about them. A small prompt appears at the bottom left, headed "Design_v2.pdf" uploaded (or 3 files uploaded when you added several at once), asking "Do you want kim@example.com to be notified about this?". With more than one contact on the order it reads "kim@example.com and 2 others", and the email goes to all of them.

Recipients are every contact on the order that has an email address and has Send portal notifications to this contact switched on. When no contact on the order can receive portal email, no prompt appears.

Notify customer switches those files from Internal to External, so they show in the portal, and sends the email. No thanks, the X, or leaving the prompt alone for eight seconds (a blue bar counts that down) answers no: nothing is emailed and the files stay Internal. You can still flip a file to External later with the Internal and External buttons on its row. While it sends, the button reads Sending..., then Sent, and the prompt closes.

What the family gets is one email each, telling them a new file was added: 'a new file ("Design_v2.pdf")' for a single upload, "3 new files" for several. It carries the order number, your office or company name, phone and email, and a fresh link into their portal. A reply reaches the salesperson assigned to the order when they have an email address, your office or company address when they do not, and the person who created the quote when neither has one. Several files uploaded together produce one prompt and one email.

Telling the customer their install day

When you schedule an installation for a specific day, MonuDesk offers to email the family the date. A small prompt appears at the bottom left, headed Install scheduled for Sep 15, 2026, asking whether the contacts on the order should be notified about it. It appears wherever you schedule an install: the Scheduling panel of the order popup, the calendar, and Insights → Installations.

Notify customer sends the email: the button reads Sent for a moment and the prompt closes. No thanks, the X, or leaving the prompt alone for eight seconds answers no, and nothing is sent. The install email only ever goes out when you choose it.

The prompt comes up when an install is newly booked on a single day. Rebooking an order that already had a day, choosing a window of several days, saving the same day again or clearing the date does not bring it up. Recipients are the same as for file notifications: every contact on the order with an email address and Send portal notifications to this contact switched on. When nobody on the order qualifies, there is no prompt.

The email tells the family their install date and carries a fresh link into their portal. The order's Activity Timeline records it as "Install-scheduled email (Tuesday, September 15, 2026) sent to kim@example.com", one entry per contact emailed.

Drawing approval

When you share drawings as External, families can review and approve them directly from the portal, or ask for changes with Request changes, and you get a clean record of what was approved and when. Right after you upload a Front or Back sketch on an order, MonuDesk asks Show this drawing to the family?: Show to the family puts it in the portal under drawings, and Keep internal leaves it in Notes & Files only. They can approve straight from the portal link without hitting a login or expired-token error. See How Families Review and Approve a Drawing for the full flow, including the approval cooldown, what locks in, and the confirmation email you receive.

Accepting the order

Every open order in the portal, a quote included, shows Accept Your Order. The family types the purchaser's name as it is on the order and presses Accept & Sign, agreeing to the contract and terms in their documents. The portal then shows "Your order has been accepted" with who accepted it and the date. An order is accepted once, and accepting does not move the order to another stage.

The person assigned to the order gets the notification "Customer [name] accepted the contract on order [number]" in the bell, and the order's Activity Timeline records it. If nobody is assigned to the order, nobody is notified, so assign your orders. For a company in Germany and an order with a stone, the family also confirms the withdrawal notice before accepting. Other orders, and companies outside Germany, never show it, whatever the company language.

Letting the family pick a quote option

When a quote has more than one option (Quote A, B and C, added with Add quote option in New Quote), the portal shows Choose Your Memorial with a card for each option. The family taps the one they want and presses Confirm Quote A (or B, or C).

The chosen option becomes the order: the other options are dismissed and the order total changes to the chosen option's total. Your team gets a Quote option chosen notification in the bell, and the Activity Timeline records "Customer confirmed Quote A" with the name of the family member who chose it. To change their choice afterwards, the family contacts you.

Portal for service orders

Service orders get the portal too, with the same layout as a monument order: the progress timeline built from your customer-facing stages, the documents you've shared with the family (drawings, invoices, receipts), and any stage subtext or action required messages you've configured. The Service Details card shows your service description exactly as you typed it, with its line breaks, blank lines and spacing.

The portal link is not sent automatically when a service order is created. To share it, open the order, click Customer Portal, and choose Send Portal Link, or copy the link and send it your own way. When the email goes out, its body is tailored to service work instead of describing a monument build.

Turning the portal on or off

Whether the portal link goes out on its own is decided on the Review & Create step of the New Quote. The Customer Portal card there starts with the switch Send portal link automatically after order creation. Leave it on and the link goes out once when you save with Save as Quote and once when you save with Save as Confirmed Order: by email to each contact with an email address, and by text to each contact with a mobile number. Saving again with the same status sends nothing more, and editing an order never sends it. Turn the switch off and no link is sent automatically for that order.

Below it, This is a pre-need order tells the portal that the people on the order are still living. Switch it on and the portal titles the order "The [last name] Family" and never mentions a loved one. Leave it off for a normal memorial order, and the portal shows "Honoring [name]" for the person on the plot. The info icon next to the switch explains the same, and the setting saves with the order, both on a new quote and when you edit an order.

That switch belongs to order creation, so on an order you re-open it stays as you left it. Send the link whenever you want from the order popup instead: hover Customer Portal and choose Send Portal Link.

Where that switch starts is your company's choice, set in Settings → Customer Portal with Send the portal link automatically. With it on, which is how every account starts, the switch starts on for any order that has a customer email address or mobile number. With it off, the switch starts off on every new order and nothing is sent until you turn it on for that order. It is always off for a service order, and for an order with neither a customer email address nor a mobile number.

To send the link automatically, give the order a customer email address or a mobile number on the Client Information step. A service order is shared by hand with Send Portal Link.

Related articles:

• How to Open an Order

• How to Manage Pipeline Stages

• How to View and Download Documents

• How to Review and Finalize Your Order