Introduction
The customer portal is a web page your customers open from a link in their booking emails. It greets them with Hello and their name, then Please manage your information in this portal! On the left are three tabs: Preparation, Documents and Contact. On the right is a summary of the booking: a picture and the name of the vehicle class, the number of days, From, To, Locations, and the money in it (Subtotal:, VAT:, Total, Deposit, Payments and Outstanding). From there the customer can fill in their own details, pay what is due and download the booking's documents, without phoning you. Staff never work in the portal itself; your part is setting it up, and answering the customer when something in it confuses them.
You would be here because:
- A customer is coming to pick up tomorrow and you want them to fill in their licence and address beforehand, so the handover takes two minutes instead of ten.
- You want customers to pay the balance online before they arrive.
- A customer phones to say the portal still says Please update your profile after they filled everything in.
- A customer asks where to find their rental agreement or invoice.
- You are checking what your portal shows before you start putting the link in emails.
Words this screen uses
| The screen says | What it means |
|---|---|
| Customer portal | The customer's own booking page, opened from an email link |
| Customer validation | Your company's list of details a customer record must have |
| Mollie | The online payment company RentVisie uses; the customer pays on its page |
| Branch | A part of your company with its own name and contact details; each pickup location belongs to one |
Customers get in through the link in an email. There is no button in the app that opens a customer's portal for you.
How to use
Configuration
The portal has no switch of its own; it exists as soon as an email carries its link. Four things decide what the customer sees. Settings sit in three places, none of them under Admin → Self service: that tile page is for unattended pickup and return (see Let customers collect and return a vehicle on their own).
1. Put the link in your emails. From the main menu open Admin, then Communicator, and click the Bookings tile. Open the template you want (the confirmation email is the usual one) and type ${customerPortalUrl} in the text where the link should go. When the email is sent, the app replaces it with that customer's own portal address for that booking. Only emails that contain it carry the link; the app adds it nowhere by itself. How templates work is described in Send a customer an email from a booking.
2. Decide which details the portal asks for. Open Admin, then Settings, and click the Operational tile. On the screen headed Operational settings, open the Customer validation tab. It has two lists of yes/no switches.
- The upper list (Name, Email, Phone, Birth data, Address, Company name, Chamber of commerce, Tax number, IBAN, BIC, Drivers license, min age) decides what a record must contain before the portal calls it Completed.
- The lower list, under Whether to show the fields in the inspection app and customer portal, decides which boxes the portal shows. Only five of them change the portal:
| Switch | Default | What it does in the portal |
|---|---|---|
| Show address fields | Yes | Shows the Address step. When off, that step says Address information not requested. |
| Show IBAN field | Yes | Shows IBAN on the Financials step |
| Show BIC field | No | Shows BIC on the Financials step |
| Show driver license fields | Yes | Shows the licence boxes on the Identification step. When off, it says No information requested. |
| Show chamber of commerce field | Yes | Shows Chamber of Commerce for business customers |
Name, phone, email and birth details are always shown, whatever Show name fields, Show phone field, Show email field and Show birth data fields say. Press Save. The change applies the next time a customer opens their portal; links already sent keep working and simply show the new set of boxes.
3. Fill in the Contact tab and turn on paying. From the main menu open Admin, then Product design, and click the Branches tile. Click the branch to open the screen headed Branch.
- On its Customer portal tab, fill in About (a line about your company) and Instructions (for example where to park and which door to use). The portal's Contact tab shows these under About and Instructions, with the branch name, its Website and the phone number of the pickup location.
- On its Financials tab, set Accept payments to yes. It starts at No, and while it is no, the Preparation tab shows no payment blocks at all. The portal uses the branch of the booking's pickup location.
Press Save. For online payment to work, your company must also be connected to Mollie; see Take card and online payments.
4. Leave Customer portal base url alone. The Customer portal tab on Operational settings holds Customer portal base url, with Please contact RentVisie for assistance with the setup. It does not change the ${customerPortalUrl} link. It feeds the separate self-service links, ${customerSelfServiceUrl} and ${driverSelfServiceUrl}, described in Let customers collect and return a vehicle on their own and the driver app.
Before you start: Settings, Product design and Communicator are for a company administrator. Ask them to make these changes if you are not one. Customers need no account of their own: the link is all they need.
Using the customer portal
Customers reach the portal by clicking the link in their booking email. You cannot open it from inside the app. When a customer phones about it:
- Ask which tab they are on: Preparation, Documents or Contact. The tabs are described below.
- Find the customer in Customers, then the Customers tile, and open their record. Everything they save in the portal is already there.
- Correct anything they cannot fix themselves on that record, and press Save. The portal shows the change the next time they open the link.
Preparation tab, top block. It says Update customer details with either Completed or Please update your profile, and a Change button. Change opens Edit your customer details, with four steps across the top: Basic information, Address, Financials and Identification. The customer fills in each step and clicks Next; the last step has Save instead. Cancel and Back return to the portal.
| Step | Boxes | What the portal accepts |
|---|---|---|
| Basic information | is company, First name, Last name, Company name, Chamber of Commerce, Dial code, Phone, Email, Invoice email (optional), Place of birth, Date of birth, Nationality | Dial code must be chosen, or Next marks it Please fill in. Email is shown but cannot be changed. Date of birth is typed month first: 03/04/1990 is 4 March |
| Address | Postal code, House number, House number addition, Street, City, Country | Any text |
| Financials | IBAN and BIC; VAT number for business customers | An IBAN that is not a real IBAN stops the step with 'IBAN Invalid' |
| Identification | Licence Number, Issuer, Date of issuance, Date of expiration | Any text and dates |
Preparation tab, payment blocks. Below the details block, each amount due has its own block with a Pay now button: Pay booking balance due, Pay outstanding rent and Pay full booking balance. Pay now takes the customer to Mollie's payment page. When nothing is due, the block reads No outstanding balance with No outstanding amount at this moment. Thank you!
Documents tab. A list with Document type and Document status columns and a download icon at the end of each row. It shows every official document of the booking (agreement, invoices, pickup and dropoff forms, quote, credit) and the latest draft rental agreement.
Contact tab. Your branch's name, phone number, website, About and Instructions, taken from the branch's Customer portal tab (see Configuration).
Key details
Each step is saved the moment the customer clicks Next. It goes straight into the customer record you see in the app; nobody approves it. Cancel on a later step does not undo an earlier one. Clicking a step name at the top jumps there without saving the step the customer was on.
What makes the profile Completed. After each step the app checks the record against the upper Customer validation list. With the switches as they start, all of these must be true for a private customer:
| Condition | What to check |
|---|---|
| Name | First name and Last name filled in |
| A normal email address | |
| Phone | Phone is 9 to 15 digits with no spaces or plus sign, and a Dial code is set |
| Address | Street, House number, Postal code, City and Country all filled in |
| Birth data | Place of birth filled in and, where a Date of birth is given, the customer is at least min age (18) |
| Driving licence | Number and Issuer filled in, issued in the past, expiring in the future |
A business customer is checked on Company name and Chamber of commerce instead of name, birth data and licence.
Which payment blocks appear. Each block shows only when its amount makes sense to pay:
| Block | Shows when |
|---|---|
| Pay booking balance due | Something is due now, following your payment terms (for example an advance payment) |
| Pay outstanding rent | The rent still owed is more than what is due now, and differs from the full amount |
| Pay full booking balance | The full amount still owed (rent plus deposit, where you ask for both) differs from what is due now |
| No outstanding balance | All three are zero or less |
For example: a four-day booking at €600 with a €500 deposit, where your terms ask for 20% up front. If the portal works out €120 due now, €600 rent and €1,100 in full, the customer sees all three Pay now blocks. After paying the €120, the first block disappears and the other two show €480 and €980. Once €980 more comes in, only No outstanding balance is left.
The link carries two numbers, and nothing else protects it. The address ends in a customer number and a booking number, and it has no password and no end date. Anyone who has the link can read the customer's name, date of birth, address, licence and bank details, change them, and start a payment. The numbers follow on from each other, so changing a digit can open another customer's details, and the app does not check that the customer and the booking in the link belong together.
What to do next: once the customer has paid, see how the money lands in Take card and online payments; when they arrive, carry on with Run the pickup inspection.
Q&A
Could another customer see this customer's details through the portal? Yes, if they get hold of the link or alter the numbers in it; see The link carries two numbers above. Never paste a portal link into a group chat or forward it to anyone but the customer it was sent to. If a customer reports seeing someone else's details, tell your administrator and RentVisie support straight away.
Why is the customer's driving licence still empty after they saved it in the portal? When a customer has no licence on file yet, the first Save on Identification creates an empty licence and drops what they typed. Ask them to open the portal and fill it in once more; the second time it is kept. Or type it in yourself, as in Record a customer's driving licence and passport.
Why is the BIC or VAT number missing when the customer says they entered it? For a customer with no bank details on file yet, the first Next on Financials keeps only the IBAN. Ask them to do the step again, or add the rest on the customer record.
The customer's date of birth is wrong by months. The portal reads dates month first. A customer who typed 03/04/1990 meaning 3 April is recorded as 4 March. Correct it on the customer record, as in Create a customer record.
The portal still says Please update your profile, though the customer filled in everything. Check the conditions in What makes the profile Completed. The usual causes are a phone number typed with spaces or a plus sign, a missing country, or a licence whose expiry date has passed. Correct it on the customer record; the portal shows Completed the next time the customer opens it.
The customer sees no Pay now button at all. Accept payments is off on the branch of the pickup location. Ask your administrator to switch it on, as described under Configuration.
The customer clicked Pay now and saw No balance outstanding. Nothing was due for that choice at that moment, for example because a payment came in after they opened the page. Ask them to open the link again.
The customer clicked Pay now and saw Can't connect to payment portal. Please try again later. The booking behind the link could not be found. Check the booking still exists in Bookings, then send the email again so they get a fresh link.
The customer cannot change their email address. The portal shows it but does not let them change it. Change it on the customer record yourself.
A document the customer expects is not on the Documents tab. Only official documents appear, plus the latest draft agreement. A draft invoice or draft quote stays hidden until it is made official.
The Contact tab is empty under About and Instructions. Nobody has filled in the branch's Customer portal tab, as described under Configuration.
Related pages: Sign, accept and pay by link for the other links in your emails, Send a customer a payment request for asking for a specific amount, and Check what a customer owes and take a payment for the customer's balance.