A client portal for buyers and agents — sign, pay, read the report

A client portal for home inspections should be the one place buyers sign the agreement, pay the invoice, and read the report. Agents should see the same job without a second PDF chain in email. If you still attach files from a personal inbox, you do not have a portal — you have a file drop. Inspecta Home 360 inspection report software delivers a branded, client-ready PDF and an interactive share view through the portal. Inspecta Home does not inspect houses. Your branding stays on the job.

The portal is not a marketing microsite. It is operational software for people who are not inspectors: the buyer on a phone at 9 p.m., the agent toggling repair items during negotiations, the co-client who also has to sign. If that experience is confusing, you will get “just email me the PDF” and the whole gate collapses.

Sign in with the email on the job

Clients and agents sign in at /portal with the email on the inspection — not the inspector workspace at /login. The job list shows inspections tied to their email. If they cannot get in, check the address on the project before you assume the product is broken. The Help article using the client and agent portal is the map. There is a separate article when a client cannot sign in at all.

Open a job to sign, pay, chat, and view the report. If the inspector held the report, it stays closed until signed and paid. That copy has to be plain: here is the agreement, here is the pay link, here is why the report is not open yet. Silence reads as incompetence. A visible hold reads as process.

If two people must sign, both emails belong on the job before you send the agreement. A co-client who is only in a text thread will never see the portal. An agent who was not attached will not see repair flags. The portal is only as complete as the people record. Fix that on the project, then resend the message from Notifications or from the card.

Repair requests are inspector-flagged, agent-toggled

Findings marked for repair can be toggled by the agent during negotiations. The inspector chose those flags in the writer. The portal is not a place for the agent to invent new defects. It is a place to work the list you already documented. That keeps the inspection record honest and still useful after the walk.

Do not run repair negotiations in a parallel Google Doc. The job should remain the source of truth. Photos stay on findings. Severity stays on findings. If someone needs a PDF, they download the published one, not a cropped screenshot.

Publish once, share on purpose

Generate the report from the writer, preview HTML, download PDF, and share a link. The interactive report lets people jump sections, filter safety vs deficiencies, and open photos in a lightbox. New links expire in 90 days unless you pick 30 days, a year, or never. Freeze a published version, rotate, extend, or revoke. Optionally collect a client or agent acknowledgment. The how-to is publish the PDF.

The canonical inspection is still structured data in Inspecta Home 360, not the PDF. If you edit a finding, regenerate. Do not keep a “final_final_v3” on someone’s desktop. The portal should always point at the version you meant to deliver.

Messages that drive people to the portal

Settings → Notifications holds the emails and texts for each job step: request, booked, invoice, signed, paid, report held, report ready, review ask. Edit the wording. Use chips for client name, property, fee, date, pay link, review link. Turn a message off if you do not want it. See client emails and texts. Outbound mail and texts belong in Queue so the office can see what already went out.

A portal without messages is a locked door. A message without a portal is another attachment. Use both. Point every CTA at the job, not at a personal email thread the next inspector cannot see.

Access problems are usually data problems

Wrong email on the client. Agent not attached to the job. Portal vs /login confusion. Held report with no explanation. Fix the record, then resend. Do not create a second user “for the wife” unless she is actually the co-client who must sign. Co-client is a job role, not a courtesy login.

Tenant isolation still applies. A buyer should not see another buyer’s inspection because they guessed a URL. Authorization is server-side. Knowing a share token that you revoked should fail closed.

Office, field, and the portal stay one job

Inspectors write. Office sends agreements and invoices. Clients finish in the portal. Agents work repair flags after release. If any of those people use a side channel, the board lies. A client portal for buyers and agents only works when it is mandatory for delivery, not optional for people who like clicking links.

What “client-ready” means in the portal

The buyer is not an inspector. They need severity they can scan, photos that prove the sentence, and a recommendation they can forward to a contractor. Filter safety vs deficiencies. Open a lightbox. Jump to electrical without scrolling a hundred pages of “functional.” If your portal is just a PDF download button, you still made them work for the story.

Agents live in negotiations. They need the same job, not a second login maze, and they need repair-request items the inspector actually flagged. If they can invent new defects in your portal, you have turned the report into a wiki. Keep the writer as the place findings are born. Keep the portal as the place they are read and, after release, marked for repair talks.

Chat on the job beats a personal text the office cannot see. If the buyer asks where to sign, the thread should sit on the project. If the inspector answers from the field, the office should see it. That is how a client portal for buyers and agents becomes the operating surface for delivery — not a pretty extra URL.

Put sign, pay, and the report in one place. Hold the PDF until you are covered. Publish a document they can actually read. That is the portal. Inspecta Home 360 is the software behind it. You are still the inspector they hired.