This article is designed to show you how to add a customer account to your Crik-IT portal. By doing so, you will be able to log in to a customer account and see what your customers would see when they log in to their respective accounts. Click here for a short video.

Step 1: Add a customer user account.

Log into your Crik-IT portal, click on the Tools tab, then under "Maintain Other User Info" click on Add Portal User. 

Under "Relationship" select "Customer". 

Crik-IT will display a list of your customers to chose from, select one and fill out the requested information.

Important:

Note that the email address you enter when setting up the customer's user account will receive a couple of emails.  So, if you are setting up a customer user account for you to use yourself during the trial, make sure you use your own email address when setting up the customer's user account.  If you have one of your customers helping you evaluate Crik-IT during the trial period, go ahead and use that customer's email address.

Click Create User to finalize the process.

Step 2: Set up a password for your customer account.

A confirmation will appear on screen and you will receive two emails from Crik-IT, each containing the username for the customer account.  One of the emails is a "welcome to our portal" email; the other contains a link to set up a password. The link to set up the password will expire in 24 hours, if unused.

Note that Crik-IT sets up two usernames for a customer. The reason for getting two usernames is that there will be a portal used by staff and another portal used by management. The staff username is usually the same as the management username but ends with an "S".

The staff portal is limited, as staff users cannot see costs or how much your customer currently owes you, as well as other sensitive information. Read more here about the differences between the management and staff usernames.

Make sure to log out of your Crik-IT portal before setting up a password for your rep account, since Crik-IT does not allow someone to be logged into Crik-IT with two usernames at the same time on the same browser. 

Click the password link in the email with the subject "Create your portal password".

You will be taken to a page where you will set up the password for your management username and a different password for your staff username.  

Step 3: Set the customer's landing page in your own portal.

Go to the Tools tab and click on Maintain Permissions.

Under "Select User Type" select "Customer Users", then select the customer whose account you are exploring, and select either "Orders Entered in Portal" or "Dashboard" under "Default tab" 

If you want your customer to use Crik-IT mainly for order entry, configure the Orders Entered In Portal page to be the customer's landing page once they log in.

Allowing your customers to place orders directly takes the order entry burden off your staff and yourself. 

If you want to provide an "informational" portal to your customers, configure the Dashboard as the customer's landing page.  

If you are on the Sales Force or Full Circle plan, the charts shown below can be turned off in the Maintain Permissions page, if you prefer that they not be displayed for a particular user.

Step 4: Explore your customer portal.

On the Orders Entered In Portal page you will see a red button titled "Enter New Order". Clicking on it will take you to an order entry page. 

You can also configure what is called a standard order for your customer users. What this does is include certain reoccurring purchased items on a new order by default. Click here to learn more.

For visual simplicity, the order entry page can be configured to hide the "Header Info" if the customer's shipping information does not vary from order to order. 

This what the order entry page looks like with ...

And, if a customer wants to place a new order that is identical (or nearly identical) to a previous order, they can click on the previous order, view it, and click on Create a Copy on the top right corner of the screen. They will then be able to edit this order, save it, or submit it.

You will also see a field called "New Order" on the home page, below which you will see "Enter Order". Clicking on "Enter Order" will take you to the order entry page.

On the home page you will see a field called "Balance" and a number below. This is the dollar amount a customer owes you—the vendor. Click on the number to get to the "Invoices" page where you will see all open invoices.

You can configure Crik-IT to allow your customer to pay an invoice directly in Crik-IT, to set this up, you can contact our team at support@crik-it.com or by booking a video call. For more information, click here.

Another feature you can configure for your customers is the ability to track a shipment in Crik-IT. If you do so, your customers will see the carrier icon corresponding to their order and will be able to track their shipment by clicking on it. For QuickBooks Online users, see how to configure tracking within Crik-IT for customers here. For QuickBooks Desktop users, see how to configure tracking within Crik-IT for customers here. 

When you go back to the home page you will also see a field called "Library" below which is "See Library". Clicking on "See Library" will take you to a page listing documents you—the vendor—has shared with your customer. 

Next, see how to invite your customers to become users by clicking here, and see how you can customize this user's permissions by clicking here.

As you explore your Crik-IT portal, questions will arise and we're here to help! Meet with us via video call  and email us at support@crik-it.com.