Getting Started

Create your Upclient account, set up your workspace and portal, and join a team you've been invited to.

Everything in Upclient happens inside a workspace: your team, your clients, your projects, and your client portal. This page walks you through creating an account and setting up your first workspace.

How to create an account

1. Open the sign-up page and enter your Name, Email, and a Password. The rules under the password field tick off as you type; click the eye button to show what you typed.
2. Click Create account.
3. Check your email for a verification code and enter it to verify your address.

Once your email is verified, you’re signed in and setup starts. If you signed up from a team invitation, you go to the invitation instead. See How to join a workspace.

How to set up your workspace

Setup has two steps. The line at the top shows Step 1 of 2 or Step 2 of 2. Upclient remembers how far you got, so if you close the tab, sign out or continue on another device, you pick up on the same step.

Step 1: Your business

1. Enter your Business name.
2. Check the line under it: Clients sign in at shows the address of your client portal, made from your business name. Click Change to edit it. Upclient checks the address as you type and suggests up to three free ones when it’s taken. If the address made from your name is already taken and you haven’t edited it, Upclient picks a free one for you.
3. Under What kind of work do you do?, choose the option closest to yours. This picks the project template, forms and contracts Upclient sets up for you, plus a sample client. See Starters.
4. Click Build my portal. Upclient creates your workspace and sets everything up, which takes a few seconds.

While you type, the preview next to the form shows how your client portal will look, with the tasks your sample client will have waiting. On a phone the preview sits under the form.

If you’d rather set everything up yourself, click Start empty instead. You get an empty workspace and go straight to Projects.

Your workspace uses your browser’s time zone; you can change it later in Workspace Settings.

Step 2: Your portal

This step shows your real client portal, exactly as your sample client sees it on its Home page, with a contract to sign, a questionnaire and a file request waiting. The sample client is marked as sample data, so Upclient never emails it, even though its address looks real.

Under Make it yours (optional) you can:

• Upload logo: if you haven’t chosen a brand colour yet, Upclient also picks one from your logo.
• Brand colour: click a colour, or the last swatch to choose any colour.

Changes save straight away and the portal preview reloads to show them. When you’re ready, choose one of:

• Invite your first client: creates a project for one of your own clients and gives them portal access. See How to invite your first client.
• Explore the sample first: finishes setup and takes you to Projects, where the sample client’s project is waiting.
• Open the full preview: opens the read-only portal in a new tab, so you can click around as the sample client.

Back returns to step 1, where you can still change your business name and portal address. The kind of work can’t be changed once your portal is built; add templates for other kinds of work from the library instead.

Every new workspace starts with a 14-day free trial. See Billing.

How to invite your first client

You can open Invite your first client from the last setup step or from the Getting started checklist on Projects.

1. Enter the Client name and Email, and optionally the Company.
2. Under Start from, choose a project template, or Blank project. The line under it shows how many stages, tasks, forms, contracts and file requests the template has. Your starter’s main template is chosen for you.
3. Click Create project and send invite. Your client gets one email with a sign-in link to your portal. Click Create without sending to set up the project and portal access without emailing anyone; you can send the invite later from the project’s Members tab.

Upclient names the project after the template and the company (or the client, when there is no company), for example “Brand identity onboarding for Tidewater Kitchens”, and opens it. If the email belongs to someone already in your clients, Upclient adds the project to that client instead of creating a second one. You can’t use the sample client’s email address here.

Starters

Each starter adds one onboarding template (its main template), the forms and contracts that go with it, and a sample client. The forms and contracts are the same ones you find in the library, so a contract shared by several starters, such as the mutual NDA, is the same contract whichever starter you pick.

Every main template has four stages or fewer, a mix of client tasks and behind-the-scenes tasks for your team, workflows that are switched on, and portal pages: a Welcome page that greets the client by name and an FAQ or a booking page. The sample client’s contract already has its blanks filled with example fees so you can see a finished contract; the copy in your Contracts list still has the blanks for you to fill in.

What to do next

After setup you land on Projects. Until you have an active project of your own (the sample project doesn’t count), it shows a Getting started checklist. Each item ticks itself off when it’s done, and Dismiss hides the list for good:

1. Brand your portal: add your logo or brand colour, in setup or in Workspace Settings.
2. Preview your portal: look at the portal as the sample client. Seeing it in the last setup step counts.
3. Invite your first client: opens Invite your first client.
4. Fill in your contract details: replace the blanks, such as your fees and governing law, in the contract your main template uses. See Contracts.
5. Invite a teammate: see Team.

You don’t have to build project templates, forms, or contracts from scratch. On the Templates, Forms, and Contracts pages, click Browse library to preview ready-made ones and click Use this to add one to your workspace. Library forms and contracts are ready to use when added, so you can attach them to tasks straight away, or pick them from the library right inside a task. See Project Templates, Forms, and Contracts.

Only the sample client (its company, its contact and its project) is sample data. The templates, forms and contracts a starter adds are your own from the start, so you can edit them and keep them. When you no longer need the sample client, click Remove sample client in the note on the Projects or Clients page, or in Workspace Settings. Projects you created from the starter’s templates are not affected.

How to join a workspace

When a teammate invites you, you receive an email with an invitation link.

1. Open the link. If you don’t have an account yet, create one with the email address the invitation was sent to and verify it with the emailed code.
2. Sign in with the invited email address if you aren’t already.
3. Click Accept invitation, or Decline if you don’t want to join.

Invitations expire after 14 days. If yours has expired, ask the person who invited you to send it again.

How to reset your password

1. On the sign-in page, click Forgot password?.
2. Enter your email and click Send reset link.
3. Open the link in the email and choose a new password.