The professional portal: adding and managing clients

The professional portal is where a client's figures live for you. A client gets there one of two ways: you create the account for them, or they connect their own account to yours. The rest of this guide walks through both, then what each of you can do once they're in.

Two ways a client ends up in your book

If the client has never used BrickTrack, you create the account. You get their portfolio open and editable straight away, and they get a login whenever you decide to send one.

If they already have an account, they connect to you from their side, or accept an invite you send. Their data stays theirs and you see what they've chosen to share.

Both kinds sit together on your Clients page. The difference shows up on the client's own page in the portal, where the controls differ depending on which way they arrived.

Add a client

Open Clients and choose "Add client". The form takes a name, an email address, and one switch, "Client can edit their own data", which is on by default. Turn it off and the client can sign in and read everything but not add or change a record; your firm does the entering.

Nothing goes to the client when you save. The account exists, the portfolio is yours to fill, and they don't hear about it until you send them a login link. That's deliberate: most advisors want the books in shape before the client sees them.

The portal shows a counter against your firm's client limit. That number is the live one, so trust it over anything written here.

If the email you enter already belongs to a BrickTrack account, the form refuses it, because there's already a person on the other end of that address. Connect to that account instead, which is covered further down.

On the client's page you'll find "Email them a login link". It sends a sign-in link to the address you entered when you created them. The link works once and expires after 15 minutes, and you can send up to five in a day for any one client, so an unread email isn't a dead end; send another when they're at their desk.

The first time they open it, BrickTrack asks them to accept the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy before anything else loads. One checkbox and a button, then their dashboard. They never chose to sign up, so this is where they agree to the same terms everyone else did at registration.

A client you created appears only in your own portal book. Colleagues at your firm don't see them there today, so only you can send the link or flip the edit switch.

Setting a password

There's no "Set password" control for a client you created; the link is the way in. If they'd rather have a password, the order matters.

Sign in with the link once first. That marks the email address as verified. Then, on the sign-in page, use "Forgot your password?" and follow the emailed reset; the password it sets becomes their normal login from then on.

Doing it the other way round doesn't work. A reset run before the client has ever used a login link does create a password, but signing in with it ends at a prompt to verify their email first, because the address was never confirmed. Have them use the link before anyone touches the reset.

View only or can edit

The switch you set at creation lives on the client's page in the portal as "Let them edit their own data". Off means they can sign in and view everything, but only your firm can make changes; on means they enter their own records alongside yours.

You can flip it at any time. Like the login link, the switch is only available to the person who created the client, and only while that person is still at your firm.

Open client dashboard

"Open client dashboard" takes you into the client's own BrickTrack, the same screens they see when they sign in. There you can add and edit properties, loans, entities and transactions on their behalf; anything you'd enter for yourself, you can enter for them.

Every change you make there is recorded under your name in the audit log, and the client can read that log. They'll see that, say, their accountant added the June rates notice, not that it appeared from nowhere.

When a client connects from their own account

A client with an existing account connects to you from Reports → Broker Portal in their own BrickTrack, using "Connect with Broker" and your email address. You can also start it from your side: the Invites page in the portal sends the same invite to the client's address.

Either way, an email goes out with a link. The client opens it while signed in to an account whose verified email matches the invited address, then accepts. If they're not signed in, the page offers sign in or create account first.

Accepting connects you, but it grants nothing beyond that. Until the client turns on the switches described next, you have read-only visibility in the portal and there's no "Open client dashboard" to press. Once they've let you edit, a card headed "Open [their first name] dashboard" appears on their page with that button in it.

What your client controls

A client, whether you created them or they connected, manages your access from Settings → Advisors in their own account. Three switches sit against your name: "Let [your name] enter and edit your data", "Share your full net worth with [your name]", and "Let [your name] see your bank account balances".

The first one is the edit switch. When a client you created turns it off, it removes edit access for your whole firm, not just for you, so a colleague who was working on that portfolio loses the ability to change it too. The other two govern what the portal shows you. With the net worth switch off you see property equity only, nothing the client holds outside their properties; with the balances switch off, their bank account balances stay hidden.

"Add accountant" on that same page is something different. It invites a person as a read-only member of the client's portfolio, and it doesn't connect them to the professional portal. If a client asks how to give you portal access, point them at Reports → Broker Portal, not at "Add accountant".