Client collaboration
Your clients log in with a magic link, see their own tickets, comment in the shared thread, and get email when something changes. They never see internal notes, rates, or other clients. Client users are free.
The problem
Clients want to know what is happening. Without a place to look, they email and call, and the team answers the same question several times. A separate client portal is another product to buy and another login for the client, and it still does not know what the client is allowed to see.
How SAQ solves it
A client is a record in your workspace with its own users, contacts, rate card, and billing rules. Client users open the same SAQ, not a portal: they see their own tickets, the shared conversation, and the time logged for them. Three comment audiences and a visibility model based on who is billed decide what each person sees, and SAQ shows the audience before every comment is posted.
What you get
- Magic-link login
- Regular client users sign in from an email link. No password to support, no account to create.
- Three comment audiences
- Shared goes to everyone on the ticket, including the client. Internal stays with your team and elevated client users on the project. Staff stays with your team. Tickets started by a client or by email default to shared; everything else defaults to internal.
- Mentions are sharing
- Adding a viewer is an explicit access grant. The composer says who will gain access before you send, and the grant is recorded on the ticket.
- Elevated client users
- A client's project manager can be a project member: assignable, able to comment internally, able to change states, within their own client's tickets.
- Billing contacts
- Designated people at the client who may download timesheets and see rates and time bank balances. Ordinary contacts never receive documents.
- Email notifications
- Clients get shared comments and state changes on their tickets by email, from your workspace mailbox, and can reply to the email.
- Customer resolve
- A client can close a ticket they started, using the state you choose for it.
- Their language
- Each client has a locale. A Norwegian client gets Norwegian notifications and timesheets from an English workspace, and the other way around.
Key benefits
- Fewer status emails and calls, because the client can look
- One thread per ticket with the client in it, instead of forwarded emails
- Internal discussion right next to the client thread, never leaking
- Clients cost nothing, so invite everyone who needs to follow
- Access is explicit and logged, which your client will ask about
Typical use cases
- Support with visibility. The client's staff report issues by email or by logging in, follow the answer, and close the ticket when they are satisfied.
- A client project manager. Elevated on the project, they prioritize their own client's tickets on the project board and take part in internal discussion, without seeing your staff-only notes or your rates.
- Monthly review. The client's billing contact downloads the timesheet, sees charged, retainer-covered, and free hours, and has no reason to ask for a breakdown.
Why this is simpler
There is no separate portal, no per-ticket sharing switch to forget, and no second product to pay for. The visibility rules are the same in the app, in email, and in the API, because they are enforced in one place.
FAQ
Client collaboration questions
Do my clients need a paid account?
No. Client users, contacts, and billing contacts are never counted. Only your own workspace users are.
What can a client see?
A regular client user sees the tickets they started or were added to as a viewer, shared comments, billable minutes, and the billing outcome (charged, from a time bank, or free). They never see internal or staff comments, notes on time entries, non-billable time, estimates, rates, or amounts. A billing contact with a full login can additionally download their client's timesheets.
How do clients log in?
Regular client users get a magic link by email, valid for 15 minutes, no password needed. A client user who is elevated to project member or flagged as billing contact sets a password or uses their organization's single sign-on, because those roles carry more access.
Can a client accidentally see another client's work?
No. Visibility is scoped by billing client. On a project shared by two clients, each client's users see only tickets billed to their own client, unless your team explicitly adds them as a viewer, which is logged as a system event.
See whether SAQ fits your team
Workspaces are set up by us, not by a signup form. Tell us how your team works and we set one up, with a 30-day trial. Already invited? Log in.