Most of the email a purchase desk deals with is a supplier asking a question the system already knows the answer to. Did you get my invoice? When is it being paid? What was on that order?
The portal lets them look.
Switching it on
- Open the vendor and go to Access & agreements.
- Turn on portal access.
- Choose the portal role — what a vendor may see in general.
- Set the four switches for this particular vendor.
A role rather than a pile of switches for the general case, because “what a vendor may see” is a decision a business makes once and applies to all of them.
Their login
The switches decide what the portal shows; the login is what lets them in. In Settings, Users, Invite user, set Kind to Vendor portal, choose this vendor, and send the invitation. They set a password from the email and sign in at app.jaicrm.ai/login, which takes them straight to their portal. A vendor login reaches its portal and the files you share with it, and never a staff screen.
The four switches
| Switch | What it lets them do |
|---|---|
| View purchase orders | Open the orders raised against them. |
| Upload invoices | Send their bills in directly, with no email chase. |
| View payment status | See what has cleared, what is scheduled and what is on hold. |
| Send messages | Write in the thread on their own record. |
Upload invoices is the one that saves real time. A bill arriving in the system, attached to the right vendor, beats a PDF in somebody’s inbox that has to be found, saved, renamed and keyed in.
View payment status is worth thinking about
It cuts the chasing calls almost entirely, which is the argument for it. The argument against is that it also shows a vendor exactly when you intend to pay them — including when you are deliberately sitting on something.
That is a commercial decision, not a technical one. Switch it on per vendor, which is why it is a per-vendor switch.
What they cannot see
Their own record and their own documents. Not your other vendors, not your rates with anyone else, not your customers, not your margins. The portal is scoped to the party signing in.
What it saves
Count the emails a purchase desk sends in a week. A large share are answers to three questions the system already knows:
| The question | The switch that answers it |
|---|---|
| “Did you receive my invoice?” | Upload invoices — they put it in themselves and can see it landed. |
| “When am I being paid?” | View payment status. |
| “What was on that order again?” | View purchase orders. |
Each one answered by the vendor looking, rather than by somebody stopping what they are doing to look it up.
Rolling it out
- Start with two or three vendors you deal with most. They generate most of the traffic.
- Turn on view orders and upload invoices first. Those are the two with no commercial downside.
- Leave view payment status until you are comfortable with what it shows.
- Tell the vendor it exists. A portal nobody mentioned is a portal nobody opens.
Portal access is per vendor, on purpose. There is no reason to give a supplier you use once a year the same access as the one you buy from weekly, and every login is a way in.
Switching it off
Turn portal access off on the vendor record and they can no longer sign in. Do this when a relationship ends, at the same time as you would take back a key — and certainly before you block them over a dispute.
A worked rollout
You buy from about forty suppliers. Three of them account for most of the traffic.
- Turn the portal on for those three, with view orders and upload invoices.
- Leave view payment status off for now.
- Tell them it exists — a portal nobody mentioned is a portal nobody opens.
- After a month, count how many “did you get my invoice” emails you still get from them.
- If it has dropped, extend it. If not, find out why before doing it forty more times.
The three switches you turn on first are the ones with no commercial downside. View payment status is the one to think about: it removes the chasing calls and it also shows a supplier exactly when you intend to pay — including when you are deliberately sitting on something. That is a commercial decision, which is why it is a per-vendor switch rather than a global setting.
Where to go next
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