Customer Portal — A Guide from Scratch

Your customers ask the same things every day: "Where is my order?", "Can you send me a copy of the invoice?", "How much do I owe?". The customer portal gives the answers to the customers themselves, on a page that opens on their phone. The employee of your dealer or buying company sees their own account's orders, invoices, balance and statement; reports payments, opens return requests and places orders. You decide on all requests in a single window in HNR.

1. The portal at a glance

Order tracking: the status line of each order — received → confirmed → in production (with a percentage) → shipped (tracking number and link) → delivered (who received it and when) → invoiced; the promised delivery date.
Documents: invoices, delivery notes, quotations and the order form — view on screen or download as PDF.
My account: balance, overdue invoices and invoices due within 7 days, your company's payment details (IBAN), account statement (on screen and as PDF).
Requests: payment notification (amount, date, receipt), return request (invoice, item, quantity, reason, up to 3 photos), quotation request, document request, order change request.
Placing orders: search products, add to cart, send; the server calculates the price. A customer with a blanket agreement places call-off orders against it.
Notifications: always inside the portal; also by email or WhatsApp if the user chooses so and the company's message service is connected. The portal works in 24 languages and is designed for phones first.

2. First setup: permissions, settings and the service user

Settings › Users › the Customer portal group has two permissions: Portal users and customer requests (musteri_portali — invite users, decide on requests, see the notification history) and Portal settings and service credential (musteri_portali_yonet — settings and the service user). An administrator has both.

Then open the Settings › Company Information › Customer portal group (the same screen is also the Settings tab of the "Customer portal" window): turn the portal on, enter the company name, accent color and logo address the customer will see; choose which documents appear on the portal (invoices, delivery notes, orders, quotations, account statement), whether the customer may place orders, and call-off orders from blanket agreements; set the payment details (bank / IBAN text and payment note), the default language, the return request period (days, 0 = unlimited) and the request owner who receives a message for each new request. In the same place every notification event sent to customers can be switched off one by one.

⚠️ Without a portal service user nobody can log in

The portal uses the permissions of an HNR user to read company data and write orders. Set it in the Portal service user box of the same settings group: enter the HNR user name and password; Verify and save tries the credential against HNR and stores it encrypted (key HNR_PORTAL_KIMLIK_ANAHTARI, otherwise the live bank connection key; if there is no key at all the credential is not saved, it is never stored in plain text). We recommend a separate user opened only for the portal: reading accounts and documents plus writing orders is enough. If no service user is set, a warning appears at the top of the window and customers cannot log in.

💡 The portal address

The portal opens at /portal/ on your HNR server. The invitation link takes the customer straight to your company's portal; a customer without a link types the portal code you gave them on the login screen. For the links in email and WhatsApp messages to point to the right place, the server administrator must set PORTAL_ADRES to the portal's public address.

3. Inviting customer users

Open the account card › Portal tab: that account's portal users and open requests are shown here. With Invite user enter the email, full name, mobile phone (WhatsApp) and role (the email and mobile number on the account card are suggested). Create invitation produces a link: copy it and pass it on through a channel you trust, or send it directly by email or WhatsApp. The link is valid for 7 days and can be used only once, to set a password. The users of all accounts are also listed on the Users tab of the "Customer portal" window.

Role	What they can do
Viewer	Sees orders, documents, balance and statement; reports payments and opens requests. Cannot place orders.
Can place orders	Everything a viewer can do + orders and (if enabled) call-off orders.
Customer administrator	Can place orders + is the person in charge on the customer's side. Only a user with the `musteri_portali_yonet` permission can assign or change this role.

A user's status is Invitation pending, Active, Locked or Inactive. The buttons on the row: Unlock (removes a wrong-password lock), Lock, Close sessions (ends all of the user's open portal sessions at once), Renew invitation and Send password link. A customer who forgot the password can reset it on the login screen with I forgot my password; a new invitation is the administrator's way of resetting a password. No invitation is sent to an inactive user; change the status first.

4. The portal as the customer sees it

The customer opens the invitation link, sets a password (at least 10 characters, with at least one letter and one digit) and logs in. The bottom menu has four sections: Home (balance, overdue, due within 7 days, open requests, open orders and recent notifications; shortcuts Place an order, Open a return request, Report a payment), Orders (open or the last 120 days; tapping an order shows the status line, items and documents), Account (debit/credit, open invoices and days overdue, payment details, the account statement for a date range and its PDF) and Requests. The menu at the top right opens invoices, delivery notes, quotations (last 24 months), notifications and settings; settings contain the language, notification channels and changing the password.

ℹ️ The figures are the same as in HNR

The portal calculates no amount by itself: the balance and the statement are read from the account itself, the order status from the order, work order, shipment and invoice records. A payment reported by the customer does not change the balance until you post the collection; PDFs are produced with the same design as in the print designer.

5. Orders and call-off orders from the portal

If ordering is enabled in the settings and the user's role allows it, the customer searches for products by code or name, enters quantities and sends the order (up to 50 items). The total on screen is an estimate: the server calculates the price — the price list and campaigns set up for that customer (Prices and Campaigns), otherwise the item card price. Before it is saved, the order passes the credit limit check: if the policy is "send for approval", the order is taken in as awaiting approval and the customer sees "it will be processed after approval"; if it is "block" or the account is on hold, the order is not accepted and the customer reads that they should contact their sales representative. The same order cannot be sent twice.

If the customer has a blanket agreement and call-off orders are enabled in the settings, the portal shows the agreement, its end date and the remaining commitment; the customer enters the requested delivery date and sends a call-off order. The agreement price, the overrun policy and the single-use permission are applied on the server exactly as for a call-off order entered in HNR.

6. Requests: returns, payment notifications, quotation and document requests

Request type	What the customer enters
Return request	Invoice, items and quantities to return (cannot exceed the invoiced quantity), reason (arrived damaged, wrong product, arrived incomplete, quality problem, sent in excess, other), up to 3 photos. If the invoice is past the return period, the request cannot be opened.
Payment notification	Amount paid, payment date (cannot be in the future), optional receipt (photo or PDF, max. 2 MB). The balance changes only when you post the collection.
Quotation request · Document request · Order change	Subject and a short description; when opened from an order or document screen, that document is linked to the request.

A new request reaches the request owner as an in-app HNR message and is listed on the Requests tab of the "Customer portal" window (filter: open, all, by type). Open the request, look at the attached photos and items, click Start review; then Approve or Reject. A reason for rejection is required and is sent to the customer; with an approval you may write an optional note. When the work is done, Close as completed. Every decision goes to the customer as a notification; the request's history (who, when, which status) stays on the request card. The customer can cancel a request only while it is open.

⚠️ Approving a return does not issue a return invoice

Approval only accepts the request. Return logistics (pickup appointment, goods receipt, quality decision) are not available yet: when the goods arrive, issue the return invoice from the usual document screen, then Close as completed.

7. Notifications and the communication sequence

HNR notices the events that concern the customer's business by itself and informs the customer. The notification is always shown on the portal; if the user chose email or WhatsApp in their settings, the company's message service is connected and the address is on record, it also goes out through that channel. The texts are built in the language the customer selected (24 languages).

Event	When
Order received · Order confirmed	When the order is saved; when nothing is left waiting in the approval queue.
Production started	When the first confirmation is entered on the order's work order (with a percentage). Off by default.
Shipped · Delivered	When the shipment leaves (with carrier and tracking number); when the proof of delivery (POD) is saved.
Invoice issued	When a sales invoice is issued; the link goes to the PDF on the portal.
Monthly statement	In the first 5 days of the month, for the previous month, with the current balance.
Payment reminder	Every step sent by the collection reminder sequence also appears on the portal.
Request received · Request decision · Return decision	When a request is opened; at every status change (the rejection reason or the note is added to the text).

The task that finds the events is off by default; the server administrator turns it on with PORTAL_BILDIRIM_GOREV=1 and it then scans every 15 minutes. Even while the task is off, the Scan now button on the Notifications tab of the "Customer portal" window runs one round (result: how many events were processed, notifications written, external sends and errors). The same event is never notified twice. The notification history is listed with event, channel, status (sent, pending, skipped, error) and the error text; "skipped" usually means the message service is not connected or the address is missing.

8. Security

The customer sees only their own account. Trying to open another account's document, order or request returns "not found" — not even the existence of the document is revealed.
Login brake: after 20 failed attempts per minute from one IP address, logins pause temporarily; 5 wrong passwords on one account lock it for 15 minutes.
A password has at least 10 characters with at least one letter and one digit; it is stored as a strong hash. A password reset code is valid for 15 minutes.
A session ends after 30 minutes of inactivity and after 12 hours at the latest. Optional second step: a 6-digit code sent by email or WhatsApp at login; if the channel is not ready, login is refused (it is not silently skipped).
All portal access is written to the audit log (company, account, user, operation, IP) and appears in the HNR access trail under the portal user's name. The portal cannot reach HNR's own endpoints.

9. On the phone

The portal itself is built for phones first: bottom menu, large touch targets, adding photos with the camera; in right-to-left languages (Arabic, Urdu, Persian) the page flips automatically. On the HNR side, on screens under 7 inches the "Customer portal" window opens in the Garden + Steps layout: a request is picked from the 1 · Requests list, and in the 2 · Request step the photos, items and decision buttons appear in a single column; Users and Notifications come as card lists.

10. Known limits

Because the official PDF of an e-Archive invoice is not stored separately, the portal provides the invoice PDF from the print designer.
Return logistics (pickup appointment, goods receipt, quality decision) are not available yet; the return invoice is issued from the usual document screen.
There is no card payment; the customer only reports the bank transfer they made.