Portals

A portal is a set of pages where someone outside your business signs in with their own email and password and sees their own account with you: what they owe, their receipts, their orders. They use it on their phone or a computer, at your business’s address, and they see nothing that belongs to anyone else.

Kila has two portals, the customer portal and the supplier portal. Some kinds of business show the customer portal in their own way: schools and daycares as a parent portal, gyms and studios as a member portal, property managers as a tenant portal. Law firms have a client portal of their own.

What each portal shows

Portal	Who signs in	What they see and do
Customer portal	Your customers, including a fuel station’s fleet accounts	What they owe, receipts, their statement, hire purchase, layaway and credit agreements (and paying an instalment by M-Pesa), bookings, online orders, loyalty points, offers and their contact details.
Supplier portal	Your suppliers	The purchase orders you sent them, acknowledging each with a delivery date, what you received from them, their invoices and your payments.
Parent portal	Parents and guardians at a school or daycare	Each child’s fees and fee statement, attendance, report cards and the school’s notices, and paying fees by M-Pesa. A daycare’s day sheet, and leave-outs at a boarding school.
Member portal	Members of a gym or studio	Their membership and card, what they owe, and booking classes and services.
Tenant portal	Tenants of a property manager	Their rent invoices and receipts, what they owe and their statement.
Client portal	A law firm’s clients, and the people who act for a company client	Their matters and court dates, what the firm asks of them, documents, fee notes and secure messages with the firm.

A portal shows only what you use with that person. Agreements appears when you sell on hire purchase, layaway or credit, Bookings when you take appointments, and Loyalty, Offers and Orders when you run them.

A supplier sees only their own orders at their own prices, with their deliveries, invoices and payments: never your stock, your other suppliers, your costs or your margins. A customer sees only their own account.

Who can have one

The customer portal comes with the Business, Growth and Enterprise plans, and the supplier portal with Enterprise. See Customer portal and Supplier portal for what each plan includes. Each sign-in belongs to one customer or supplier of your business; a parent’s covers all their children at the school.

How you give someone access today

Not available yet

Kila has no screen yet for giving a customer or a supplier a sign-in to the customer or supplier portal. Two kinds of business can invite people themselves: schools and daycares to the parent portal, and law firms to the client portal, as below.

Schools and daycares: the parent portal

1. Under Customers and services › Students and fees › School settings, in What the school uses, switch on Parent portal: “Guardians see their children’s fees, report cards and attendance.” Then tap Save.
2. Open the parent under Customers and services › Students and fees › Guardians. They need an email address: the Parent portal button stays grey without one.
3. Tap Parent portal. Kila says Invited to the parent portal: “A link to choose a password was emailed to …”

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The email, Your parent portal at your school’s name, has a Choose a password link. A parent who has lost their password gets a new link the same way: the password they have keeps working until they choose a new one.

Law firms: the client portal

1. Open My work › Inbox and the Client portal tab. If it says The portal is closed, open it first under The firm › Practice configuration, Client portal.
2. Tap Give access: “They sign in with their e-mail and see only what you choose here.”
3. Choose the client. For a client in person, Kila says so, such as “Agnes Njambi Kariuki, the client in person.” For a company or other organisation, choose one of its representatives: “Only an authorised representative recorded with their authority (Contacts and representatives) can have access.”
4. Check E-mail (they sign in with it), choose the Matters (Every matter, now and later, or some) and what They may do.
5. Tap Send the invitation. Kila says Invitation sent: “Agnes Njambi Kariuki has an e-mail with a link to set a password and open the portal.”

Zoom

The person is then on the People with access list as Invited, until they sign in. Tap them on the list to change their Matters or what They may do (Save changes), Send the invitation again (once they have signed in, Send a sign-in link), Suspend their access, or End access: say why and tap End the access. The client is told that their access ended, not why.

A client’s main representative may also ask, on the portal, for access for someone else at their organisation. The request is on the list as Asked for by the client, with their note. Tap it: record the person as one of the client’s representatives first, with their authority, then choose that record and tap Approve and invite. Or tap Decline, say why and tap Decline again.

See Legal practice for the firm’s side of the portal: messages, documents shared and fee notes.

What you see in your business

A customer with a sign-in has Uses the customer portal on their record.

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A supplier with a sign-in has portal after its number under Stock › Purchasing › Suppliers, and Uses the supplier portal on its page.

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When a supplier acknowledges an order, Kila tells the people who raise and approve purchase orders, such as PO-000017 acknowledged: “Simba Paints Ltd confirmed PO-000017 and promised delivery for 6 Nov 2026. Note: Two pallets, on our own truck.” The order shows Supplier acknowledged, with the time, the date promised and the note.

Zoom

When a customer books or cancels a service online, the people who manage appointments are told: New online booking (“Mary Wangari booked TV wall mounting for …”) and Online booking cancelled. A payment made in the portal goes on the customer’s account like any other, with its M-Pesa code.

Not available yet

Payments in a portal use your M-Pesa prompts. Until Kila’s M-Pesa connection is live (Integrations and API says Prompts not connected), a portal sends no prompt and says “M-Pesa prompts are not connected to Safaricom yet”: customers pay at the branch or to your till or paybill. See Take M-Pesa. Without prompts set up, a member’s Pay by M-Pesa says “M-Pesa prompts are not set up for this business.”

Send these guides to the people who use your portal

Each guide is written for the person who uses the portal, to read on their phone. Send them its link, with your business’s address, the one your staff sign in at (such as mwangi-hardware.kilabiashara.co.ke).

• Customers: Your customer portal, Pay an instalment by M-Pesa and Book a service.
• Suppliers: Your supplier portal and Acknowledge a purchase order.
• Parents: Your parent portal and Pay your fees by M-Pesa.
• Members: Your member portal and Book a class.
• Tenants: Your tenant portal.
• Clients: Your client portal.

Each page’s address is the Help Centre’s followed by the page, such as help.kilabiashara.co.ke/portals/customer-portal/.

Related

• Customer portal and Supplier portal: the plans, and what each includes.
• Schools and daycares, Gyms and studios and Property management: the businesses behind the parent, member and tenant portals.