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Moving Portal Access to a New Email

When the person who handles a customer's billing changes — a new accounts-payable contact, a new site manager, or simply a corrected email — you need their portal access to follow the new email. FSM Navigator does this automatically the moment you update the customer's default location or change the email on that location.

When the transfer happens

The portal email moves to the new address in two situations:

Trigger What you did What happens
Set a different location as default Promoted a different location to be the customer's default billing location The new default location's contact email takes over portal access
Edit the email on the current default location Changed the contact email on the location that is already the default The newly saved email takes over portal access

If the location you set as default has no contact email saved on it, portal access stays where it was — nothing is moved.

What the customer sees

Two emails are sent at the same time:

The old email address receives a security notice. It explains that portal access for your company has been moved at the request of the account contact, that this address will no longer receive portal sign-in links, and that the new contact at a masked version of the new email (for example jo***@example.com) now has portal access. The notice asks them to contact you immediately if the change was not expected.

The new email address receives a welcome message with a fresh sign-in link valid for one hour. The link drops them straight into the portal with no password required. They will see the full service history, all past invoices, and any open balances — portal access is tied to the customer record, not the email, so nothing is lost in the transfer.

What stays the same

The customer record itself is not changed. Past invoices, jobs, attachments, and service history all stay attached to the customer and remain visible inside the portal to whoever signs in. If the previous contact was already signed in when you made the change, their session stays valid until they sign out — they will only lose the ability to request a new sign-in link from the old address.

What you see after making the change

A confirmation banner appears in the dashboard after the location update. It tells you exactly what happened:

Banner Meaning
"Default location updated. Portal access moved to jo***@example.com." The transfer succeeded and both emails were dispatched
"Default location updated. Note: this location has no email, so portal access was not transferred." The new default has no email saved, so nothing moved
"Default location updated. Portal access transfer skipped (rate limit)." More than five transfers were attempted on this customer within an hour — try again later or use Resend Portal Link
"Default location updated, but portal access transfer failed." The default-location change succeeded but the portal transfer ran into an issue. Contact support if portal sign-in problems follow

The default-location change itself always commits even if the portal transfer cannot complete — the two operations are independent.

If the new contact loses their welcome email or the one-hour link expires before they sign in, you can resend it from the customer's profile in the dashboard. The resend goes to whatever address is currently driving billing for that customer — which, after the transfer, is the new email.