What is the Client Portal?
The Client Portal is a secure, branded space where your clients — plan sponsors, HR contacts, and payroll admins — work with your firm without needing a full Stax.ai CX login. Clients use the portal to upload files, complete tasks, answer questionnaires, and start requests. Everything they do flows straight back into CX, so your team sees the work in one place instead of chasing emails.
Key capabilities
Collect data without the email chase. Clients upload census files, sign forms, and complete tasks in the portal. Their work lands on the right company record in CX automatically.
Let clients start the work. With Client Requests, a plan sponsor can kick off a distribution or other request from the portal. CX launches the matching project for your team the moment they submit. See Creating Client Requests.
Give each person the right access. Portal permissions control what each contact can see and do — from viewing shared files to managing their own portal users. See Client Portal Permissions.
Help clients in real time. When a client is active in the portal, you can request to view their screen and guide them step by step — no outside screen-sharing tools. See Client Portal Live View.
How it fits into CX
The portal is the client-facing side of the work you already manage in CX:
Companies and People — you invite portal users from a company's People tab, and their portal status shows there.
Projects and Tasks — client tasks appear in the portal for clients to complete. Client Requests launch projects from your templates.
Files — files clients upload arrive in the company's file directory.
Sessions — every portal visit is recorded, so you can replay what a client saw and did.
A quick look
When a client signs in, they see the tasks you've assigned, shared files, and (if configured) a Requests card for starting new work. Your firm's branding keeps the experience familiar and professional.
How a client verifies a census file
The Verify Census File task is one of the most common things you'll send to a plan sponsor, and it's worth knowing exactly how it behaves so you can answer questions about it.
The task has three steps: download the census file, review it, and approve. Approve stays greyed out until the sponsor has downloaded the file at least once — that's deliberate, so nobody signs off on a census they haven't opened.
From there the sponsor has two ways to finish:
Approve it as it is. If they've downloaded the file and everything looks right, clicking Approve asks them to confirm they're approving the census without changes. They click Continue and they're done.
Upload a corrected file first. If they found something to fix, they upload the corrected version and then click Approve. Because they've supplied a corrected file, there's no confirmation prompt — the correction is the signal.
Tip: If a sponsor tells you they can't approve the task, the usual answer is that they haven't downloaded the file yet. Ask them to download it and the Approve button becomes available.
Invite your first client
The most common first step is inviting a contact to the portal:
Click Companies in the left sidebar and open the company.
Click the People tab.
Click the three-dot menu next to the contact and select the invite option. The Invite to Client Portal dialog opens.
Check the permissions you want this person to have.
Click Send Invitation. The contact receives an email with a link to set up their portal account.
Tip: For the full walkthrough, including eligibility rules and troubleshooting, see Setting Up and Inviting Clients.
Related articles
Setting Up and Inviting Clients
Client Portal Permissions
Client Portal Live View
Creating Client Requests
Participant Census Data and Statuses