Running your portal

Starting a portal

You go straight into a new portal: the example project, five first questions, a checklist that checks itself off, and an email to confirm.

Watch the video · 1:37Setting up your office

Each answer is a setting the portal already reads. The word for your people (employees, team members, staff, or your own) names the Employee role and is used on People and roles, seats, invitations, the expense queue and this manual; Settings → Firm changes it. We only specify switches pricing and procurement off; the parts are the modules under Settings → Work → Modules; the software sets the workspace style.

The email question starts on Not yet — keep them in the outbox for me to review: email to clients, vendors, contractors and consultants waits in the outbox (it is the Pause email to people outside the firm choice), while your own team's alerts and everyone's sign-in links go. Yes, send as usual. sends everything as it happens. Skipping keeps Not yet.

Either way it changes under Settings → Email → Outgoing email. While email to clients waits, Finish setting up carries Start sending email to clients and vendors, with the held emails waiting under it; the step checks itself off once email goes as usual. A portal that existed before the question is never asked it.

We also email the owner a Confirm your email link. Until it is used, the portal sends no email on the firm's behalf to anyone else: invitations, proposals, invoices, presentations, statements, purchase orders and RFQs say Confirm your email first with Resend beside it. Everything else works, from the example and specifying to spec books, pictures, the assistant and downloads. The first step of Finish setting up shows the address the link went to, Resend, and Wrong address? to correct a typo (the link then goes to the new address).

Signed out before confirming? On the portal's sign-in page, enter the address you signed up with: the emailed sign-in link or code also confirms it. A portal whose owner never confirms is reminded once, three days before, and removed after 14 days with everything in it.

After that, the home page of the owner and administrators carries a Finish setting up card that checks itself off as the first steps are done. Remind me next week puts it away for seven days and Dismiss for good; Help → Setting up brings it back.

The card is twelve steps — logo, brand color and email sender, time zone, sales tax and currency, markup, item numbering, team, showing your principal, seeing the portal as your people do, payments, first project, retire the example. A firm that only specifies sees nine: tax, markup and payments are left out. A firm that answered Not yet to the email question also has Start sending email to clients and vendors. Until the owner confirms their email, Confirm your email comes first, and stays in view even on a card put away.

Two things are asked at the moment they matter instead: the first spec book, proposal or presentation made without a logo offers to add one to the cover, and the first proposal or invoice with no sales tax set asks for the rate. Not now stops either asking again.

The firm address given at signup goes straight onto the invoice layout, and every portal starts invitation-only: the owner can let everyone at the firm's own email domain sign straight in under Firm → People and roles → Invite and sign-in.

Show your principal is for whoever set the portal up when the decision is someone else's: often a senior designer bringing PortSpace to the firm's owner. It offers a short film of PortSpace — The whole job (2:22) or AI in the work (2:02) — with Copy link and Email it. Email it opens your own mail program with a short message, its subject and the film's link filled in, to change as you like and send to whoever you choose; PortSpace sends nothing, so it uses none of the portal's email. See or change the message shows it first. Copying or emailing checks the step off; Not now puts it away.

Finish setting up: the first steps, each checked as it is done, with Show your principal.

The demo portal

Anyone can walk into a demo portal of their own, as principal, designer or client.

portspace.io → Try the demo walks anyone into a demo portal as a visitor:

• as the principal — everything, with a short tour in the corner;
• as a designer — projects and specifications, no firm-wide money;
• as the client — their one project, without cost or markup.

The green bar switches between the three.

Each prospect gets their own portal, built the first time they open their link and kept, so they come back to their own work rather than a clean slate. Start over in the green bar puts the example project back. A portal nobody has opened in a fortnight is taken down, and rebuilt if they return.

On the shared demo the example project cannot be deleted, archived or renumbered, so every visitor finds it. On a prospect's own portal it is theirs to remove.

Its makers, vendors and people are invented, its outgoing mail is paused and the shared directory is not shown, so nothing real can be reached from it.

Sending email to people outside the firm

Every email to a vendor or client is shown to you before it goes.

Every send to a vendor or client — a purchase order, a proposal, a transmittal, an issue set, a statement — shows the email first: from, to, subject and the words as they will go, with the link.

• Send on that preview is what sends.
• Back changes nothing.

Nothing leaves the firm unseen.

Sending it from your own mail

Would rather send it yourself? Copy for Outlook or Gmail puts the email on the clipboard with the firm's look — logo, color, the button for the link, the closing line — ready to paste into your own mail program. Copy plain text gives the bare words.

See also Emails held for approval · Branded email

Modules: what your firm does

Switch off what your firm does not do; the menus, tabs and pages go, the records stay.

Watch the video · 1:43Your firm’s look and settings

Where Settings → Work → Modules

The first questions

The owner's first sign-in asks, on one screen, Do you sell to your clients, or only specify? (We only specify switches pricing and procurement off) and Which of these will you use? — the brief, commissions, time tracking, expenses, team tasks, the calendar, the client portal, receiving, installation schedules, transmittals, visualizations, presentations, vendor price lists — and shows only those areas. Commissions start off because most firms do not pay them.

It also asks what the firm calls its people and Which kind of software are you coming from? — None, A web-based spec system with tabbed item pages, A desktop spec database or Something else. The two spec systems set the firm's workspace style to the familiar layout for them (Tabbed or Project-first); the others set PortSpace's own. Left unanswered, the style stays as it is.

Skip, I'll do it later leaves everything as it is. Settings → Work → Modules changes any of it later, and the owner can have the questions asked again from there. Off hides the menus, tabs and pages; the records stay.

Modules under Settings → Work: each area of the portal, on or off.

Procurement

A firm that specifies but doesn't buy — the client or a purchasing agent places the orders — can switch Procurement off.

• Price requests, purchase orders, expediting, receiving, pick lists and the vendor links go from the menus, the project's tabs, Home, the Overview, the Dashboard, search and the daily alerts.
• A spec shows its quantity and price without order tracking.
• The project's Order tab becomes Installation, since installation stays its own choice.

The orders already recorded are kept, and switching it back on shows them again.

A lean studio

A design-only firm whose architect of record runs the job in Procore or Autodesk Forma can switch off what it does elsewhere, each on its own:

• Team tasks — Tasks, the tasks on each project's Team page and on an item, task lines on Home and the Overview, and the task and overdue-task alerts. Meetings stay, and so does time tracking, which is its own switch.
• Calendar — the Calendar page, its feed for Outlook, Google or Apple Calendar, and the calendar links on Home, the Dashboard and the Installation tab. It is its own switch: with Team tasks off and the Calendar on, the calendar shows meetings, site visits, deliveries, pick lists and due dates, and no tasks.
• Client portal — no client seats or client invitations, nothing sent to a client for approval (internal reviews still go to colleagues), and no proposal links for a client to open. A client who already has a seat sees a page saying the projects aren't shared here, and nothing more.
• Pricing, proposals and invoicing — budget only. Each item keeps a price, read as its budget ("Budget each", "Budget"); the project's budget stays and its Budget page shows the budget against what is specified, by area. Markup and cost, proposals, change orders, invoices, payments and pay links, statements, deposits, vendor bills, the money reports and Home's money figures are hidden, and the spec book and issue sets are made without prices.

Nothing is deleted: switched back on, every task, proposal and invoice is there as it was.

Reaching a switched-off page

A module that is off hides its menu entries and tabs. If someone reaches one of its pages by an old link or a bookmark, it says that it is switched off and that nothing was deleted. An administrator is offered the switch; anyone else is told who can flip it.

Settings, logo and color

One brand on everything you send, the seven tabs of Settings, and AI.

Watch the video · 1:43Your firm’s look and settings

The seven tabs of Settings

The open tab is in the address, and you see only the tabs your role may change. The box above the tabs finds a setting by name; a link to a card, such as the outbox, opens its tab.

One brand, everywhere

Where Settings → Firm → Brand

The Brand is what your clients and vendors see on everything from you — proposals, invoices, statements, purchase orders, requests for quotation, spec books and issue sets, transmittals, briefs, expense reports, boards and layouts, invitations and every email, and the pages they open from a link. Set it once:

• the firm name;
• the Logo and name in the bar;
• a Logo on documents and email of its own — not cropped to the bar; an SVG is drawn sharp at print size; Print the logo turns it off everywhere;
• one Color — also the portal's highlight: buttons, links, the current tab;
• a Typeface — Helvetica, the standard, one of six open-license fonts embedded in each PDF, or your own. A letter the typeface lacks is printed as its nearest plain letter, and email falls back to a close standard font where the reader's mail shows no web fonts;
• the Letterhead — the address under the name, phone, website, email, tax registration number, and small print at the foot of every page.

The email's sender name, reply-to address, closing line and signature are under Settings → Email → How email looks.

The Brand card: logos, color, typeface and letterhead, with a preview of a document on the right.

Spec books follow the brand color unless the Spec book color under it gives them one of their own, and whoever builds a book can still pick another for that one.

The invoice layout keeps only what invoices alone say (title, columns, terms, how to pay, the closing line). Dashboard tiles lay out in even rows (eight is four and four, six is three and three).

Other letterheads

Where Settings → Firm → Brand → Other letterheads

A firm with a second studio, office or division gives each its own letterhead. A desktop spec database's several letterheads land here too.

• A project prints on one of them from its Areas and rooms page (Letterhead: the Brand or another).
• A purchase order, proposal or invoice can pick its own beside its PDF buttons (Letterhead: the project's, the Brand, or another). Its PDF, the vendor's and client's copies and the emailed attachment follow.
• Every document the project prints — spec books, issue sets, transmittals, statements, fund requests, reports, the finish schedule, briefs and boards — takes the project's.
• A print link can ask for another with ?letterhead= and the letterhead's name in short (main is the Brand).

Other letterheads: one per studio, office or division.

The firm name

Settings → Firm → Firm name is the one name on everything that leaves the firm: invoices, orders, proposals, statements, email, invitations, the sign-in page, the pages clients and vendors open, and online payment.

Changing it there changes it in all of them, the bar's text included; it is recorded in the settings history.

Where the old name is still written in the firm's own words — the letterhead address, the small print, the email signature, the invoice terms, how to pay, the invoice's closing line — the card says which, and offers Replace it there too or Leave it. Nothing there is rewritten unless you say so.

The logo in the bar

Where Settings → Firm → Logo and name in the bar

Text in the bar sits beside it. Documents and email print this logo too, unless the Brand has a Logo on documents and email of its own.

AI actions and the meter

Watch the video · 1:45AI actions

AI features are part of the Per seat plan (complimentary and trial portals have them too).

• A Per seat portal has so many actions per seat a month (thirty unless the console says otherwise), pooled.
• The Free plan has a few a month for the whole portal (ten unless the console says otherwise) on PortSpace's AI. Receipts read for you and a portal's own AI key stay with the Per seat plan.
• Both are shown on Plan and billing and in Settings.

A question to Ask — on a project or from the home page — a meeting summary, a brief read or a product-page read is one action. Receipts and questions to the manual are read free, within a daily ceiling.

More is bought up front, never billed after use. Under Buy up front on Plan and billing an administrator chooses a bundle — 50 for $10, 250 for $45 or 1,000 for $160 unless the console says otherwise — paid once by card through Stripe.

• Bought actions are spent only once the month's included ones are used, the oldest bundle first.
• Each bundle lapses twelve months after it was bought; the page says how many are left and when the oldest lapse.
• Bought AI actions are not refundable, as the payment page and the receipt say.
• With no included or bought AI actions left, AI waits for the month to turn — nothing is ever added to an invoice for AI.

Owners and administrators are told when four fifths of the month's included AI actions are used (with what is left bought, or what more would cost), and again when they and any bought ones run out. A portal on its own key is never limited. A daily ceiling guards against a runaway.

Which AI reads your material

Where Settings → Integrations → AI (administrators)

Choose PortSpace's AI, or Use your own AI key: paste an API key from your AI provider account and PortSpace works out which kind it is. A model name is optional; left blank, the provider's recommended model is used.

On PortSpace's AI the heavy work — Ask, reading briefs, concepts, meeting summaries, look-ups — runs on the strongest model we offer, and plain reading (receipts, product pages, the manual) on a faster one, as the operator sets them.

With your own key, receipts, meeting notes, project questions and product pages go straight from the portal to your account and never through ours. The key is sealed on the server and never shown again.

• Test makes one tiny request and shows the reply, so a wrong key is caught before anyone needs it.
• Where the provider gave your key an end date, type it under Key expires on. The portal's owners and administrators are told a week before, on the last day and on the day itself. PortSpace also tries the key once a day, telling them the same day if the provider refuses it.
• A new key pasted without a new date leaves the old date behind.

The AI card: PortSpace's AI or your own key, with Test and the key's end date.

The site administrator can withhold own keys from a portal (on its card in the console, Own AI key: not allowed). The choice then offers PortSpace's AI only, a sealed key is set aside rather than used, and every request counts against the allowance.

Your own typeface

Upload your firm's font and it goes on every document, client page and email.

Watch the video · 1:43Your firm’s look and settings

Where Settings → Firm → Brand → Your own font (owners and administrators)

A firm with a typeface of its own can put it on everything it sends instead of one of the built-in faces. Only an owner or administrator can upload it, and only when the firm holds a license that lets it embed the font in documents it sends — most desktop font licenses do not, so check with the foundry first.

The built-in face you choose above stays underneath: any letter your font lacks (a € sign, an accented capital) is printed in it, on paper and on screen. Most mail clients — Gmail and Outlook among them — ignore web fonts in email and show the built-in face's nearest standard font; Apple Mail and the iPhone show yours. Documents and client pages always do.

Remove this font goes back to the built-in face and deletes the files. The files are kept with your firm's own files, rebuilt without any of the small programs a font can carry, and served only to your own portal and the pages your clients and vendors open from it.

Plan and billing

Your plan, seats, projects and storage; paying, changing and canceling.

Where Firm → Plan and billing (administrators)

The page shows where the portal stands — trial, active, complimentary or paused — with staff seats, active projects and files stored against the plan's limits. Staff seats are people at the firm and invitations holding a seat; clients and contractors are free. Files stored is everything the portal keeps on disk: documents, pictures with the sizes made of them, 3D models, exports and imports. It is measured every hour, and a file uploaded since counts at once.

Plan and billing: the plan, seats, projects and storage against their limits.

The trial

A new portal starts with everything on for its first days (the trial). When they are up it moves to the free plan by itself, never to a closed portal. Nothing is charged either way: with no subscription the page says Nothing is billed.

The owners are emailed three days before (with who will lose a seat) and on the day, and in the last three days the home page says so too. subscribing during the trial ends it that day, and the change page says so.

The two plans

• Free — one seat, three projects, no card, no time limit. Use the free plan on that page ends the trial early.
• Per seat — unlimited projects. The seats themselves are added and removed under Firm → People and roles → Seats; Stripe, once connected, mirrors them.

Plans are chosen and paid through Stripe from that page, and the same page holds invoices, the card and cancellation (Invoices, card and cancellation).

Buying — seats, room, AI actions or a term — needs Portal settings. A team manager hands seats out but does not buy them.

A sale price. When PortSpace runs a sale (a Launch offer, say) and your firm signed up during it, your first purchase is charged the sale price automatically — no code — for the time the sale says (often your first 12 months), then the regular price from that renewal on, by itself. Plan and billing shows it, for example Launch offer: $49 a seat a month until 8 Oct 2027, then $69, and the renewal email names the price. Seats added meanwhile are at the sale price too. A coupon does not combine with a sale: at the first purchase the better of the two applies, and while you are on the sale price a coupon is not taken.

Seats

On the per-seat plan a seat is an account for one of your employees — clients, contractors and vendors are free. The same page grows or shrinks the seats, prorated; invitations stop at the seat count.

A paused portal shows everyone a notice and keeps every record until it is reopened. More AI actions are bought on the same page, up front — see AI actions and the meter.

See also Leaving PortSpace

Your own email domains

Send from your own domain, receive project mail at it, and pause outgoing email.

Sending from your domain

Where Settings → Email → Your own email domains

Below it, name a receiving domain of your own for project addresses (jobs.yourfirm.com) and point its MX where the card says. Otherwise projects receive at the portal's own address.

Your own email domains: a sending domain with its DNS records, and a receiving domain for project addresses.

Pausing outgoing email

Settings → Email → Outgoing email chooses who the portal emails:

• Email goes out as usual — everything goes as it happens.
• Pause email to people outside the firm — email to clients, vendors, contractors, consultants and any address that is not one of your own staff waits in the outbox, client and contractor logins included. Mail to your team (alerts, digests, assignments, mentions) still goes, unless you also check Also pause email to our own team.
• Pause all email — every email waits, for a quiet day or while testing.

A new portal's first screen asks the same thing: While you're trying PortSpace, should emails go to your clients and vendors? Not yet (the usual answer, and what Skip keeps) is Pause email to people outside the firm without the team switch; Yes, send as usual. is the first choice. While that first-run pause holds an email, the message where you sent it says Email to clients and vendors is paused while you try PortSpace. Start sending in Settings → Email.

Sign-in links and codes, confirm-your-email links and security email always go, whichever you choose, so nobody is locked out. With the approval hold on as well, a paused email waits in the outbox, not under Waiting to go out.

Reviewing held email

Held emails stay in the outbox until you send or discard them: switching a pause off sends nothing by itself. The count shows on Settings → Email and, while any wait, on the Finish setting up card on Home.

• Open an email to read it whole: who it is to, the subject, the message and its attachments.
• Send lets it go. While email is still paused for that address, the portal asks first and sends just that one; the pause stays as it is.
• Discard asks first, and the outbox keeps a line saying who discarded it and when. A discarded email is never sent.
• Check several for Send selected or Discard selected, or press Discard all held.

Owners and administrators can do this, and anyone whose role pays expenses. An invitation held while paused is sent again from People, since its link is never kept; it says so on the People page.

What never gets email

Three things are never emailed, whatever the switches say. The outbox shows them as never sent with the reason, and they cannot be sent again from it:

• anything about the example project — its alerts still appear in the portal, but no one is mailed about an invented hotel, and they are left out of digests and the weekly client summary;
• anything from a demo portal;
• addresses at test domains that reach nobody (.example, .invalid, .test, example.com).

Emails held for approval

Email to people outside the firm can wait for a manager's or owner's look.

Watch the video · 1:48Pausing and approving outgoing email

Where Settings → Email → Approval → Hold emails to people outside the firm for approval

Switched on, anything the portal would email to someone who is not on your team — a client, a vendor, a contractor, a rep — waits for a look before it goes: proposals, invoices, statements, issue sets, transmittals, price requests, purchase orders and their notices, expediting chases, approval requests, client invitations, meeting invitations, alerts and the weekly summary to clients.

Mail to your own people, sign-in links and codes, and a note to someone about their own account are never held. Under the switch, check the kinds that need nobody's approval; they go straight out as before. Off (the default), email goes out as it happens.

Who approves

• The project's managers, for email about their project. A manager who does not see prices leaves proposals, invoices, statements, orders and price requests to the owners.
• The owners, for anything. Email about no project goes to the owners.
• A manager may approve their own email.

Deciding on a held email

Where you pressed send says Held for approval by … and nothing has gone yet. The approvers see a count in the bell and a line on Home, and Waiting to go out (under Projects) lists each one: the email exactly as it will look, with its files (the proposal or invoice PDF, say), who wrote it and from where. On each:

• Approve and send;
• Edit, then send — subject, message, recipients (several addresses, separated by commas; an invitation goes as it is);
• Send back with a note to the writer;
• Cancel when it went from your own mailbox instead — it is marked canceled in the outbox, and Copy the text on the email's page gives you its words to paste.

Waiting to go out: each held email as it will look, with Approve and send, Edit, Send back and Cancel.

Only one decision counts, however many press at once, so it is never sent twice. The writer is told in the portal when it goes, comes back or is canceled (and by email if they take alerts by email); no reminder emails are sent.

Every step is in the project's Activity and on the order, invoice or proposal it came from. An email approved while outgoing email is paused waits in the outbox until it is back on; the outbox never sends a held email round the approval.

Branded email

Every email carries your logo, color, typeface and the sender's signature.

Watch the video · 1:43Your firm’s look and settings

Where Settings → Email → How email looks

Everything the portal emails (approval requests, proposals, invoices, statements, vendor links, invitations, sign-in links) goes out with your logo, color and typeface from the Brand, a button for the link, and the sender name, reply-to address and closing line set under How email looks.

Every email a person sends ends with their signature, and the foot carries your closing line, address and contact line. Email me a sample shows the result, signed as you.

Email signatures

Two signatures, plain or HTML pasted from a signature service:

• The firm's, under Settings → Email → How email looks → Signature: a template with {name} {title} {email} {firm} {phone} {website}, or HTML with the same fields inside it. Left empty it is the sender's name over the firm's.
• A person's own, on their profile → Email signature: plain text, or Paste HTML from your signature service.

Which one goes: a person's own signature replaces the firm's on what they send; without one, the firm's is filled in for them. An owner or administrator can switch on Firm signature only, and then everyone signs with the firm's and the ones on profiles are ignored.

Which emails carry one: what a person sends — proposals, approval requests, purchase orders and price requests, invoices, statements, transmittals, replies on a proposal, and the invitations they send (People → Invite, Send again, and inviting a client or contractor to a project), signed as the person inviting. An invitation held for approval is signed when it goes. Never alerts, digests, sign-in links, or an invitation the portal sends by itself. It comes after the message and its button, before the foot; the invitation's link stays its own.

• Pasted HTML is cleaned on the server when it is saved and again whenever an email is built: tables, text, links (https, email and phone), images hosted on https and simple inline styles stay; scripts, style blocks, forms, frames, SVG, event attributes, comments and javascript: or data: addresses go.
• At most about 10 KB of HTML and five images.
• The preview shows exactly what will be sent, in a frame that runs nothing, with the plain-text version made from it for mail that shows text.

A reply goes to the person who sent it — or, for what the portal sends by itself, the project's manager — and the preview before each send says where replies to it will go. Calendar invitations name the portal they came from, not PortSpace.

Slack and Teams

What happens in the portal, told where the team already reads.

Watch the video · 1:33Slack and Teams

Where Settings → Integrations → Slack and Teams (its own tab)

Each event goes once, with a link back to the record — an approval decided, a proposal accepted, a vendor's answer, an arrival with a claim, someone mentioned. It can go to:

• A firm channel — everything, or the kinds you pick, for every project. On the Slack and Teams tab, paste an incoming-webhook address, choose kinds and projects, and send a test.
• A project's channel — a channel that follows one project. The project's Areas and rooms tab (under Specify) shows which channels it posts to, and Add a channel for this project opens the same form with the project already chosen.
• A person's own — see Your own Slack or Teams; nothing for an administrator to do.

Several channels can take different kinds.

Slack and Teams: firm channels, Connect Slack workspace and a test message.

Direct messages, with nothing to set up

Each person's profile shows it, with an off switch, a Send me a test message button, and a box for a different Slack email when the address on their Slack profile is not the one they sign in with here. The same test button sits on the Slack and Teams tab. Disconnect stops the messages and leaves channels alone.

The calendar in Slack and Teams

With the Calendar switched on, each channel has two more choices under its kinds and projects. Owners and administrators set them for firm and project channels; each person sets their own.

• Post a morning calendar digest — at a time you set (8:00 to start, in the firm's time zone; a person's own channel and Slack DMs use their own zone), on the days you check (Monday to Friday to start). It lists today's meetings with their hours, deliveries and expected ship dates, site visits and installation, deadlines and, with Team tasks on, tasks due — each a link, with Open the calendar at the end. A firm or project channel lists invoices due only when Include invoices due is checked, since everyone in the channel reads it; a person's own lists them only if they may see money.
• Meeting reminders — 15 minutes, an hour, or a day before (any of them). A firm or project channel is reminded of the meetings on its projects; a person's own channel and Slack DMs of the meetings they are expected at.

A quiet day posts nothing unless Post even when nothing's on is checked. Reminders are worked out from the meeting as it is when they go: a meeting moved is reminded at its new hour, one deleted is not reminded at all, and none goes twice. Nothing is posted to clients or contractors, nothing about the example project, and a demo portal never posts. Switching the Calendar off stops both.

Importing what you already have

Bring projects, specifications, contacts and products in from a spreadsheet or another program.

Watch the video · 1:35Bring your existing projects

Where Settings → Integrations → Import, or the product library's import

It takes projects and specifications, vendors and contacts, or the product library.

Import: say what the file holds, drop it in, and check each column's meaning.

A link must be shared so that anyone with it can view it: in Google Sheets, Share → General access → Anyone with the link → Viewer; in Excel or OneDrive, Share → Anyone with the link → Can view. A link to one tab of a Google Sheet brings that tab. A work or school SharePoint link often asks for a sign-in; the page says so, and then you can download the file and upload it, or paste the cells. The link is kept with the import and named in each item's or product's history. Paste cells needs no sharing; pictures in cells come across a paste from Google Sheets in the browser, not from desktop Excel or Numbers.

Files it knows

Exports from the common design-business programs are recognized and loaded for you by the people who run the portal, so nothing lands in the wrong place. The page offers Send it to us with a note; the file is kept under the portal's documents and the support address is told. You hear back at your portal email, usually within a working day. Map the columns myself instead is there for anyone who would rather.

For any other file, every column shows a guessed meaning you can change. Send it to us is offered too wherever the page cannot take a file: more rows than an import takes, an old .xls, a program's own backup file, or one over 95 MB (for that, paste a link to it in the note).

The headings

A title or a group row above the column headings is passed over and the page says so. If it chose the wrong row, type the row the headings are on and press Read again. Problems name the row as Excel numbers it.

What becomes what

Specifications become projects (matched by number), areas, products (matched by manufacturer and model), vendors and specifications. Width/depth/height are joined into dimensions and, where a room type and per-room quantity are given, the takeoff.

Project and address-book rows match by number or company name and are brought up to date rather than doubled. A row already there keeps what it has wherever the file is blank — unless you check Clear fields the file leaves empty before importing, which empties a field where its mapped column is blank.

Importing again

• A row with an item number is matched by it. One without is matched to the specification of the same description in the same area that has no number either — so a second import of the same file doubles nothing, and a number added in the file is taken on by the row that had none.
• The same item number twice in one file is said and the later row left out, not written over the first — except a row for another room type of the same item (one row per room type, as the template writes it), which adds that room type's takeoff line and its count to the item. A room type with no count takes the one its rows imply (quantity ÷ per room).
• Totals and subtotal lines are skipped.
• A field changed in the portal since the last import — an area merged, a supplier corrected, a quantity — stays as it is. The result lists which rows and fields it kept, your value beside the file's (with a word where a new cost sits under a kept price).
• Every field an import changes goes in the item's history, old → new, as any edit does.
• The product library does the same, except that a vendor's own price list still brings its prices.
• An area written in another case ("lobby bar") joins the project's own.
• A row with no quantity counts as one until it has one, and the result says how many there were.

Moving in mid-project

A PO # column (with PO date, if the file has one) records each order as placed in your previous system: an order under that number, Issued, with those rows as its lines, and nothing sent to anyone. Importing again adds only rows it does not have.

A number another project's order already uses is not added to it: the import's notes name that order, its project and supplier, so you can give the rows their own number.

Pictures

Pictures come with specifications and the product library as they do with a schedule: pictures over the cells, pictures placed in a cell (Excel's Place in Cell), =IMAGE("https://…"), and a picture column of web addresses (Picture, Image URL…). Next to the columns, the page says how many pictures the file has and of which kind, and a Pictures column counts each row's.

Each row's pictures go on its library product, after any it already has, in the row's order; the same picture is never added twice. A specification row needs a manufacturer or a model for its product, and the import says so where a row with pictures has neither. An address that does not load keeps its place on the product, with Try again there.

A Google Sheets link to one tab brings that tab with its pictures. A picture linked to a file on your computer (Excel's Link to File) is not in the workbook, and a Google Sheet whose picture column came through empty is said in the preview, with what to do.

The product library also reads Markup %, Lead time, Web Site and a Description beside the name, leaves out a totals line at the foot, and files each vendor under an address-book card, making the card if there is none.

Orders and invoices already sent, by hand

• Raise purchase order → Placed already, in another system? keeps the order's number and date. Then mark it Issued, and Acknowledged if the vendor confirmed — Expediting follows, and nothing is emailed.
• On a draft invoice, Sent already from another system? keeps its number and date. The due date moves with the date by the terms unless you set it by hand. Then Mark sent (I sent it myself).
• A line typed on an invoice starts taxed, as a proposal line does; uncheck it for a fee or a service that is not taxed.
• Until a vendor gives a ship date, Expediting reckons one from the order date and the item's lead time, and says so.

One company, several spellings

Under Vendors and contacts, Merge into… on a card moves its orders, bills, quotes, products and history onto another card and renames the specifications that named it. On Library → Makers, Merge two spellings… does the same for a maker across the library, capitals included ("ARTERIORS" into "Arteriors").

Either way the old spelling is kept, and an import that uses it reads it as the new name. Renaming a card carries the new name onto its specifications the same way; renaming it to another card's name is refused, with the merge offered instead. On a project, renaming an area onto another area's name offers to merge them.

Imported files

A portal that came across from a design database keeps a page under Firm → Imported files: how many of the files its records point at came across, which are missing, and the exact list to ask the client to re-share.

Files found on the firm's earlier drive with no record pointing at them are listed there too, under From the old drive: by project, each linking to the project's Files (where they have their own From the old drive list, and the cut sheets named by an item number are on that item too), and the rest by the month folder they were found in. Only the firm sees them; a client or a contractor is never shown them.

Backups and your data

The nightly backup, and a copy of everything whenever you want it.

Where Settings → Security and data → Backups and your data

The card shows the nightly backup and its recent runs. The whole database and the uploads are encrypted and copied each night to Cloudflare R2, where 35 days are kept; the server keeps the latest night. A library imported from another system is copied off-site too, file by file, as it changes.

The card shows the size of your own files, not the site's backup. Restoring from a backup is a support request.

The companies that process your firm's data for PortSpace (hosting, email, payments, and the AI features where you switch them on) are listed on the sub-processors page. Your account owners are told by email at least 7 days before a new one is added.

Taking a copy

• Download everything takes a copy of every record in the portal, whenever you like, as an Excel workbook with a sheet per table, or as JSON.
• Prepare the full export with files adds every document, photo, receipt, recording, logo and product picture to the workbook and JSON as one zip. It is prepared in the background — it can run to gigabytes — with an alert and a download link when it is ready, and stays on the server for seven days.

The workbook is for reading: amounts in whole units, each project's code beside its id, a firm sheet with the portal's settings and invoice layout, the invitations and the sent-mail log, and a Contents note on where each file sits in the full export. The JSON keeps cents and ids for other software.

Backups and your data: the nightly runs, Download everything and the full export with files.

Leaving PortSpace

Stop paying, take everything with you, or close the portal for good.

Where Plan and billing → Leaving PortSpace

It is said in one place. A portal on a subscription stops paying under Invoices, card and cancellation and runs to the end of what was paid, then moves to the free plan. A trial or free portal has no card and nothing to cancel.

Audit, retention and removal

The activity log, the history of settings changes, and removing a person's details.

Where Settings → Security and data → Audit and retention

Download the portal's activity log (who opened or changed what, when) for as long as it is kept, and set how long that is. Shortening it asks first, since older entries are deleted that night.

Changes to settings

Under it, Changes to settings lists who changed which setting, from what to what, and when — kept for a year, or as long as the log if longer:

• the tax rate, the currency, markup rules (firm and project), permissions and roles, modules, the AI choices (the key's expiry date included), the logo, the plan;
• changes to people: a role, project access, a billable or cost rate, a commission, archiving or bringing someone back (and who took their work), an invitation, and a project's managers.

Audit and retention: the activity log to download, how long it is kept, and Changes to settings.

Removal

Anyone can ask from their profile to be removed (it asks first, and tells them it was sent). The request waits under People and roles, for another administrator to decide.

The portal's only owner cannot ask: there is nobody to remove them. The profile says to make someone else an owner first, or to close the portal (Leaving PortSpace).

Remove personal details there — or on a former colleague's row under Former people, asked first, for someone who left without asking — closes the account and replaces the person's name and address everywhere the portal wrote them: the logs, meeting notes and attendees, comments, alerts, the search index.

Their work stays on the projects as "Removed person". A signature a client typed to accept a proposal is kept as the record of what was agreed.

Download their data on a card gives the person's own file first. What is kept and for how long — sessions, sign-in links, invitations, the mail log — is on the privacy page; the portal deletes each on time by itself.

Security, status and the data processing agreement

Three public pages for a firm's own due diligence.

Three public pages, linked from every footer:

• Security — where data lives, encryption, who can get in, backups, the third parties used, how to report a problem.
• Status — live checks on the application, the database, the last nightly backup and the last restore rehearsal, with the recovery target; also as JSON for monitors.
• The Data processing agreement — processor terms with the firm's name filled in.

Recovery

Backups are rehearsed every week.

Backups are rehearsed weekly on a scratch database, and the last rehearsal shows on the site's health page.

The terms state the recovery target: every portal back within four hours, data as of the last nightly backup.