Giving clients visibility without giving them your margins

The instinct with a client portal is to open everything — progress photos, receipts, the works. That's also how a client ends up seeing what a fixture actually cost against what they were billed, which turns every future pricing conversation into a negotiation.

What a client actually needs to see

A client checking in on a project wants three things: what's approved, what's been issued to them, and what's happening on site. None of that requires access to your cost basis.

• The issued contract and BOQ, as agreed
• Which selections and change orders are approved
• Progress the studio has chosen to publish
• Their own payment schedule and what's outstanding

Where portals leak margin

Most "client portal" features are read access to the same database the studio uses internally — the same rows, filtered for the client's view. Filters get missed. A line item with a cost field renders once without the right guard, and the client has seen a number they were never meant to see.

How Studio does this

Archgrid Studio's client portal runs over WhatsApp: a secure link, not an account, with a PIN gating prices and approvals. Expenses and margins never enter that surface — it's built from what's been issued and published, not a filtered view of the studio's own working data.