Keeping clients: health, renewals and portals
Winning a client is expensive; keeping one is mostly attention. Here's how to see which accounts are going quiet, stay ahead of every renewal, and give clients one place for everything you share.
5 min read6 steps
Why clients leave quietly
Clients rarely leave after one bad day. They drift — fewer replies, later payments, a renewal that arrives before anyone has checked in. By the time someone notices, the decision is made. Tracking a few simple signals on every account, and giving clients a portal so working with you is easy, turns that drift into something you can see and act on in time.
Building a retention routine
Set up the signals first, then the client-facing side.
Decide what healthy looks like
In Configuration → Accounts → Health Score, weigh payment history, engagement, follow-ups and renewal history into a score from 0 to 100. Accounts show as Healthy, Watch or At risk.
Step by step in the Help CenterGet told when something changes
Turn on account alerts for a renewal coming due, a failed payment, a drop in health score or a churned account.
Step by step in the Help CenterPlan renewals ahead
Set your renewal period and reminders — 30, 7 and 1 day before by default. Upcoming Renewals lists everything due in the window you pick.
Step by step in the Help CenterOpen a portal for your clients
Give each client a portal where they see their proposals, contracts, documents, invoices and payments, and sign in with a one-time code sent to their email.
Step by step in the Help CenterTake requests through the portal
Clients can raise a support ticket from their portal, and your team works it from the Support queue — with an automatic acknowledgement so nobody waits in silence.
Share the work and get sign-offs
Share project boards column by column, and ask clients to approve work right from a card. Their pending sign-offs collect on the Approvals page.
Step by step in the Help Center
Where client relationships slip
None of these feel urgent on the day. All of them show up at renewal time.
Renewals that come as a surprise
If the first anyone hears of a renewal is the client's email asking about it, you've lost the chance to prepare.
Assuming quiet means happy
A client who stops replying is often a client who's looking elsewhere. Engagement belongs in the health score.
Documents scattered across email
When clients have to search their inbox for the latest contract or invoice, working with you feels harder than it should.
Approvals given in chat
A "looks good" in a chat thread is hard to find later. Record sign-offs where the work is.
Your setup checklist
Do these before you invite your first client to the portal.
What Worxley gives you for this
Worxley keeps the signals and the client-facing side on the same account, so the person who looks after a client sees everything that client sees — and more.
- Health score on every account
- A 0–100 score from payments, engagement, follow-ups and renewals, with Healthy, Watch and At risk chips.
- Renewal tracking
- Reminders before each renewal and an Upcoming Renewals list to work through.
- A portal for every client
- Proposals, contracts, documents, invoices, support and projects in one place, with one-time-code sign-in.
- Client approvals
- Request sign-off on work and proposals, and see every pending approval in one list.
FAQ
From four signals — payment history, engagement, follow-ups and renewal history — weighted the way you choose. Scores of 70 and up show as Healthy, below 40 as At risk, and anything in between as Watch.
With a one-time code sent to their email — there's no password for them to remember.
Yes. You choose which portal pages are on, and whether each person sees the whole account or only their own records.
Yes, when the Support module is on. Clients raise tickets from their portal, get an automatic acknowledgement, and your team works them from the Support queue.
Keep reading
You've seen how it works on paper. Now set it up for real.
Use the pipeline from this guide as your starting point, and adjust it to your business.