What your client sees

The link

Each person gets a private link, unique to them and to that request. It's the whole login: no account, no password, no app to install. Opening it on a phone is the normal case, so the page is built for a phone first.

Because the link is the access, treat it as confidential. Anyone your client forwards it to can see and upload to that checklist. It only ever opens one person's request — in a group, one person can't reach another's documents.

The checklist

Your client sees your firm's name, the request title, and every item you asked for, with your instructions underneath. Each line shows its own state:

What they see	What it means
To do	Nothing uploaded or answered yet.
Received	It's in, waiting on your firm to review.
Needs update	You asked again. Your note appears with it, in red, so it's impossible to miss.
Accepted	Done and closed. Nothing more for them to do.

Progress saves as they go. They can upload two documents on the bus, close the tab, and finish the rest that evening from the same link.

Written answers: typing in a question box brings up a Save answer button underneath it. Tapping away from the box saves too, so a half-typed answer is never lost — the button is there so the client can see the item tick over to Received rather than wonder whether their answer counted. Multiple-choice questions save the moment they're tapped.

Choosing a file, then sending it

Picking a file doesn't send it. The client taps Upload, chooses one or more files, and sees them listed with a ✕ beside each — then presses the button to send them. A client who grabbed the wrong photo from their camera roll can take it back out before it ever reaches you.

Replacing something you sent back: when an item is marked Needs update, the new file replaces the one you rejected rather than sitting next to it. The client sees one current file per item, and on your side the item shows the replacement with the original tucked under Previous uploads — still there to open if you need to show what was originally sent, just out of the way.

What the portal accepts

• Up to 25 MB per file. Oversized files are caught in the browser, before the upload starts, so nobody waits for a failure.
• PDF — the most common case for statements and forms.
• Photos — JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC. A clear phone photo of a passport page is fine.
• Word and Excel — .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx.
• Up to 20 files per checklist item. Far more than a real document needs — it's there so a link that gets into the wrong hands can't fill your storage.

Anything else is refused. That's a safety boundary, not fussiness: executables, web pages and SVGs have no business in a document collection, and blocking them protects you as much as us. We check the contents of every upload, not just its file extension, so something renamed to .pdf to sneak past doesn't get through.

What we deliberately don't do is put a captcha in front of your client. Proving you're human before you can hand your accountant a bank statement is exactly the friction this product exists to remove, and every extra step costs completions. The protection sits behind the scenes instead — the link is a long random secret, it expires, you can revoke it, and the limits above cap what any one link can do.

Finishing, and coming back

Once they've worked through the checklist they submit, and the page turns into a confirmation rather than a to-do list. The link keeps working. If you later ask again for something, we message them with your note, and it takes them to the same link to fix just that item — no second link to confuse things. See Reviewing uploads for what that message says.

Required items have to be there before they can submit. Optional items can be left blank, but the Submit button stays disabled while a required document or answer is still missing — and the page names exactly which ones, so nobody has to hunt the list for gaps. An item you sent back for a replacement counts as outstanding until the new one arrives.

This means you decide what "required" means, not the client. If someone genuinely can't produce a document, they'll tell you — and you either mark that item optional or remove it from their checklist, and they can submit. The upside is that a request landing in your review queue is one that's actually ready to review.

Your branding

On Team and Firm plans the portal carries your logo and accent colour, so it reads as your firm's page rather than a third-party tool. Set it under Settings → Branding; there's a live preview of what the client will see. On Solo it's the standard ChaseDocs styling with your firm name.

What to tell your clients

Two lines in your own message cover almost every question people ask:

• "The link is just for you — please don't forward it."
• "You don't need to sign up for anything. Photos from your phone are fine."