Case study · A UK tax practice of about a dozen people
A client portal the practice owns, in place of ShareFile
A UK-hosted client portal for a small tax practice moving off ShareFile: passkey sign-in, its own branding and storage, and a record of every action.
Published
- Client portal
- Custom software
- Migration
A tax practice of about a dozen people exchanged documents with its clients through ShareFile. It wanted a portal of its own instead: client data held in the UK in its own account, a sign-in its clients couldn’t be phished out of, and its own name from the sign-in page to the emails. We built it, and the practice’s clients are moving across to it in stages.
The challenge
The practice wanted three things from its client portal:
- Client data in the UK, in its own account. Tax records and identity documents held somewhere it controls, under UK jurisdiction.
- A sign-in clients can’t be tricked out of. Passwords and one-time codes can be phished. The NCSC recommends passkeys instead.
- Its own name on it. Clients should see the practice, not a file-sharing service, from the sign-in page to the emails.
There was also the move itself. Years of use had left client folders without a consistent structure, and the practice wanted every client set up the same way in the new portal.
What we built
- UK-hosted, in the practice’s own storage. The files sit in the practice’s own cloud account, in the UK.
- Passkey sign-in. Clients sign in with Face ID, a fingerprint or their device PIN. There’s no password to phish, reuse or leak.
- The practice’s brand throughout. Its logo and colours, on its own web address, with emails sent from its own address.
- The right access for each person. Roles from full administrator down to read-only client access, and a record of every action, kept for as long as the practice decides.
- Built to connect. The portal has its own API, so it can link to the practice’s other systems rather than sitting on its own.
You can see what the portal looks like on our AI-native software page.
How we did it
Moving off a file-sharing service is mostly about the files and who can see them. The move is planned in stages. We export the folder tree and the permissions through ShareFile’s API, and put every client into the same folder structure as they come across. Staff and a few pilot clients move first, then everyone else, with ShareFile kept read-only until the last client has moved.
Why it matters
A client portal is the part of your IT your clients actually see. If it’s awkward or untrusted, people drift back to email attachments, which is where client data goes astray.
We built the portal once to run for many practices, each with its own branding and storage, so the next practice gets a proven portal rather than a new project. Our post on what makes a great client portal sets out what to look for, whoever you choose.
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