The Subcontractor Portal gives your trades controlled access to the jobs they’re working on — their subcontract and scope, the documents and notices you issue them, defects to fix, site sign-in and toolbox talks, RFQs to quote, and a way to flag variations. It’s built mobile-first, because that’s where your trades actually are: on site, on a phone.

This guide has two parts: setting it up (what you do as the builder) and what your subcontractors see and do.

Part 1 — Setting up the portal

Giving a subcontractor access

A subcontractor reaches the portal through an invitation. You invite them like any team member but with the Subcontractor role (see Getting Started). When they accept, CortexPM links their login to their vendor record and their subcontract, and to the projects you’ve given them access to.

Access is tied to their vendor record, so each subcontractor only ever sees their own work on the projects you’ve allowed — never your internal system or other trades’ information.

Portal settings — what you make available

You control which features the subcontractor portal offers. Toggle on or off:

Safety sign-in — geofenced site sign-in/out.
Toolbox talks — present and capture sign-off on safety briefings.
Defect reporting — route defects to subcontractors and let them respond.
Progress updates — let subcontractors report progress.
Variation flagging — let subcontractors flag potential variations.
Schedule lookahead — show the near-term program.
Notices and subcontracts — show the formal documents and their contract.
Quotes — let subcontractors receive and respond to RFQs.
Claims — let subcontractors lodge progress claims.
SWMS, inductions and QA checklists — safety and quality records (off by default; turn on if you use them).

What you route to subcontractors

The portal is fed by the other modules — you don’t drive it from here:

RFQs you send from Purchasing appear for the sub to quote.
Subcontract orders and subcontracts from Purchasing and Contracts give them their order and scope.
Variations, notices, instructions and defect notices issued in Contracts appear as documents for them to acknowledge and respond to.
Defects routed to a subcontractor in Site Management show up for them to acknowledge and fix.

Part 2 — What your subcontractors see and do

Most of the subcontractor’s day-to-day happens on the mobile app. Signed in, and across the projects you’ve granted, they can:

See their projects — a dashboard of the jobs they’re on, and switch between them.
Sign in and out of site — geofenced safety sign-in, the same system as your own site teams (see Site Management).
Complete toolbox talks — read the active briefings and record their acknowledgement at sign-in.
View and respond to documents — variations, notices, instructions and defect notices you’ve issued, which they acknowledge and then accept or dispute (the document moves Issued → Acknowledged → Accepted/Disputed).
Handle defects — see defects routed to them, acknowledge them, add photos, and work them to close-out.
Report progress — update how their work is tracking.
Flag a variation — raise a potential variation against their subcontract. This becomes a variation flag on your side, which you can convert into a formal variation or dismiss (see Contracts).
Quote RFQs — receive your requests for quote and submit prices, where enabled (see Purchasing).
See their subcontract and scope, and the schedule lookahead for what’s coming up.

Progress claims from subcontractors

With claims enabled, a subcontractor lodges progress claims against their subcontract through the portal instead of emailing you a PDF.

What they see. A worksheet mirroring your own trade-breakdown claim — one line per contract scope item plus one per approved variation, or a single contract-sum line on a lump-sum subcontract. Each line is prefilled with the contract value and what they’ve claimed to date, and they enter either a cumulative % complete to date or a $ value for this claim.

Columns run Description, Contract value, Previously claimed, This claim, Total to date, Remaining, then Claimed this period (ex GST), Less retention at their subcontract rate, and Net claimed this period. Retention and GST come off their subcontract, so they can’t get them wrong.

Lodge claim creates a Submitted progress claim with one item per line, which you assess line by line in the normal workflow — see Contracts.

If you send it back, they see Builder feedback above the worksheet and get a Resubmit claim button.

Tip: the claim shows their subcontract’s jurisdiction and the statutory certificate due date as a management aid. It’s a prompt to keep you inside Security of Payment timeframes — not legal advice, and it says so.

Payments

Payments gives a subcontractor their money in one place: an account summary per subcontract — contract value and retention from the subcontract, invoiced and paid from your accounts — then My progress claims, Invoices and Payments.

When you issue a payment certificate in response to a claim, they’re emailed it — certificate number, the claim it answers, the project, amount certified (ex GST), total payable (inc GST) and the payment due date — with a link into the portal.

Watch out: a subcontractor whose portal login isn’t linked to a vendor record sees “Your account isn’t linked to a vendor record yet.” Link it from their vendor record and their invoices and payments appear.

The Action Required queue

Across all their jobs, a subcontractor gets one list of what’s waiting on them, sorted by urgency:

Issued documents they haven’t acknowledged
Defects assigned to them, with where and by when
Toolbox talks to read
Quote requests closing in the next week
Scheduled tasks ready to start in the next week

It drives the badge counts in their navigation, and each source disappears if you’ve turned that feature off.

Tip: this is the answer to “I didn’t know you needed that from me”. It’s one screen and it’s the first thing they see.

Subcontractors on mobile

Subcontractors have native app screens rather than a phone-sized website — Today, Safety, Reporting, Money, Quotes, Contracts, Schedule and Notices, with the same feature toggles deciding which appear.

See The Mobile App.

Where to next

The subcontractor portal is the trade-facing end of several modules: engage subcontractors through Purchasing and Contracts, route defects and sign-in through Site Management. For the client-facing equivalent, see Client Portal.