Once you have invited your clients to Productive, you can easily add them to collaborate on your projects.
This ensures effective communication and allows clients to stay updated on project progress without accessing sensitive financial information.
On the Essential plan, clients (Client Collaborators) can view projects and tasks, but can't see time entries or budgets.
On the Professional and Ultimate plans, Client Leads can also view budgets, time entries on budgets, and time estimates on tasks.
Client Lead and Client Collaborator are the permission names used in organizations created from mid-August 2026 onward (previously Client Manager and Client Staff).
đ See Why Your Permission Set List May Look Different for the full breakdown.
Adding Clients to a Project
đ See Adding Clients To Projects for the full steps on adding or removing a client from a project.
Client Permissions on a Project
By default, clients (Client Collaborator or Client Lead) can:
View the project, its members, and its activity feed, limited to what they have access to
Subscribe to project notifications
View meetings linked to the project (shared directly with them or shared with the project members group)
Create, edit, and delete tasks, including status, assignees, dates, and custom field values
Add comments to tasks
Create and manage subtasks and task dependencies
Export tasks
View docs (shared directly with them, or shared with the project members group)
Create new docs, and edit or delete docs they have write or full access to
Comment on docs
đ Commenting on tasks requires the Add, edit, and delete tasks permission. You can't enable commenting without also enabling task editing.
Clients can't remove project members, or create new task lists or folders. They also can't see worked time logged on tasks.
đ See Customizing Client Permissions if you need to restrict what a specific client can do, for example turning off task or doc access for one client without affecting others.
Private Folders
Use a folderâs Client access setting to keep it and its contents hidden from clients.
đ For details on restricting folder access for clients, see: Private Folders in Projects.
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Clients with Access to Budgets and Timesheets
Client Leads, or clients with access to budgets and timesheets (available on the Professional or Ultimate plans), have additional options.
đ See Giving Clients Access to Budgets and Timesheets for what Client Leads can see and do on budgets and timesheets.
Customizing Client Permissions
If you need more control over what clients can access and do in your projects, you can create custom client permission sets.
đ Learn more about customizing client permissions here.
