Howard Wealth Planning
A financial planner's public practice site with a private client portal and advisor workspace behind it — documents, homework, check-ins and messaging in one place instead of an email chain.
- My role
- Designer and developer — the public site, the portal, the advisor workspace, the security hardening, and the production launch.
- Built for
- Independent professionals
- Current status
- Live. A published About page and privacy policy are still outstanding.
- Built with
- Next.js · Supabase (auth + row-level security) · Sanity CMS · Stripe · DocuSeal · Resend
The story
What problem existed, and what we built.
The problem
An independent advisor's real work happens after the first meeting: paperwork, documents, follow-ups, homework between sessions, and staying in touch. Run over email and attachments, that work is impossible to keep track of, awkward for clients, and risky with sensitive financial documents.
What I built
A polished public site that earns the first conversation, and behind a login, a portal where clients upload documents, complete what they've been asked to do, and message their advisor — with an advisor-side workspace that shows who needs what.
What it had to achieve
- Look like the practice the advisor actually runs
- Move client paperwork out of email
- Let the advisor update the site without calling a developer
- Never lose an enquiry
The customer's experience
A prospective client reads the site, understands the offering, and books a consultation. Once they're a client, they sign in to one place for their documents, what they've been asked to prepare, and a direct line to their advisor.
What customers can do
- A practice site that explains the offering and books a consultation
- A private client portal with secure document upload and download
- Homework and weekly pulse check-ins between sessions
- Direct client-to-advisor messaging
- Published resources and course material
The owner & staff experience
The advisor sees who has uploaded what, who is behind, and who has messaged. Site copy, resources and course material are editable directly. Enquiries arrive in the database whether or not the notification email goes through.
What the business can do
- An advisor workspace showing every client's state at a glance
- Document review in one queue
- Editable site content through a content management system — no developer needed for copy changes
- Workshop enquiries captured to the database before any email is sent, so an email outage cannot lose a lead
- Signed agreements and payments handled by the systems that specialize in them
How it works
The system, explained without the jargon.
If a technical term is needed below, it's explained right where it appears.
Two sides of one system
The public marketing site and the private portal are the same application. A visitor becomes a client without changing platforms, and the advisor manages both from one place.
Locked at the data layer
Client roles are stored where the database itself can read them, and row-level security means one client's documents are unreachable by another — not merely hidden from the interface.
Leads land before the email is sent
A workshop enquiry is written to the database first, then emailed. If the email provider is down, the lead still exists.
Specialists for money and signatures
Payments and signed agreements are handled by dedicated providers rather than rebuilt in-house, and the site reacts to what they report.
Design decisions
The choices that shaped it — and why.
Bookings deliberately go off-site
Consultations are booked through the advisor's existing scheduling tool. That keeps her one calendar authoritative and means the booking path cannot silently break inside the app.
One price, one source
Two different processors charge for two different offerings. Each price is verified against the processor that actually charges it, never against another page — cross-checking pages against each other is exactly how prices drift apart.
A strict content security policy
The site enforces rules about what code is allowed to run on it, which closes off a whole family of attacks on a site that handles financial documents.
How it was built
Development process
- 1Built the practice site to an agreed brief
- 2Added the client portal and advisor workspace
- 3Launched to production
- 4Ran two security waves — roles, row-level security, enforced content policy, rate limiting
- 5Reconciled every published price against the processor that actually charges it
- 6Remaining: the About page and privacy policy publish
Where it stands
Status & outcome
Current status
Live. A published About page and privacy policy are still outstanding.
Outcome
Client paperwork and between-session work now live in one private place instead of an email chain. No conversion or retention figures are claimed — none have been measured.
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