Working a client's Google account

The point of this. The client has handed us the keys so the work gets finished rather than sitting in a queue waiting for a reply. Roughly two hours of work per client can be done in one sitting, and the client's next contact with us should be a finished system rather than another question.

Four things that are never done, whoever holds the password

Never change the account password, the recovery email or the phone number. If the client cannot get into their own account, we have taken their business off them by accident. This is the one that ends the engagement.
Never use the account to pass an identity check. Not HMRC, not Companies House, not a bank. Holding the mailbox lets us do their admin; it does not let us be them. Those tasks are marked they must be present in the queue and go to the partner firm or the director.
Never enter bank or card details — not into the portal config, not anywhere. The director types those on their own machine. We do not hold them and we do not take them by email.
Never publish anything. Everything is drafted and queued. The director approves the first batch before a single post goes out.

The sequence, per client

Work one client start to finish before opening the next. Switching accounts mid-job is how the wrong company's details end up on the wrong portal.

Phase 1 · about 10 minutes

Log the access before you touch anything

Record in the client folder: date, time, which admin, and that access was given by the client. If there is ever a question about what we did in someone's account, this log is the answer.
Sign in and confirm the account matches the client you think it is. Check the company name and the email address against the client's front sheet before proceeding.
Check whether the account already has a Google Business Profile. Do not create a second one — a duplicate listing is painful to merge and looks careless to the client.
If two-step verification prompts and you cannot pass it, stop and flag it. Do not attempt recovery questions. That is a client-present task.

Phase 2 · about 45 minutes

Install the portal

Open that client's own INSTALL.html under 01_LIVE/GOOGLE_PORTALS/{Client}/. It is written for this company, with their config already filled in. Follow it, do not improvise.
Create the Apps Script project named {Client} — Operations and paste the bundle from PASTE.html — every file on one page, in order. Do not open them one at a time.
Run the installer. It builds the enquiry form, wires the submit trigger, creates the deadline calendar with reminders at 90/60/30/14/7/3/1 days, and seeds the first posts.
Check the two statutory dates it wrote into the calendar against the client's front sheet. If they disagree, the front sheet wins and something needs correcting — raise it, do not quietly fix one side.
Leave the three unknowns blank: which mailbox it runs from, bank details, and where they actually trade. Those are the handover conversation, not guesses.

Phase 3 · about 75 minutes

Set up the social channels

Check handle availability on all five first, before creating anything. If the exact name is taken on one platform, pick a variant that works everywhere rather than a different handle per platform.
YouTube — create the brand channel straight from the Google account. One click from the login we already have.
Google Business Profile — the portal install covers this. Check first for an existing one.
Meta — Facebook Page first, then link an Instagram professional account to it through Business Suite. Doing it the other way round forces a re-link later.
X — sign up on the client mailbox. Expect phone verification; use a number the practice controls, never a personal one.
Fill every profile properly in the same sitting: logo, banner, about text from the brand pack, website link and the portal enquiry-form link. A half-filled profile reads worse than no profile.
Load the first batch of drafts into the content queue. Do not connect auto-publishing.

Phase 4 · about 10 minutes

Record it and hand back

Write every handle and its recovery route into the client folder. An account nobody can get back into is a liability, not an asset.
Mark the portal and social tasks submitted in the dispatch portal — not done. Supreme checks the evidence before anything reaches done.
Draft the handover note: what was built, what is waiting for their approval, and the three things only they can answer. One message covering all of it, not a drip of separate questions.
Sign out. Do not stay signed in to a client account between jobs.

Five clients that do not get social channels yet

Blue Tech, CRP, Grays, Pinegrove and Willow Croft are on a live strike-off or have no director at all. Building a public brand across five platforms for a company that may not exist in two months creates a shopfront that then has to be dismantled, and the handles have to be recovered afterwards. Install the portal, skip phase 3, and note why. They get their channels once the register is fixed.

What is still left after this

Finishing phases 1 to 4 clears the commercial side entirely. What remains per client is compliance work, and most of it also needs nobody — confirmation statements, authentication code requests, UTR orders and HMRC chases are all done from the company details we already hold. Those sit in the dispatch portal under the compliance track.

The genuinely client-dependent remainder is small: a VAT application, a director appointment, a personal identity code, and the three portal unknowns. Those go to the partner firm or into the single handover message — never chased one at a time.