# The portal on the client's phone and the vault on the firm's desktop

Clients carry the portal on their phone, and professionals carry the firm's document vault on their desktop. Both work from the same records, under the same permissions, and neither keeps a copy the firm cannot see.

## The client's phone
The Rutledge app for iPhone signs the client in with the same passkey they use everywhere, with no password to remember. A client who works with more than one firm picks the one they want; a client with one firm goes straight in. Home shows a greeting, the onboarding steps still open, what the firm is waiting on and the documents recently delivered, each opening with a tap.

## Documents in the client's hand
The Documents screen shows the client's private space and each firm's space, with folders inside. A client previews a file, uploads a new one from the phone, shares a private file with a firm or makes a shared file private again. A deleted file can be restored from the recycle bin, and earlier revisions can be opened and recovered. Nothing is cached on the device; every open reads the current record, and signing out leaves nothing behind.

## Profile changes with a receipt
A client can read and change their own profile from the phone. A change that the firm must confirm is proposed rather than applied, and the client gets a receipt that says whether it was applied, proposed or declined. The firm sees the same proposal in its workbench, so a new address or phone number never lives in two versions. Settings let the client switch firms or sign out.

## Rutledge Drive on the desktop
Rutledge Drive puts the firm's document tree in the desktop file manager: a firm folder and a folder for each client, with a firm-only space and a client-portal space inside each. Files appear as placeholders and download the first time they are opened, so a laptop does not fill up with the whole vault. A file can be kept on the device or freed to save space, and renaming and moving work like any other folder.

## Private or shared by choice
Dropping a file into a client's portal space is what shares it, and Drive asks first, because a file there is visible to the client. The default is the firm-only space. Moving a large number of files at once asks for confirmation. A file that lands in an ambiguous place is moved to the less visible side, and the structural folders are put back if they are removed, so the tree always matches the record.

## Edits that never overwrite someone else's
Every save is checked against the record on the server. If someone else changed the same file first, Drive keeps both and names the second a conflicted copy, so no work is lost. A file that could not be written back is kept as a recovered copy. The tray icon shows the last fifty things that happened, and signing out can leave the login in place or clear it.

## The same record everywhere
The phone app, the desktop drive, the portal and the workbench read one record. A document the client uploads from the phone is in the firm's Drive folder moments later; a report the firm drops into the client-portal space is on the client's phone with a delivery record. Read how the [client side](/clients) works, how the [compliance archive](/archive) keeps documents, or [talk with us](/contact).