Hotspot customers
A hotspot customer is created the first time someone uses your portal. Each one has an account number (their payment wallet), usually a phone number, and the devices (MAC addresses) they connect from.
Find a customer
Section titled “Find a customer”Go to Hotspot → Customers (/dashboard/hotspot/customers). The table shows
Payment Wallet, Phone Number, Email, MAC Address, Device
Type, Router Device, Package, Balance, Active Connects,
Connection and Last Seen. Filter by any column to find someone. Use
Export to Excel to download the whole list, and Refresh to reload it.
The Hotspot Customers table on Services → Hotspots is the same list, with buttons for bulk work:
- Bulk Actions and Compensation. See Bulk actions & compensation.
- Import CSV: bring customers over from another system. The file needs
mac_address,package_idandpaid_until(e.g.2026-03-15 14:30:45) columns. The import window lists your package IDs.
Click a customer to open their page (/dashboard/customers/hotspot/<id>).
The customer page
Section titled “The customer page”The top of the page shows the customer’s current package and connection. It lists their Active Connections with when each one expires, an Extend button, the fair-usage state (Full speed, throttled, or Data limit reached) and a Disconnect button. Below that you’ll find:
- Payments Details: wallet and balances (and Claim Customer Balance to move a balance from the customer’s wallet to your ISP wallet).
- Auto Billing, Current Package, Current Device.
- Customer Profile: device type, OS, browser, last IP, and when they were last seen on the portal. Use Edit Customer Details to change the name or phone number, or the OTP verification status.
- Assigned TVs, Add Child Account, Linked Accounts: family and sub-accounts that share this customer’s packages.
- Seamless Sharing Code and Active Promo Codes.
- Router Device and Recent MAC Addresses. You can remove a MAC address that no longer belongs to the customer.
- Recent Connectivity: every package the customer has had, with Package, Mode, Server, Router, MAC, IP, Download, Upload, FUP and Expiry, plus their session history.
Actions
Section titled “Actions”| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| View Portal / Self Service Portal | Opens the portal or the customer’s self-service page, as the customer sees it. |
| Access Logs | Opens the customer’s recent login attempts. |
| Send SMS | Sends the customer a text message. |
| Connect | Gives the customer a package by hand (see below). Disabled while they already have an active connection. |
| Create Voucher | Creates a voucher for this customer, which they can activate at any time. It can be sent by SMS. |
| Reset Connection | Ends the customer’s sessions and sends a disconnect, so the device (and any TV) has to reconnect. Force reset also removes the customer from the router’s hotspot hosts. |
| Block / Unblock | A blocked customer can’t connect through the portal until you unblock them. |
| Change Phone | Updates the customer’s phone number. |
| Send Self-Service Link | Texts the customer a link to their self-service page. |
| Flight Speed Change | Changes the speed of the current session only. It goes back to the package speed when they reconnect. |
| Speed Override | Sets a permanent speed for this customer that replaces the package speed. |
| Payment Ref Login | Turns payment-reference login on or off for this one customer (Sharing or Migration mode). |
| Award Points | Awards loyalty points for past payments. See Promotions. |
Customer paid but didn’t get connected
Section titled “Customer paid but didn’t get connected”Sometimes a payment goes through but the device doesn’t come online. This can happen if the phone left the WiFi, the portal was closed early, or the router was briefly offline. Here’s how to fix it.
- Check the payment. Look it up under Payments or in Recent Payments on Services → Hotspots, and note the customer.
- Open the customer’s page and check Recent Connectivity. If a package was created and hasn’t expired, the customer just needs to reconnect. Ask them to rejoin the WiFi, or use Reset Connection and have them try again. If Payment Ref Login is on, they can also get back online themselves by entering their M-Pesa code on the portal.
- If no package was created, click Connect. Choose the package in Select Package, set the Package Expiry Date and Package Expiry Time, and click Connect. You’ll see “Customer connected successfully.”
- If the package expired too early, use Extend on the active connection to set a new expiry.
The Manual Connects log
Section titled “The Manual Connects log”Hotspot → Manual Connects (/dashboard/hotspot/transaction-connects) keeps
an audit trail:
- Manual Connects by Team Members lists every package a team member gave by hand, with Customer, Package, Connected By, Paid Until and Created.
- Manual Connect Logs lists changes to connections, such as extensions, with Changed By and Paid Until Before / Paid Until After. Click a connect’s ID to see only its changes, and Show all logs to go back.
- If a customer says the internet is slow, check the FUP column and the fair-usage state first. If fair usage has slowed them down, you can clear it with Reset fair usage on the connection.
- Use Access Logs or Hotspot → Auth Logs to see why a login was refused. See Sessions & logs.