Guides for Running a Testing Firm, Written by People Who Run One.
These are the answers we have had to work out ourselves: what a client is really asking in a supplier assessment, why generated reports drift, what local inference is actually good at, and how to move a firm off a shared drive without stalling for a quarter. No product pitch inside them.
Start here
The setup guide, start to finish
The fastest way through everything below: registering, your own domain, your own database, your own mail server, branding, the first sign-in, and keeping the database updated.
- 0:00 · Registering, signing in, and the free trial
- 0:51 · Your name and your firm’s name
- 0:57 · Custom domain
- 1:45 · Bring your own database
- 4:07 · Your own email server
- +3 more
Creating Your Database and Installing the Schema
Four steps: create a Postgres project in your own account, run the setup SQL, register one auth hook, then connect the project to Pental. The hook is the step people miss.
Putting Your Portal on Your Own Domain
One DNS record, then the portal verifies it and issues a certificate. Most failures are the same three causes, and the setup screen tells you which one you have hit.
Making Your Word Template the One Pental Fills
Open the Document Builder, upload any document you already send, and let the AI take the last engagement out and place the fields; you check what it did and see the real pages before you save. Nothing asks you to know how a Word file is put together.
Connecting an AI Provider, or Running One Yourself
Settings, then AI. Ollama on your own hardware, Groq, OpenAI, Anthropic, or any OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible endpoint. The key is encrypted into your own database and no prompt passes through Pental.
Adding Your Team, Roles and Multi-Factor Authentication
Six roles, enforced by the database rather than the interface. Two MFA methods, a policy for whether one or both are required, and an inactivity rule you should set deliberately.
Switching Off the Parts of the Platform You Do Not Use
Settings, then Feature Modules. A module that is off disappears from navigation and from everywhere that links to it, and keeps whatever you had configured in case you turn it back on.
Sending Portal Email from Your Own Domain
The connection is set in your pental.io dashboard, the wording in the portal. Until you do the first, sign-in codes and notifications go out through Pental rather than from you.
Single Sign-On Under Your Own Name
Register a Google or Microsoft application of your own, paste the two values into your portal, and the consent screen your team and your clients see carries your name instead of ours. The redirect URI is the part people get wrong.
Running AI Drafting on Hardware You Own
Ollama on each tester’s machine, or one shared box over HTTPS. The setup is small, and the part that catches everyone is that the request comes from the browser rather than from a server.
Fixing a Template That Renders Inconsistently
Nearly every rendering complaint traces to formatting applied to the paragraph instead of held on a style. Word hides the difference from you; anything reading the file can see nothing else.
Setting Up Multi-Factor Authentication for Your Firm
Two methods, an any or all policy, and the rule that a passkey always needs a backup authenticator. Plus what happens to a session that goes idle, and how a locked-out colleague gets back in.
What Your Clients Actually See in the Portal
The client portal shows findings you have published, documents you have delivered, and nothing else. Here is exactly what is on each screen, and the three things that control it.
Reviewing a Report Before It Goes Out
How QA works end to end: submitting, picking work up, commenting on the exact words, suggesting changes against applying them, and carrying the whole review into the Word document somebody reviews offline.
Something Here You Would Like Covered Properly?
Tell us what keeps coming up on your engagements and we will write it up.