Help others: answer a question

When I am sending an email from Smokeball through the New Outlook, my email signature is not auto populating. I have to manually add my saved signature to the email every time. Is there a way to make it always populate when sending emails from Smokeball?

Hello.  We are new to Smokeball and I have been reading some of the Q&A’s here.  Like a few of you here, we have clients who have multiple matters and I am not seeing/finding a convenient way to do a couple of things.  For example, let’s say our client, Company ABC, has 100 matters.  Company ABC has a main client contact for most of the matters and then there’s a billing contact and a contact we need to cc on billings.  Company ABC also has a couple of confidential matters where our company contact and billing contact are different and need to be separate from the other bills.  So 98 matters have statements that need to go to the same 3 people and 2 matters where statements go to 2 different people.  Here are my issues/questions:Do I have to go in to all 98 matters and add the main company contact?  It appears that even if I do that, their name doesn’t even pull onto the invoices anyway.  So now I have to go into each of the 98 matters and override the invoice address to get their

Hi I have just started using the new Smokeball Add-in for the new Outlook. The matter naming convention that Smokeball uses makes it difficult to assign emails to matters because you cannot actually see the name of the matter. All you can see is the matter number and client name. I have a number of clients for whom I have a large number of matters so I need to be able to see the matter description in order to know which matter to assign the email to. I understand that the lengthy matter naming convention used by Smokeball has been raised as an issue on numerous occasions. Is this going to be addressed? I am unsure why the longer matter naming convention is required when there is a unique matter number.

We had a client overpay an invoice on a particular matter. No biggie, we created a credit note and eventually invoiced the matter again, applying the credit to the outstanding balance of that new invoice. However, there still remains a balance on the credit note ( >$1k) and we wont be issuing any further invoices on this matter as that matter is now complete.  Can we transfer the balance of the credit note to another matter under the same client?  If so - how? 

SB support tells me I can’t move time entries in bulk to another matter - has anyone else had this issue.  I have to go into every entry and change the matter number.   I have $15k of time to move.  😥

Why does the new upgrade not allow me to select contacts associated with the matter to send email

Is there a way to send a file to opposing counsel via a link without requiring them to use client portal?

Billing is not opening. When I go into the billing portion of smokeball the matters will open but no time keeping or invoicing opens. Just wondering if anyone else is having these issues. There appears to be no outages

I am attempting to create a work in progrees report and I can’t get to the right side of the screen to fill in the requisite selection info. Also, the Start a Timer drop down offers a very limited view 

In the calendar view, we can assign a Label to an event by right clicking and choosing a particular label and it changes the colour of the event entry to which ever label you choose Can you change and/or add to the pre-existing titles and customize to your firm?  If so how?  If not, can it be submitted to the products team

I’m looking for a solution to answer calls, do intake, maybe ai or chat bot for website leads, that integrates well with Smokeball. I’m thinking Smith AI, Answering Legal or Lex Reception. Anyone have any experience/thoughts on those, or any other recommended solutions, they care to share? Thanks!

HELP … In My Case, I could easily send an e-mail through the program asking for a retainer and there was a link in that message.  HOW do I send an internal request for a retainer payment.

Good evening, Sometimes at the end of the day or week, I check my email box and make sure emails are properly assigned to a matter.  There may be several emails in my box that need to be assigned, or outgoing mails sent in a hurry or from my phone will also need to be assigned.  So I will tkae a few minutes at the end of the day to assign emails.  I am not reading them, I am only right clicking on the emails in outlook so I can assign them.  It seems like this creates a billable event and I do not want that.  I would consider this matter management and not bill for it.  Does anyone else have the same concern? 

I only practice one area of law and have one client. Because of the unique situation, I created a matter template years ago when I first got Smokeball. Today, I have tried creating a new matter using the matter template as I always do and I am getting an error box “There was a problem creating a matter from this template. There was an error generating the XML document.” Has anyone else experienced this and have an easy fix? I can use a pre-set template from Smokeball but I’d prefer not to have to re-create the whole folder set I regularly use each time I have to create a new matter. 

We are trying to get our whole firm utilising the “tasks” function as a “to-do” list, to delegate work and act as “bring ups”.Many of my colleagues have used emails for these functions for 5, 10, 15+ years. So there have been some grievances raised with transitioning to Smokeball Tasks for these specific things. ​​Primarily issues relate to:Alerts/notifications for new tasks only showing in Smokeball (so can be missed if you do not have smokeball open on screen); and Needing to individually clear each notification for a new task/event in the “Notifications & Reminders” section (i.e., a “clear all” option would be helpful for when there is a back log).Other than updated Smokeball features, does anyone have any tips to overcome these grievances?

Is there a best practice for managing containers and templates? Specifically, is it recommended to create separate letterhead container for each use case (for example, new event with subrogation, demand requests to opposing counsel, etc.) using the same container or to create a container by use?  We currently use one letterhead container, but the coding has become fairly complex, so I’m wondering what approach is considered best practice.

Has anyone suggested the idea or has Smokeball started working on setting up a function to customize different Message Templates for Intake Forms? Perhaps based on each user or a template that can be saved for a specific matter type(s)?. 

My firm is exploring options for a phone integration. We are a two-attorney firm with limited staff. Our goal with a phone integration service is to reduce the amount of time our staff spends answering calls from both current and prospective clients.  In reviewing the current phone integration options, we have narrowed it down to Clerx AI, RingCentral, and Smith.ai.  We appreciate any insight community members can provide as to what works best.  

We keep having people accidentally bill to closed matters. Is there a way to lock matters billing once they are closed? 

Good morning,   I am looking for feedback from attorneys who have used reception services that intergrate with smokeball like Clerx, answering legal, Lex, etc.  Small firm with two poeple but would really like a system that gets all the detail in a lead, schedules call backs, fills in the data, and really gets the info we need from the lead.  

Hello, we pay most of our disbursements via credit card and would like these to be integrated with xero. I can see we can setup up office payments by cheque - can we also do this by credit card?

I wish to make a minor edit to our email that sends a trust receipt to a client.  I know how to edit an email template, but I can only find invoice buttons, not the trust receipt button, as the support hub mentioned. See screenshot below:I would appreciate some assistance as the support hub explains how to edit the email sending trust receipts, but I don’t have the button for trust receipts, only invoices, invoice reminders, evergreen retainers and deposit requests.  At the moment, we can email a trust receipt, but the email signs off with “Kind regards” and my name, but we want it to say “Yours faithfully” and then our firm name. Thank you!Nancy

I found the following article while looking for something else: https://support.smokeball.com/hc/en-au/articles/6112048755735-Using-the-Safe-Custody-register This is a really interesting feature. Is it available only for Australia? If so, is there a plan to add this feature to the US as well?  It would be so useful for estate planning clients, or business clients, to keep all the “official” executed documents associated with the contact (as if it was that client digital binder) so that they are easily accessible when a client has several matters opened with the firm (instead of keep moving/copying the “executed documents” from matter to matter).

Is there anyway to deactivate the use of the Client Portal? Our firm does not utilize the portal since it tends to confuse our older clients. But whenever we send them an email or a text message the inform us that they are being prompted to access the client portal.