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General Q&A

Have a question for the Smokeball community? Can't find what you're looking for? Ask it here!

  • 647 Conversations
  • 1,556 Replies
Ben
Ben
started this topic

How to use Smokeball Q&A

Welcome to Smokeball Q&A! What is this category for?Whether you are just beginning to move your firm over to Smokeball or you’re a veter...
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647 Conversations
A
Anonymous
posted in General Q&A
Hotkeys and keyboard shortcuts - do you use them?

There’s been a few conversations here in the community about wanting to use keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys in Smokeball to quickly get something done without extra mouse clicks. For example, CTRL+S to save CTRL+F to find something are pretty common ones in other software.We know @atharkhan would love to use keyboard shortcuts when tagging emails and @JKibler to open and save a memo. Our own @Sara Sultan loves them, and can probably teach us all a thing or two!Do you use keyboard shortcuts too? What would use use them for?Answer our poll and put in your suggestions in the comments or send us a feature suggestion - we love hearing your thoughts.(and, if you’re wondering what’s currently possible in Smokeball, @leonzhou gave an example) 

3351
atharkhan
10 months ago
Ashlie
AshlieBeginner
asked in General Q&A
Is there a matter that works for Writ of Garnishments?

Wondering which matter works best for Garnishment cases?

252
W
1 day ago
P
Premier Legacy LawContributor
asked in General Q&A
Client List Report

I have generated a client-full list report using the broadest categories to show me all the clients in the past year. I have checked this list against the open and closed matter list and the client-full list report seems to be randomly missing entries for clients. I have tried to rerun the report multiple times and I get the same results. I have confirmed the clients missing on the report are listed as clients in their respective matters. I’m at a loss.The online support article doesn’t cover how to troubleshoot this issue. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. We are just trying to get a client list with all their contact information. While you are at it, if Smokeball can allow the export feature to Excel not merge cells randomly, that would be really helpful. This prevents us from being able to sort the information.

224
Sara Sultan
Community Manager
1 day ago
C
Carolyn16txContributor
asked in General Q&A
Billing Clients With Multiple Matters

I have a bunch of questions and will set up a Billing Q&A, but I thought that here I might be able to get a change for more suggestions, perhaps from someone who has a good workaround.I am a sole business transactional attorney. Many of my clients will have multiple matters running at the same time (eg: 2 trademarks; 3 major contracts; 1 re-draft of their in-house NDA). They do NOT want to get 6 invoices this month.I’ve been using “combined pdf with cover letter” which is a great start. But, my understanding is, that cannot be emailed from within Smokeball billing. Question 1: Can I email the combined pdf with cover letter invoices from within smokeball?What I’m doing so far is to download that Cover letter with the invoices to my desktop outside of Smokeball. I’ve created an Outlook email cover letter, and I sent that out. BUT… what I didn’t anticipate was, the client still has to click on each invoice to pay.Question 2: Am I correct that the client then has to pay for each matter

14412
E
4 days ago
K
KerrilHContributor
asked in General Q&A
Invoice vs Statement of Account

EDIT: I have solved this for now but can’t delete questionHi All I have been asked to provide a statement of account for a client rather than just the invoice. No payments have been made as yet. Is there a way to create the statement of account from the invoice file?TIA for all assistance.

563
S
7 days ago
L
Legal SecretaryRegular
asked in General Q&A
Account details

HI there.  When I send a statement to a client to chase up an overdue account, there are no account details listed, nor an option to set up a template so that I can provide our account details.Generally, from my experience, the people who have overdue accounts are the people who don’t save our account details for payment next time, this means when I chase them, I have to provide additional details in relation to our bank account.Please make provision for our bank account details to be provided at the bottom of an overdue statement.And, please don’t suggest I send from the “Reminders” tab because that will only send it from my personal email address and not from our generic “accounts” email address, which is where we want all our accounts related emails to be sent from which means a number of people can access that inbox (in case I am away).  I have previously asked for that to be changed, and I was told I could change it, but I can’t.

1254
K
7 days ago
J
JenH1000204Contributor
asked in General Q&A
past due balances

Is there a way to generate invoices for when a client has a balance due, but no new work is done?  Besides using the “reminders” tab?? 

445
K
7 days ago
J
JenH1000204Contributor
asked in General Q&A
Billing

Is there a way to generate invoices for when a client has a balance due, but no new work is done?  Besides using the “reminders” tab?? 

566
K
7 days ago
J
jasonbContributor
asked in General Q&A
Disable Working Time FIeld?

Is there a way to disable or hide the working time field entry? It is creating confusion for our attorneys and errors in billing entries. We just want one box to enter billed time. I don’t know why we would do work and not bill it. If we did, we would mark it not billable.Thanks.

11911
K
7 days ago
mallorylarkby
mallorylarkbyContributor
asked in General Q&A
Smokeball and New Outlook

Has anyone started using the New Outlook and been able to link e-mails to matters to Smokeball?

85238
D
10 days ago
A
AmyRosenlundContributor
asked in General Q&A
Why can't I find phone messages when I do a search?

I don’t understand how to find phone messages through search.  I don’t see them show up as a time matter either.  I think we are missing time on bills because of this.  Is there a way to fix this or should I not be using phone messages the way I am because I cannot seem to track them at all. 

303
Sara Sultan
Community Manager
10 days ago
M
MSINDCContributor
asked in General Q&A
Addresses of Contacts Who Are Part of a Company

I have an existing Contact who has joined the local Attorney General’s office.  Therefore, I opened the contact record for the Attorney General’s office and clicked on “Add Another Person” at the bottom of the list of all of my contacts already there and successfully linked my contact to the office.But there is no address in that person’s contact record.The address from the Attorney General’s Office contact did not fill in the address fields of the individual whom I just added.Is there a way to tell Smokeball that the employee of the company uses the address in the company’s contact record?

131
Sara Sultan
Community Manager
10 days ago
B
BrudahContributor
posted in General Q&A
Trust payment

What is the process to making a trust payment (eft) to a client and also to general for invoice payment

80
B
11 days ago
J
janehContributor
asked in General Q&A
Discounting invoices to a flat number?

Discounting invoices When entering the amount in the discount field, we have to enter the amount before GST is factored in. Is there a way to apply a discount after GST is factored in?Alternatively, if I want my invoice to end up being a round number, what is the calculation I need to apply to figure out the discount?

90
J
11 days ago
Reckless_Kelly
Reckless_KellyContributor
asked in General Q&A
Errors with Archie

Is anyone else experiencing errors when using Archie?I have had several instances where I will ask Archie to create an outline of a document, usually an intake form, and the information that Archie provides is incorrect. For example, it will list the correct date of birth but the age will be off, an it has even gone so far as to add a date of death to a client who is very much alive.When reviewing specific documents, the information that it will return is sometimes wrong or missing important parts. When I ask about the specific section of the document, it will sometimes tell me that the section does not exist.This seems like it could be a great tool, but I’m currently second guessing everything that it tells me.Charles

8510
Funkytown
11 days ago
SallyBergman
SallyBergmanContributor
asked in General Q&A
Issues with Smokeball on Mac running Parallels

Is anyone else having issues with running SB on Mac via Parallels? While I can open it and it works fine, if I multitask with other programs and then come back to SB, hover over the icon to show the open SB pages, they’re all white and I can’t activate them. I have to close down SB and start over. This is happening quite frequently. This is occurring on two new M-based Macs. It does not happen on my PC.

70
SallyBergman
14 days ago
H
HolliKHoustonContributor
asked in General Q&A
Yes/no toggle in custom intake forms?

Hi all,  I’m new to SB and working to set up some customized intake forms.  In the pre-loaded questions, for yes/no questions, there is a little toggle button at the bottom that lets someone choose yes or no.  But, I’m not finding that toggle switch in any questions which I create myself.  I seem to be able to only use the “choice” button and then create yes and no options.  Am I missing it somewhere?

121
Sara Sultan
Community Manager
15 days ago
M
Mallory SContributor
asked in General Q&A
Bill Preview PDFs in Chrome

I review and approve my invoices in Chrome. After I am done reviewing my time and fees, I click “View Preview” on the right hand side. When I do that, I get a message that says “This browser does not support PDF!” I have other people in my office that use Chrome and don’t have this same issues. How do I fix this?

121
Sara Sultan
Community Manager
17 days ago
M
MSINDCContributor
asked in General Q&A
Importing Unbilled Time Entries

Folks:I am a new Smokeball user, transitioning from an old version of Time Matters.  I have many unbilled time records that I intended to import to Smokeball.  Based on Smokeball’s help files, I knew that my Matters had to be imported and validated before I could import time entries.But the “Unbilled Time & Fees” option in the Import function is grayed out.When I addressed this with my onboarding agent, she told me that I cannot import time and fees except when importing matters.  No one else at Smokeball has told me that and that appears to be inconsistent with the Smokeball help files.  “Finalize matters import before importing time and “Import time when you are importing matters” just don’t jive!Does anyone know how I can get the import function unblocked and how I can get these records imported?Micah 

173
J
17 days ago
R
rumpoleContributor
asked in General Q&A
Problems with smokeball compatibility

Hi there,  I was wondering if anyone had any ideas or suggestions. I am a recent user of smokeball. My laptop is 3 years old and was struggling to run smokeball and other applications at the same time. I bit the bullet and recently bought a new laptop so I could run smokeball and other applications. I bought a top of the line laptop with more RAM (32GB) same brand as my existing laptop (Lenovo) same operating system (windows). When I went to download smokeball on the new laptop, I had all sorts of problems. I rang smokeball support for help. They tried to install smokeball and had issues. Finally I was told that smokeball doesn’t support the processor that my new laptop has. The processor is Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E78100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) CPU   3.42 GHz.Does any of this sound right? Are there any work arounds or solutions? Otherwise it seems that I have spent $3000 on a new laptop for my business that I can’t run smokeball on. Any help appreciated. Thanks

321
J
22 days ago
Funkytown
FunkytownFrequent Scribe
asked in General Q&A
Combine PDF

For the past few days, I’ve had trouble with the “Combine PDF” feature...it stalls and fails to complete when combining 7 image files with a table of contents and page numbering. Anyone run into this?

161
Sara Sultan
Community Manager
23 days ago
E
ehannalawContributor
asked in General Q&A
Removing file from Safe Custody Packet

Does anyone know, if a safe custody packet replicates a document, is there a way that I can delete one of them from the packet? It is the same document twice. 

201
J
Smokeball Team
24 days ago
BenHallLaw
BenHallLawContributor
asked in General Q&A
Single Client Multiple Matters Portal

I represent an agency that has multiple matters. We often have the same points of contact over the various matters. I am setting up my stages and want to automate some communication to the contact at the agency based on the stage of the case. How does SB handle a single “client” or person with multiple matters? 

171
Sara Sultan
Community Manager
24 days ago
D
daniel.flesch_verveit.comContributor
posted in General Q&A
Disk Full - C:\Program Files\Smokeball\data\mattermanagement\files2

We are managing devices that use smoke ball and noticed a large amount of data being stored in this location. C:\Program Files\Smokeball\data\mattermanagement\files2This is a cause of disk’s becoming full for us. Is this cached data that can be removed? Is there a command we can send to smoke ball to clear this up / limit the cache size? Thank You

370
D
28 days ago
Reckless_Kelly
Reckless_KellyContributor
asked in General Q&A
Multiple Client Entry on a single form

Is there a way to map a second client through either a Lead or Matter Form?We have created an updated Estate Planning Matter form that uses conditional logic to collect the spouse’s information, and we would like for it to be mapped to “Client 2” in the Matter so we don’t have to manually enter their information. Is this possible? Charles

785
B
1 month ago

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