Bulk client statements for all invoices and payments

Hi ​@AMC Amanda 
There is currently no a way to send bulk statements, however we do show interest on Reminders, so if the main reason is to let clients know how much interest has accrued, could that work?
I’d welcome a feedback call to talk through this, if you’d be open to talking directly with me as the Product Manager for the billing & trust account functions in Smokeball, please send me a direct message & I’ll reach out to book in some time with you. 
Thank you in advance.
Jess 

I also am trying to work out how to efficiently send statements.  I don’t need a full account statement, just outstanding invoices.

I usually send each of my Clients multiple invoices (one for each matter) each month, and for each Client there is often two or more Debtors. Sending the Debtors an invoice reminder for every invoice just results in a confusing barrage of emails that makes my firm look unprofessional. 

I see that the US version of Smokeball allows you to go into each Contact, select invoices, create a Client Statement for all selected invoices and then one-click email to the Client (https://support.smokeball.com/hc/en-us/articles/26792197754007-Create-a-Client-Statement#:~:text=Select%20Create%20Statement%20from%20the,client%20statement%20to%20your%20client.). It seems that feature is not available in Australia yet. 

I was told by Smokeball Support that in the web app I could use the Reports > Invoice History and generate a report showing effectively a statement for each Debtor, that I could then manually email to each Debtor. In addition to not looking great, that is going to take about 15 minutes.

Currently I used Xero to send statements. Its really efficient but it has some drawbacks (see below). 

With Smokeball connected to Xero, I can navigate to a page within Xero which shows outstanding balance by Debtor (Business > Sales Overview > Send Statements). I am then presented with a list of Debtors and outstanding balances. I can then check boxes for each Debtor that I want Xero to email a Statement to, select the type of Statement (activity or just outstanding) then click ‘Email’. The Debtor receives an email from Xero with an attached .pdf statement branded with my firm’s details, showing a list of invoices and the balance outstanding. Takes less than 1 minute.

The downside to using the Xero Statements, is that for each invoice the Xero Statement contains a link to a version of the invoice within Xero that lacks details on the original Smokeball invoice, rather than an exact copy of the invoice generated by Smokeball. Xero also refers to invoice using a slightly different naming protocol: “SB-[Invoice Number]”  instead of just “[Invoice Number]”. It confuses the Debtors a bit.

The US Smokeball option for Client Statements would be better than using Reports > Invoice History however it still requires going into each Debtor contact in the Web App, rather than ticking boxes on a list.

Please consider designing something that works as well as the Xero Statement function in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, similar to the ‘Create Invoices’ function.

Hi Thomas,

Thank you for taking the time to write this detailed feedback, greatly appreciated.

Yes, we do have something in the US for creating a type of statement, however its not quite the right fit for our AU requirements. Our team are looking into ways we can improve this process in Smokeball for our AU firms and your feedback has been included in the research.

We understand the importance of being able to quickly & easily issue these statements & we’ll continue to gather insights & feedback on this topic.

If you’d like to have a call to discuss this or if you have any other billing/trust account feedback you’d like to share, please feel free to send me a direct message & I’ll reach out to book in some time with you. 

Thank you again.
Jess
 

​@Thomas thanks for this detailed response. I looked at the Xero option and unfortunately it doesn’t account for the interest charge either which is another issue in smokeball and why we want to send statements.

I understand completely around looking unprofessional and also another reason I won’t send the Xero statement as it comes from a Xero email. When we swapped to smokeball, our clients thought we had been hacked as the email address is from smokeball and not our accounts team.

@jess if this could be added as an issue for sending all accounts contact, that would be great.