General Q&A

For some reason, my Outlook Smokeball integration saves all of the emails one of our staff member writes, automatically, to one specific matter.  Has anyone else experienced this, and is there an easy fix?

I know that I can drag and drop files from Windows File Explorer into Smokeball Documents.  But if I add files that are already there, Smokeball makes two copies of it.  That is not good!Can Smokeball synchronize itself with a matched Windows File Explorer folder? Or perhaps alert if a file to be uploaded is already present?We have found it impossible operate without using Windows File Explorer so we need something that can streamline the process of ensuring that both repositories are the same.

As a criminal practitioner, I need a portable work device that can also serve as my “base station” (ie move between a court room and the office with great ease). There are MANY options on the market, but it seems clear that Macbooks are currently THE best option for this. Significant performance, coupled with outstanding battery life etc. It’s unfortunate that Smokeball is not compatible on Mac’s, and I would have thought, cuts Smokeball off from a significant portion of their possible client base (judging on the number of Mac users I see floating around at court). I understand it’s an entirely different architecture and would require basically a whole re-write of the app (probably?) but is there any plans for it? Even some sort of bridging app would suffice - the web version of smokeball is good for nearly all purposes EXCEPT - filing \ reviewing emails and creating precedents. If there was a mac bridging app that simply gave access to those 2 features, it would be sufficient to enabl

Since transitioning to Smokeball, our firm has utilized Law Pay as a payment platform. This integration tool, however, is not very intuitive as far as applying the payments we receive through the platform to our clients’ payment portal. I find that I have to manually apply the payment to their client payment portal. This often creates a little bit of confusion as there is not a way to streamline the process of receiving payment, to the remittance of funds to our firm account. Does smokeball have a way to automatically apply payments received through Law Pay to balances due? If not, is there a way to work around this? 

When someone assigns a task to me, I got a notification.  So-and-so assigned a task to you.  I find the notification both distracting and unhelpful.  Obviously, I still want notifications like “you have a meeting starting”, but I would like to turn off notifications that a task has been assigned to me (which I will see, after all, in my Tasks list).  Is that possible?

Does anyone know of a way that you can see what dates future rate sets have been set up for and also is there a record kept of dates rate changes were applied?

Hello. Being nice has gotten too expensive, and I want to implement surcharges for LawPay payments. I did my research, and decided on a strategy, but when I engaged LawPay, I was given the following feedback …  Can anyone provide any hints, tips, or hacks to easily implement surcharges while using the Smokeball and LawPay integration? Thanks, all!

All:Just started with Smokeball and was looking for an article or method to “sync” outlook with Matters.Can anyone provide any direction or information?Thanks….Ben

Smokeball appears to integrate with Docusign as shown here; https://www.smokeball.com/features/legal-efiling-electronic-signatures But I can’t find a way to integrate Docusign.Perhaps its only available through Infotrack (which is not available in my state).Help?

Is there a way to make it so Smokeball will stop auto filing emails into the root folder of a smokeball file? I want all emails allocated to a matter to be filed in a folder called “Emails” or “Correspondence” or something, but I can’t see the option? I might have matters with 100’s if not thousands of emails, and having to manually click and drag them out of the root file management folder is incredibly time consuming and prone to significant error. If they were auto filed into an “emails” sub-folder, this would save me about an hour a week I reckon - and also is FAR less prone to user error than the current method (I often click and drag non-emails into my self created email folder, or drag the emails into another folder by accident). This feels like a no brainer to me - am I just a duffer and can’t find the setting?

Is there a way to upload a pdf containing information about the case and have Smokeball automatically take that information from the pdf and place it into the case in the places it belongs? For example, if I upload a document explaining how a client was injured, can Smokeball take that information and populate it into the case details or into another document that would need that information? 

How can you send statements to all of your clients at the end of the month. We have over 250 active clients that require a statement at the end of the month. To go in to every matter is not feasible. I need to send statements for multiple reasons, the main one though is to let the clients know how much interest is being charged on their overdue accounts. Especially for those clients who we no longer act for. I have tried the work around for this of adding a disbursement called interest charge for $0.00 so it calculates on the full outstanding value however the system will not finalise a $0.00 invoice.

I am new to Smokeball.  I have Ringcentral as my telephone provider.  I can get Ringcentral to record phone calls.  I was told either Ringcentral or Smokeball could transcribe the recording and put it in the correct matter file.  But I am having a lot of difficulty figuring out how to do this.Anyone conquer this challenge?Ross

Hi is there an update on how smokeball is expected to run under emulation on the new copilot+ PC'S ro be released on 18th June 2024? Is there any workarounds if it's not running eg via the Web?

Nobody in our office can get the Save to Smokeball feature to work. It rarely works, so I have been doing the “print to Smokeball” and that always works. The problem is that it is turns it all into a PDF when I sometimes want it to be a Word document. Anyone find a solution for this? Smokeball tech has “fixed” this problem with saving before but it always a very short term solution and back to not working in no time. 

Hi!I am currently researching ways that we can help to simplify your client onboarding process through automation. If you are interested in providing some insight to this area and helping to define a solution I would love if you could help by completing the below survey. Survey: Automating the Client Onboarding Process Additionally, if you would prefer to arrange a meeting to discuss please feel free to email me directly at michelle.jenkyns@smokeball.com.au and we can arrange a time that works for you. Looking forward to your valuable insights!

​@adeleh As we’ve been warned, effective July 15 invoices won’t be automatically saved to the documents folder.  There may be valid reasons for this change, sort-of explained in techie double-speak in the product update below.  Well, this will definitely be an issue, as most of our firm doesn’t have SB Billing access.  It’s new job security for us on the billing end of the house, as we’ll be continually badgered to download and share invoices for any number of reasons and/or asked if client X was sent and paid for A, B, or C invoice, fee, or expense.  In the meantime, a band-aid approach would be to do what we’ve requested for a long time now: add a simple  “paid’ entry in the billing widget as requested below.  If provided, paralegals could know, at a glance, if our flat fee services were paid so they can start working on the file. We ask that this get to the top of the pile.Yes, we realize that there are so many updates and upgrades to do, but we nonetheless appreciate the considerat

Just wondering if anyone has an online bank they can recommend that works well with Smokeball.

I’d like to print or save a PDF of my calendar and my task list on a weekly basis. Does anyone else keep a hard copy as a backup? Is there a good report or export option that could do both in one shot?

How are you dealing with not having the video playback feature in smokeball Prosper+?  Our firm works with large video files (1GB - 10GB each) and often need to review the videos for content.  Downloading a video every time you want to view it takes a lot of time and delays work.  Is this only an issue for our Michigan based personal injury firm?  Any work arounds?

We have recently released the new Intake Homepage which is designed to help you manage your intake forms from one central location.  As we plan the next round of improvements, we’d love to hear your thoughts!👉 Have you given it a try?👉 What’s working well?👉 Anything that could be improved or added? If you're interested in sharing your feedback, you can:✅ Reply to this post📧 Email me directly at michelle.jenkyns@smokeball.com.au📅 Book a time to chat via Zoom: Calendly Link Looking forward to hearing how we can keep improving this feature to make your workflow even easier!

Part of my practice is debt collection.  The matter profile I use is under “Debt & Bankruptcy - Debt Collection.”  When setting up the matter, I would like to include the principal judgment, as well as calculate ongoing interest.  I don’t see any way to do this under “debt collection” or basically “pre-judgment” interest.  This would be very helpful for me to glance at an information point and see exactly what amount the defendant debtor (not my client) owes at any given point, as well as use in forms and judgments. This is especially true for FDCPA debt.  It seems this feature may be a thing outside of the US, and on “Post Judgment Debt Collection” but not where I really need it to be.  Can anyone help advise if 1) I’m setting it up incorrectly or 2) confirm this is not a feature that exists (right now?)  Simple case scenario, debtor fails to pay invoice due on 5/1/2024 for the principal amount of $10,000 and agreed to contract interest of 18% APR on default.  Today is 5/20/25, I

We have clients who we have ceased to act for that still have outstanding accounts. How can I send them a monthly invoice to charge them the interest on their outstanding account?At the moment the only way I can see it working is to charge them a $0.10 disbursement every month to trigger an invoice, charge interest on the overdue debt and then waive the $0.10 disbursement the next day so it doesn’t add to the balance.

Is anyone else having an issue of invoices not generating and them getting hung up? Or when you try to go through billing and a white screen loads? This has been happening on numerous computers and with multiple users. Restarts, logouts, clearing cache--doesn’t work.   

I use Archie to generate emails.Is it possible for these emails to automatically include my signature?I would like text with hyperlinks and an image ideally.