General Q&A

My firm is interested in exploring minimum billable time (“piecemeal plus”?) for the automated forms we have invested time in creating ex. Petition for Dissolution of Marriage or Parenting Plan. There is a field called “Duration” in the Smokeball Pane within document automation view in Microsoft word: I cannot locate any resources in Smokeball’s support hub regarding this field. I created a document using “1:00” in the field and it did not post 1:00 as a time entry in the matter. Does anyone know the purpose of this field? ​​​​​​Here is my dream feature set for this:First, have a master setting in SB desktop main settings that enables or disables time entries according to “Duration field”; Second, have a master setting to allow fixed fee according to duration OR allow minimum of the du

Our office is looking for the best VOIP provider to integrate with Smokeball. Can anyone share if they’ve had great success with VXT in the United States?

Is there a way to calculate average days it takes for our clients to pay their invoices?  example; we want our average days our invoices are paid to be less than 30 days  on aaverage.We are using the Cash Flow Story method of analyzing our company health.Any ideas?

Hello all.Is there a canned report that I’m missing that we could compare, for various matter types, the actual time worked versus what we assess for a flat fee for said matter?  (For flat fee matters, we nonetheless add time, but we mark it as non-billable).Essentially, we’re trying to right-size our flat fees; and I don’t see an easy way to do the analysis. Short of a report that’s already created, going forward, I suppose I’m cross-referencing time entries  for specific matters against billing and income reports.  It’s job security I guess...

I have many clients who have both a work and a personal e-mail address, but I am not able to add more than one to their contact card.  How can I get around that so I can send an e-mail to a client at both addresses?  If that is not possible, I’d like to suggest that as a feature, but now I cannot find the feature suggestion page. 

Anyone figure out how to use the print checks to actually align well when they print out. The “Fit to Paper” doesn’t work on our copier (Ricoh), and I’ve spent way to long this morning manipulating a PDF to get it to fit. Wondering if anyone has come up with workarounds. 

I’m trying to work out how to set a default Re Line that is ‘our client’s lastname’ & ‘other party’s last name’. I know how to get into the smokeball settings and set an auto re line but the only options are for their fullnames. We really don’t want that. We, and all other firms in our area, only use last names. Has anyone had any success with this? I don’t want to have to manually enter in a Re Line on every matter and then every time we open a file.

Our firm typically acts for government departments and have many of the same matter type i.e Advice or General type matters, with different matter descriptions i.e:[Client - Government Department Name] - [Matter Type - Advice/General] - [Matter Description: Appeal re 1 Smith St] We are finding that the matter description does not populate in most of the SB interface as default  - In widgets such as “recent matters” or “new matters” “tasks” and in the reporting function – for instance matter lists – the description of the matter is not populated and the only identifying difference is the matter number – which is not very helpful for easy identification purposes.  Similarly, in Billing, in the Invoices tab, invoices are grouped via debtor, and matter type – and the description is not populated in a column for easy navigation. So when we have a particular client with a more than 1 matter – it can be confusing as to which matter relates to which.Surely we aren’t the

Are there multiple notification setting/options for messages/Smokeball Communicate? For example, an attorney at our firm would like to receive an email each time a Lead submits an inquiry through Lead Pro. Is this possible?

Is there a way to create a task from your activity? 

Good afternoon, I plan on getting a new PC and wanted to find out if SB is compatible with Apple products, eg Macbook. Regards,

We’re culling down our contacts list to get to a manageable number to send holiday cards.  There are any number of clients and contacts that should not be on the list for myriad reasons (deceased, difficult client, etc.).  These persons won’t get a card. Going through the downloaded client and contact list to pull these persons out has been a time sink for staff and attorneys.  I haven’t seen it, but outside of deleting a contact, is there some magic on/off toggle button somewhere in SB that we could check yes/no to keep said clients/contacts on a list for mailings?Any help would be appreciated so we can avoid this comprehensive effort next year.Thanks!---------------Yes, @Roy Clifton I see I missed this Webinar from last month.  Has that been saved somewhere to watch? I haven’t found it.

I just closed a matter in Smokeball, but was still able to enter time for it.  Is there a way to prevent time entry once a matter has closed? 

Hello everyone, Could someone please explain how to change the matter type once it has been created as lead? I’m having trouble trying to change it.

I have been asking for years for the ability to sort time and expenses by Matter and now “Internal Reference.” You can sort time and expenses by just about everything else but not these. This would be a huge help when there is a lot of billing on a lot of matters in a single day. Any hope of this becoming a reality?Thanks

We’re bringing on a new paralegal/assistant soon and I’d like to give her a manual she can refer back to for common tasks and workflows. I figure I would ask here first since we’re all on Smokeball and that’s going to factor into our procedures significantly.

Hi,I am setting up protocols for using Smokeball’s intake forms, and I have hit a snag. In the case of a client not having an email address (some of our clients don’t), I would like to be able to open a new lead and fill out the appropriate intake form for them over the phone. There is a button called “Internal Use,” but I can’t actually launch the form without entering an email address. Is there a way to not make email address a required field in this context?Edited: typo

 We have a couple of matters where we bill pursuant to contracts as a fixed fee - however we always enter our time worked on the matter so we can track where we are sitting against the fee proposal. We never include the individual time entries on the invoice though. The usual process for billing on our old system was to invoice as a fixed fee, then mark the corresponding time entries as “non-billable” so that we could identify how much WIP had not yet been ‘billed’ and how we were tracking against certain stages of the project. I’m wondering if there is a way we can allocate time entries to an invoice - but not show the individual line items and bill as a fixed fee with a one line summary?  This would help for EOM WIP reports etc.

In my form library I am having four folders that are being deleted from the smokeball side of things.  I then have to restore them.  Then a week goes by and they are gone again? Smokeball has not seemed to figure out why, even though I have submitted several tickets.  Has anyone else had this problem?

I need to void an invoice that I finalized, and create a new invoice. I watched the SB video, and it said to “waive” it, and then the option to “void” would come up -- but that isn’t what happened. Can someone please tell me how to find the “void” button? Thank you in advance.

In the new Lead Intake Forms and Matter Intake Forms will there be the option for logic rules?  For example, if I ask a client if they are currently in bankruptcy and they check yes it provides a follow up question.  If they answer no it would just go to the next question.

I would like to add a spreadsheet template for tracking medical record requests to the “Medical Records” folder that we have set to auto populate when we create a new matter in Personal Injury. I can see how to add custom folders, but not how to have a folder automatically generate this document. Is this possible?

We recently enabled MFA on our SB accounts firm wide. What we have found was that if you only close out of SB using the “X”, you won’t be prompted to login again (or enter MFA) upon opening SB the next time. So closing out of SB using “X” alone doesn’t trigger your SB to log out. It appears that you need to press log out of SB at the end of the session in order to be prompted to log back in using MFA. It would be great if closing out of SB using the red “X” meant it logged you out. 

I was using local Outlook and integrating with Smokeball fine; then it started to not catch all my emails and this last week, Outlook started freezing anytime I tried to do anything in Smokeball. So I am trying to do sync Outlook on the web and I chose the Web version of calendar sync and its just stuck on syncing.  Its been hours and it won’t let me cancel or disable so now I am stuck with neither working.  Its the weekend so SB support not open so hoping someone has some thoughts!

Hi all,My question is:Is it possible to select multiple time entries and change the hourly rate associated to them so this applies to all entries at once?Regards,