General Q&A

Hi Everyone,I note that Qld Titles registration fees are increasing from 1 July 2023.  How does Smokeball deal with the change to the amounts leading up to 1 July 2023 ?  ie.  if registration fees are calculated now but settlement is after 1 July 2023.BACKGROUND:  We always advise our client of the registration fees in our initial correspondence.I would usually have coding in our documents that say something along the lines of “IF Settlement Date is greater than 1 July 2023 then use the updated fee scale ELSE use the existing fee scale”.QUESTION:  Is this type of coding possible to do in Smokeball ? or is the updated fee scale already calculated based off the settlement date ?Any help would be greatly appreciated.Thanks.

I’m looking for best practices and real-world examples of how you handle scanning documents at your firm.  We have multiple machines.  Our scans are currently sent to individual subfolders on a shared drive, which then requires each of us to rename and drag/drop into the proper Smokeball client folder.  It can get quite cumbersome, esp for our receptionist when handling the day’s mail.ScanSnap appears to be the only software that communicates with Smokeball; and it appears that only selected scanners are compatible.Are we looking at perhaps purchasing a compatible stand-alone scanner tied exclusively to the receptionist?  Thanks for your input...

We use LEDES billing and some entries are billed on flat-fee basis. We’ve set up activities that put the correct info into the item and correct fixed amount.But, we have to manually edit each LEDES text file that has a flat-fee billing entry - without doing so, it gets rejected by the software (which is the Wolters kluwer collaboration portal, the website where we upload the txt files for processing and payment by our client). Anyone have a workaround?? Sure would be nice if SB corrected this so that a “fixed” time entry would code properly for LEDES billing...

Hello,How do I do a set figure fee on an invoice when all emails have been automatically recorded with an hourly rate in time entries?

Interested to learn from others who use FamilyProperty how much time it saves you, how accurate it is and whether it’s worth the investment.

Is anyone else having problems with Word not responding when working through SmokeBall. This seems to be the only time that I have trouble with Word, or Outlook for that matter. Just wondering if it is an issue or something on my end. Thanks Jim

Hello,We have recently migrated to Smokeball. Can you please advise how we can set up sequential numbering for our invoices from the general account? Thanks.

The date created and date modified fields for a file are not user editable. Are they the only date fields available in the doumcnets window?  The created date records the date the file was added to smokeball not the date on whcih the document was created if it was created outside smokeball. I would like to suggest there be a “date of document” field which is user modifiable.When evidentiary material is imported into smokeball it takes the created date but it is likely - certainly in litigation - to have a date which is different. The date of a document which has been imported is often cirtical to its role in the case. You should be able to sort on the date the document has within smokeball withiout changing the name of the document. This way the evidentiary folders in a smokeball matter can be sorted into chrnological order and you can read them in sequence or find them easily. 

Hello,I need help on how to setup a new/custom matter type in smokeball as we currently have a matter that does not fit into any of the provided categories. 

Is there a way for a calendar event such as a court date to be automatically inserted into a document?

Hello, How do I do a trust journal transfer from one matter to another?

I just got added to this system and for some reason when I send an email through Smokeball, my signature does not show up in my email box. I have been trying to figure this out for the last 4 days and do not know what to do. I have deleted and re-entered my signature and it has not helped. It is quite frustrating.

Hello,I can see from doing a search through Support that you can change the default folders that automatically get created for new matters but what if I only want to add a sub folder to certain matters as I am going along? I want to create an Accounts folder for a matter but not all matters will need to have an Accounts sub folder.Can you please let me know how I do this.

I am trying move couple of matters from 'Open' to 'Closed' however SB is preventing this, stating that these matters have 'unpresented cheques'. These are the only two matters I have sent cheques to client for and I know they have banked the cheques. I am not sure what SB means when it says these are 'unpresented' and I am not sure what step I maybe should have taken earlier if there was something  else needed... is it a case of waiting until after I have done this month's reconciliation?

Is anyone else having issues with since the most recent update?  Our office everyone intermittently gets loading files and folder for 5 minutes or it never ends - when going into a matter.  This also hangs up word, excel and outlook.  Causing repeated restarts for everyone.  No rhyme or reason it does not happen to everyone at the same time.

We have about 300 clients with trust replenishment requirements.  Some respond to texts, which is tedious because they have to be done individually.  Some respond to emails.  Some respond to phone calls.  Does anyone have a method, process, or system that they are using to keep track of responses and/or payments so next steps can be easily and quickly determined?

Hello, Where do I put in the cheque number to print. I don't want it to auto generate from SB. I have my next cheque number I want to use.

Hello, How do you send a link to a colleague to a draft document saved in Smokeball so that they can make changes to the document that then get saved back to Smokeball?

Hello,I need to remove a few items from a finalised invoice. How do I do this?

Hello,How do I move funds from the trust account to general account for an invoice.

Hi,I am wanting help with setting up signatures in Smokeball. I need to add the images and titles. How do I do this?

Hello,I have an issue with a trust receipt not showing up on my end of month reconciliation. How can I fix?

Hi,My April trust bank statement has a closing balance of ~$22k, to the 28th of April. But some payments occurred on the weekend 29th-30th Apr, adding to the balance for ~$26k. How am I supposed to reconcile?

Hello all,Does selecting contingency as billing status do anything other than just sort based on the status?  Are there any other down-stream affects?  

Hi,My colleague’s title in his signature comes up as “Associates” – How do you remove the “s” at the end of the word?