General Q&A

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.

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.

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.

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?? 

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.

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. 

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?

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?

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?

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?

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 

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?

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. 

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? 

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

Hi, is there a way of sending different matter intake forms to 2 different clients in the one matter without the information being deleted? For example, in a Wills, Power of Attorney & Enduring Guardian matter there are some instances where there are husband/wife clients in the same matter and a matter intake form is sent to both clients. My experience is that if Client 1 completes the matter intake form and then Client 2 completes it after, rather than creating two separate mapped intake forms for each client, Client 1’s information is deleted when Client 2 inputs their information and submits the form.The only work around that I can see is to create two separate matters for each client or I simply don’t use the Matter intake forms, which is obviously not ideal. Any help/ideas would be appreciated!

Maybe we’re an outlier, but of late, MS Office (Word, Excel, etc.) doesn’t play nice with Smokeball.  Maybe it was caused by a recent SB update or MS update, I don’t know, but it’s a recurring issue for at least the last 2 months.  What do I mean?  For example, Word will take an extended time to open when opening it with a saved SB file.  Sometimes it will freeze.  All the time, the program stays open even if you ‘save and close’ into SB.   Similar issues with Excel.Reinstall, reboot didn’t fix it.  SB tech support is still churning on this one.Just us or can anyone else commiserate?  

sometimes after I have highlighted and/or edited a PDF which I opened from smokeball I cannot save it straight back to smokeball - I have to save it to my hard drive and then import it into smokeball and then delete the original file I opened.Does anyone else experience this issue?Is there a solution?Why does it happen?

I am having difficulty preparing signature lines for a lease when there are multiple individual tenants.  I can get the name of the first tenant to populate, but not the second…. I cannot find the different fields for each tenant…Please help?

I am a careful adopter, but I feel like RingCentral is a great integrated telephone service.   I would like to get some feedback from Smokeball users who have integrated.   What have been your PRO’s  What are the CON’s I have seen some really negative review for small users . . .  Would love to speak to someone on the phone if they have a moment. Thanks, Peter Klose845-727-7727

How/where are firms recording the ITAX Prepay, Fiduciary Returns and Status Report due dates in the matter details? 

We have 3 signatures all of which appear on the letterhead when a letter is generated.  In some instances, the name of one lawyer appears twice - as her own signature and as signature for another lawyer.  Have attempted (ad nauseum!) to change the fields etc but precedent chooses to ignore us.  How do we make sure that signatures appear as directed or otherwise only one signature (for the actual operator/owner/lawyer) comes across?

Is it possible to set different Re: Lines within the same matter?  Eg my default set as Your Medical Negligence Claim but when I write to the Defendant, I want to say OUR CLIENT:   …..YOUR CLIENT…… 

Good afternoon,When we have 2 or more clients with the same address, we create a joint card within the matter by ‘adding another person’ on the card.  We have noticed, when we search for their individual card to update any details, the address on the joint client has not been updated onto their individual cards.I could have sworn that it had done so previously.What is everyone else doing to navigate this?  Do you create the individual contact card first and then merge when opening a matter? or do you create the joint card in the matter and then update the individual card with the address? This seems like extra work.  The more data entry we have to do, the more errors that can happen.  The more clicks and typing we do, the less productive we become.Smokeball - can you please update so that if an address is created in a joint card that their individual card is also updated simultaneously.Thanks 

Can you add more than one intake form and send multiple intake forms in the one email?