Write offs

Hi @Katy ,

No worries, I’m happy to help!
 

1. The way we recommend handling this is to go the invoice that the client isn’t going to pay and select Waive, and this will allow you to waive the remaining balance. I know you mentioned you didn’t want to waive it though, was there an issue with the way this is recorded?
   
   Another option, if you just want to get rid of the invoice so it’s no longer on your books would be to created a Credit in Smokeball for the remaining balance, and then apply the credit to the invoice, which will then result in the invoice being “paid” in full, if that works better for what you need?
2. Matter Balances report will give you a total of writeoffs per matter. I’ll also reach out to our reports team to see if they have further recommendations for this one too.

cheers

Sam

Waiving the balance is not the same. “I’ll waive my fee” is something you do to help out a client voluntarily. Whereas a write-off is what happens when you give up on ever getting paid. I really feel like Smokeball has this backwards in the system. Where you have the “write off” option when running an invoice should be a “waive” option. And where you have the “waive” option on a final invoice should actually be a “write off” option. 

As for the reports, I guess that’s why there’s no way to run one for write offs because of the way this is all set up. We need write offs to be actual write offs and reports that show, firm-wide, all the write offs with the name of the clients that correlate to each write off. 

I actually think an option to waive and one to write off would be good for a final invoice. That way an attorney can decide to forgive a remaining balance (waive) or to give up on one (write off).  And reports available for each one that don’t have to be run per matter but an across the board list of all of each with the corresponding client name. 

@Katy I agree the terminology of “write-off” versus “waive” in the SB world seems counterintuitive.  I’ve had to remind those in my firm of when and how to use it.

In SB, the write-off option is client-facing, where it’s rather dramatic that the time/fee amount due has a line through it so the client can really see it was credited/waived/written-off/whatever when they lay eyes on the invoice.

In the end, when we ‘write-off’ bad debt for a client we’ve been chasing for payment, we do indeed use the ‘waive’ option.  When we need to report it, we use the “Ledger Export” for the time period in question.  The ‘waive” transactions are detailed in the report.  We export into Excel and manipulate data as needed.  With this option, I don’t think you need to keep your own side spreadsheet.