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What's new: Signatures, auto address lookup, safe custody documents and evergreen retainer invoicing

Related: Billing & Trust Accounting Matter Management
What's new: Signatures, auto address lookup, safe custody documents and evergreen retainer invoicing

We’re just putting the finishing touches on our latest update to Smokeball. Watch the video to learn what’s new and click the “subscribe” button at the bottom of this post to be the first to know when these features are live! 
 


We’ve built more than we could cover in our video this month! Here’s the highlights and links to find out more: 
 

Now available in Smokeball Billing

 
Streamline compliance and invoicing with embedded signatures

You can now embed signatures in invoices automatically. Add the signatures you need in settings then customise as much as you want to by choosing which signatures are needed for each matter and invoice type.


[US only] Automate evergreen retainer top-ups 

Quickly update invoices to include retainer to top-up requests. This feature works well with the existing ability to set an alert when your retainer balance drops below a preset amount. 

Learn more about what we’ve recently released in Smokeball Billing.

 

Coming soon in Smokeball desktop

Important - these features are scheduled to be released soon and are not yet live in Smokeball desktop. We’ll let you know when they’re ready to go right here. 

 

[AU only] Store files with your contact for safe custody

Digital safe custody documents such as wills, certificates or title and assets are now easy to link to a contact for use across multiple matters.

Click to zoom in 

Create a new Lead or Matter from a contact

Word of mouth recommendations are still a major source of new clients. Because of these connections - you will often find the details you need are already stored in your contacts in Smokeball. Right clicking on an existing contact now lets you create a lead or matter that is already linked up to the contact in your records. 

Click to zoom in 

 

You auto-complete me. Autocomplete addresses in contact cards. 

Get some extra peace of mind that your address is correct with our autocomplete function. As you enter in details, we’ll search for matching street addresses. Just click the right one to automatically update the rest of your contact’s details. 

Click to zoom in 

 

Keep what matters in your matter view 

Sub-items give you space to record as much or as little detail as you need for each matter that you create for your clients. Declutter your view by hiding the items you don’t need. 

Click to zoom in 

 

For the full list of what’s to come in Smokeball, visit our release notes page.

That's all for now! Let us know what you think or ask questions by replying below.

Nice, but need the client portal. 

@jfriedman I’d be very grateful for some more detail on what you’re looking for so I can get the feedback in front of the right team for you. If you have a moment please do share a bit more detail: 

  • Do you mean integrating Smokeball with the various versions of Court portals that different jurisdictions use? E.g eFileIL 
  • Do you mean a portal for managing communication with your clients?
  • Something else? 

The more we know about your specific use cases, the more we can dial in the solutions we build for you in the future. 

Client portal is pretty self explanatory, and it's something that has spoken about before.

I would like to see a way to integrate the tasks to Outlook from Smokeball.  When we set tasks in SB, they don’t integrate with Outlook. This seems like it would be an easy fix. It changed how we were planning on using SB and now we can’t use the calendar because it will be too confusing to use both. Thanks :)

 

Stephanie 

Yes, would be very helpful!

@jfriedman in that case have a look at this set of feature’s we’ve built out in the Communicate Client portal.

We’ve made some additional updates since we shared the aforementioned post, including:
-Giving your clients an at a glance view of their outstanding balances in the portal
-Shortcuts to the payment gateway for clients who are already across your invoice details
-Improvements to internal messaging functionality for messaging colleagues 

Here’s an overview of everything that’s live and ready to use so far. 

If there’s anything else we can build or improve on for you I’d love to hear about it. I’ll make sure i get eyes on your feedback from the right parts of the Smokeball team. You can also submit more detailed ideas and feedback here.

I would like to see a way to integrate the tasks to Outlook from Smokeball.  When we set tasks in SB, they don’t integrate with Outlook. This seems like it would be an easy fix. It changed how we were planning on using SB and now we can’t use the calendar because it will be too confusing to use both. Thanks :)

 

Stephanie 


@Steph1104 great feedback, thank you for sharing.  

I’m aware of a few deeper integrations with Outlook that I think will begin to respond to the needs you have here. Alas, I think we are a few months away from launching them as they need to be tested carefully.

I’ll circle back here with an update once I know more! 

I would like to see a feature where i can send a lead a link from communicate let’s say and when they fill out their intake information it appears in there lead folder.

I think it would be helpful if Smokeball published its development roadmap and also published a list of known bugs.

Any chance of getting saved billing filter combinations so we don’t have to recreate needed invoice pulls every month?

When will the request to replenish evergreen funds be ready?

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