Smokeball Q&A

Good morning Smokeball community.I am currently working directly with Smokeball on a technical issue, and I would like to get feedback from any other users who may be experiencing this issue.In a nutshell, when attempting to open documents in our Smokeball application, we receive the following Application Error:“There was a problem communicating with Word.  Please close the application and try again.  It is recommended you save all documents before closing.”If anyone has experienced this issue and remedied the error, I’d love to learn about how you accomplished that.Thank you,Matt

How do I add a payment plan tab to contacts? Right now, I don't have a payment plan tab.

Hi All, Just wanted to share with you that Smokeball does work on Surface Pro X running Windows 11 for ARM.  I believe that the requirements posted online on Smokeball’s website refer to Surface Pro X running Windows 10 for ARM. I believe that Smokeball is now functional on Windows for ARM because Microsoft have improved the emulator for Intel/X86 based applications rather than the Smokeball app itself having been recompiled.  Either way, I will take it. I am running Windows 11 for ARM Version 22H2 (OS Build 22622.290). I did make one tweak to the shortcut to help Smokeball get out of the loop of wanting to apply updates.  I enabled the “Run this program as an administrator” feature to allow Smokeball to be happy that the updates had indeed been applied. The speed is decent.  Not amazing.  But decent.  However, the always-connected

Does Smokeball require that letters which are addressed to people only use their first initial and then surname, or is it a choice that we have made as an organisation? For instance, at present a letter addressed to me would state “Ms E Buckland” rather than “Ms Emma Buckland”. Is it possible to change it so that the full name can be used?

Hi, Is there a way to set up email notifications when tasks are allocated? 

Continuing this from the prior Community:  I have now attempted to install Smokeball on an M1 (ARM) Mac.  It does not work because the regular version of Windows does not work in VMWare Fusion or Parallels.  Because of the underlying ARM chip (M1) only the ARM version of Windows can be used.  Smokeball does not work on that.  I ran into the same issue with Smokeball on the Surface Pro X which is also ARM based.  Smokeball Billing is available through Chrome (not Safari) and Edge (which is based on Chromium).  I believe there is a website through which you can use Smokeball Communicate but I do not remember the website and I have not made it work yet.   If anyone has any experience with Smokeball on an M1 Mac, please let me know.

Hi, Is there a way to change the template wording in the email requesting a trust deposit? 

I currently have a defendant with 9 separate cases. in recently viewed matters, time and expenses and when I try to send a document to smokeball these cases are identified only by client name-matter type-opposing party. I would like to be able to customize this to identify matters by client name and internal reference number. Currently, it is impossible to tell which case an autobilling has been created for, or to know which case I am trying to send a document. Obviously this is very time consuming and frustrating. thank you

I know it is possible to alter the default hourly rate on a matter by matter basis. Is there any way of changing the fixed rate - for a day for instance on a matter by matter basis?

In my recently viewed items and when I send a document to Smokeball from file explorer, the information displayed is Client-Felony-Opposing Party. This was fine before I had 1 client with 9 cases from the same country. Is there a way to change how they are displayed to show client and case number in Recently viewed and when I am sending something to Smokeball?

For a descendants estate, I am wondering where to enter the assets so they will appear on the forms.  IN the information section and Assets it will not allow me to type any in, the information button says assets must be entered at the matter level, which is what I thought I was doing.  Any help would be appreciated, thank you! 

Hello,  We have hourly fee cases and flat fee cases.  Sometimes we do not know when the we accept these cases if they are hourly or flat fee.  We will usually set them up as hourly.  After many hourly time entries we find out that it is actually flat fee.  Is there a quicker way of changing those hourly fee entries to zero other than clicking on each one of them and entering zero?  And vice versa zero to hourly rate?We do edit  the billing type in the settings but the entries that have already been entered do not change.

I include a lot of admin activity and smaller communications in my invoices which currently requires me to mark them as “billable” and manually go in and waive the charge. It shows clients value and keeps them informed of actual activity even though we aren’t charging them for it.  Unless I’m not doing something right, this appears to be showing as billed and uncollected in the fee insights/reporting. That is giving me very misleading information that I can’t truly dig into since I can’t customize the reporting to not consider waived time. The only way around this that I can come up with for reporting purposes is to bill for everything and then give an invoice credit. However, that will cause significant problems with client understanding and perception of value (creating the opposite of my intention of showing lots of “no charges”)… Is there a way to adjust what is included or how the waived time is classified so that my actual collectio

I want to give myself and my associate attorney billable hour “credit” for the time we spend in consultations, so it will show up in my Time reports. Should I create a Matter called “Consultations”? The PNC does not exist in Smokeball until they become a client (they stay in Lawmatics), but I still want to track the time. How do you guys handle that?

Is there any way to add a contact as being staff of a contact?For example: I opened a matter using clients personal details, however have now decided to open the matter using his company details instead. I cant find a way to then connect the two, or merge them (ideally to put him as a contact under the company contact).Would I have to just delete his personal entry and re-enter as Managing Director of the company entry?

Is there a way to modify the Matters List to include the client first name, also? I have several cases with the same last name and as I scan my matters I have to open each one to figure out which case it is. Am I missing something in settings where I can customize how they appear? Thanks!

Is there a way to tack on a mileage tracker when I am setting events on my calendar?

Is there a way to set the calendar view to the full week? My attorney works on the weekends and I need to be able to schedule on those days as well. Thanks!

How do I move new contacts to the client folder?

Is there a way to save draft invoices back into SB?I would rather email our director to check invoices than printing them out.I know you can choose to download it - but then I have to save locally and import it back into SB then email it back out.Seems like there should be a quick way to save the draft back into the matter and email from there?

Most of the time my attorney charges a set hourly rate (Ex: $350.00 per hour) but he also changes this on a case by case bases (Ex: $200.00, $300.00, etc.) So we end up having clients set at different hourly rates. It is time consuming and hard to remember to go back an change the hourly rate for each client. Is there a way to customize the hourly rate under each matter so that the client is automatically billed at “their rate” and keeps me from having to go through each invoice/time entry to manually change the hourly rate? Thanks.

Does anyone else have the issue where turning a Word document into a PDF within Smokeball causes formatting changes? This has been happening so much lately, that I just use the print to PDF feature in Word and then import the PDF into Smokeball. Obviously, this defeats the feature in Smokeball, so I am wondering if something is wrong on my end. I use Kofax PDF if that matters.

I sell pre-paid packages of hours. The more hours the person purchases, the cheaper the effective hourly rate. I therefore don’t want to track their hours at an actual rate (which may change depending on any refunds) and instead, I override the default billing rates and set myself for $1.00/hr and add $1.00 for every hour they purchase. Is there a way to remove the “$” from showing up on the invoices? If I can remove the “$” from the invoice sent to the clients, I can keep using this setup without it being too confusing for the clients as they won’t have to remember that $1 = 1 hour…  I know that’s a strange request. Any thoughts, insights, or work arounds are appreciated! 

Welcome to Smokeball Q&A! What is this category for?Whether you are just beginning to move your firm over to Smokeball or you’re a veteran user looking for some advanced tips; this is the place to find answers. Our team aims to answer all questions within 48 hours of them being posted (weekdays only). Do you know the answer?We also have rewards, points and secret badges that are awarded to the most helpful members in the community. Read more about them by clicking here.  Why do we have a General Q&A as well as a country specific Q&A? We tailor Smokeball very carefully to the different jurisdictions where it is available. Sometimes your question will only be relevant to other people in your country.