Smokeball Q&A

Any bankruptcy offices use Smokeball and Best Case together?  Looking for tips on the best way to use the two together in the most efficient way possible.

Is there a way to edit the provider/payor without deleting all the information and starting over?   We have multiple duplicates in our system and since they have to be deleted vs merged into one I am trying to get rid of all of the ones we don’t need however this is becoming an issue when I go to the providers and there is not an option (that I see) to just change the provider or payor vs starting over.  

Is there a way to merge duplicate client contacts into one, instead of deleting the extra contacts? 

When opening this precedent it asks me if the Agent has released the Balance of the Deposit to us. I check YES but then this does not appear anywhere on the Statement of Account. Where do I put Balance of deposit into Smokeball details so that this precedent acknowledges it?

Our firm is handling a case with a lot of time records and fees. We recently got a message from the Smokeball bot that states, “Warning: You have reached 100% of your $800.00 Fee Estimate”. Can anyone provide any insight as to what this means? Will this affect the ability to record billing/time records?   

When I set up a Lead for a new probate, there is no “beneficiary” detail in the Matter Details. How do I add that option?

Hi Smokeball buddies,Has there been any discussion or requests to add a place in Smokeball for a client photo, similar to a Profile pic so to speak? Also was wondering if there could be a “mediator” field similar to how there are fields for judge, guardian. 

As background, my firm specializes in corporate transactions and providing general counsel services. To stay organized, we set task deadlines and conduct weekly matter reviews. Our review is frustrated, however, because we have inactive or general counsel matters that are “open” matters, but shouldn’t be showing up on the dashboard because they are inactive. I’m sure other firms and practitioners would love a way to open Smokeball and view the active matters only, and have the general counsel matters be “open” but hidden from view. I have two questions for the community: Is there a quick solve to hide open general counsel matters so the dashboard only shows active deals? If we tag matters as “pending” will this still allow us to bill these matters from time to time, but these matters will be hidden from view of “open” matters? Is there a better solution?  On a related basis, when reviewing draft invoices, it is really challenging to work d

We have recently set our budgets for each fee earner for the next 12 months.Other than the Estimated Annual Cost field in the staff tab of the firm details which won’t work for what we want to do, is there a spot that we can enter each fee earner’s budget, for that to be used in reports for how each fee earner is tracking in meeting that budget?

In the calendar view, we can assign a Label to an event by right clicking and choosing a particular label and it changes the colour of the event entry to which ever label you choose Can you change and/or add to the pre-existing titles and customize to your firm?  If so how?  If not, can it be submitted to the products team

How do I re-access account I opened last December?

I’ve told Smokeball about this issue so many times, and they still can’t fix it. At this point, I don’t know if they’re incompetent or just don’t care. Every time I try to copy folders from one matter to another, it either stalls or says it’s completed—but the folders never actually show up. I keep reporting this, and they keep telling me it’s fixed, yet the problem persists. It’s beyond frustrating, and I’m seriously considering switching to another case management software.

We are currently gathering feedback on an Intake Dashboard that we have been designing. The intention of this new feature is to provide a single location where you can manage and action all of your active intake forms and web enquiries.We welcome you to check out the attached prototype and let us know what you think!Specifically, we are looking to answer some of the following questions:What are your first impressions? How do you think you might use this dashboard? How might it change your workflow? Looking at each section, are all the columns useful? Would you remove or add any? Is there anything missing that would help in managing your intake forms? Any other feedback?If you would prefer to provide feedback via email or would like to set up a zoom meeting to go through all things intake, please feel free to reach out to me directly - michelle.jenkyns@

We are brand new to smokeball and have a question. When we copy a document to another matter - if changes are made within the new document, the changes are saved back to the original matter’s document it was created from.  This is obviously problematic for data integrity. How can i avoid this occurring? Thanks

I am the new Account Manager at our law firm, and I am trying to put together a report to show what our firm’s Client Cost Advance balance is in Smokeball. I am not sure if there is an existing report that shows the amount owed to the firm for AR and unbilled.Can someone please help guide me to what reports I can use to calculate this, or would this be a custom report that we need to look into requesting?Thank you,

I shared a document with a client.  He had trouble opening the file.  He tried to reply to me--unsuccessfully, because the return email address was mail@signin.communicate.smokeball.com instead of something associated with my firm.Can the return email address be changed to match the email address of the Smokeball user who is sending the message?Micah

Is anyone else having issues with running SB on Mac via Parallels? While I can open it and it works fine, if I multitask with other programs and then come back to SB, hover over the icon to show the open SB pages, they’re all white and I can’t activate them. I have to close down SB and start over. This is happening quite frequently. This is occurring on two new M-based Macs. It does not happen on my PC.

Hello! I recently started setting up payment plans on smokeball billing for the contacts. So far, I have set up maybe 3. I was reviewing one particular contact and notice that a payment had failed for a past month (November) . I did not get an email notifying me of the failed payment. Does anyone know if there is a setting where I can get an email with the details of failed payments for scheduled payment plans? Thanks!

I am running into an issue where my email signature won’t show up if I try to share a document from a matter via email.  It will show up when I select a contacts email from the preview at the right.  So I’m wondering if there is an Outlook integration issue.  To further clarify, from the matter documents, I right click on an attachment and select Send, then Email.  I select multiple recipients, click Next, then a blank email with the attachment and recipients will pop up.  No email signature.  It’s a minor issue, but some users in our office can’t easily navigate Outlook.

How do you guys use the Closed, Cancelled and Pending Matter Status’ in Smokeball? I’m trying to figure out whether Canceled v. Closed impacts the way Smokeball spits out reports.Are closed matters just cases that are actually completed where as canceled matters are cases that I withdraw from, the client cancels, or for what ever reason I do not see the case through to completion - I don’t know.The help articles are of no help in explaining the difference between closed and cancelled or how they impact Smokeball matters and reporting. I understand that the client can still see documents after I close a matter. Can they still see documents and communications after I cancel a matter? That’s not clear. Is cancel more egregious than close - IDK?My pending is all over the place - those are clients I typically place in a holding pattern for whatever reason (missing information, failure to pay, pedning withdrawals, etc) … How do you guys use the three status’.I’

I see that I can add interest to an invoice - but I’d like to use a default interest setting. It looks like interest can be added on a matter-by-matter basis.

Good morning, Our firm is in the metro Atlanta area and we are looking for any trainers or training company’s to integrate Smokeball with our Quickbooks program.   Looking for any referrals, especially if you have used a company to assist with this.  Thank you!

How do I add an existing contact to a matter?  I am trying to add the Chief Clerk of the Court to my “Courthouse” contact card.  When I open the Courthouse contact card, the list of contacts comes up except for the one contact I need but yet, when i open the individuals contact card, and look at what matters he is associated with, it is empty.  Is there a way to open a contact and have a choice/tab to “add this contact to matters” 

Is anyone having difficulty opening PDFs saved in smokeball lately? For the past month when opening PDFs it takes an annoying amount of time for it finally to open. 

Have a situation where a lawyer is leaving the firm with a few files. How can that lawyer download the smokeball matter or send/transfer it to a separate smokeball account? Thank you.