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Smokeball Q&A

Not sure how to do something in Smokeball? Just ask! Here you'll find answers from Smokeball users and learn best practice tips & tricks from the experts.

634 Conversations
J
JCorraoContributor
asked in General Q&A
Default Billing Type

Is there a way to change the default Billing Type when opening a new matter?  Right now our default is fixed and I would like to change it to Time Based.

261
E
Smokeball Team
9 months ago
A
avelazquezContributor
asked in General Q&A
Messages with outgoing attachments - how to download all files at once

How does another firm you send files to via messages (formerly communicate) download all files at once, instead of one at a time? 

498
Sara Sultan
Community Manager
9 months ago
A
avelazquezContributor
asked in General Q&A
Step by step instructions for non smokeball users on downloading documents from messages

Are there step by step instructions to provide to non smokeball users on downloading documents from messages/the communicate feature?  We get a lot of questions from other firms and don’t have a good clear answer to provide to them. 

311
Sara Sultan
Community Manager
9 months ago
K
KpittContributor
asked in General Q&A
Viewing staff activity/billing

I have set up dashboard to view billing and hours for the week/month.Is there a way to see other staff’s billing and hours?

473
K
9 months ago
Smokeball Anonymous
Smokeball Team
Smokeball AnonymousSmokeball Team
asked in General Q&A
Precedent letter requires correction

Hi,How can I correct the letter to remove the underscore from our PO Box address?

251
Kalina
Smokeball Team
9 months ago
B
BrotmanLaw-DanContributor
asked in General Q&A
Designating the practices for "Ethics" and "Professional Responsibility"

7+ years Smokeball small solo firm here.About 99% of our firm’s work is under the practices of:Professional Responsibility EthicsAs smokeball adds new great functionality, we are seeing that practice areas don’t include these two important categories. Example is the new “Intake Forms” where “Select Practice Area” has no category that would describe these two areas above.Ideally we would like to see these two practice areas added across the board for any functionality that requires “Selecting Practice Area”.How to other firms handle this situation? I’ve searched the community and cannot find any relevant material.Is there a workaround or can Smokeball developers add this to the system?Thank you,Dan AustinBrotmanLaw / US  

606
B
9 months ago
atharkhan
atharkhanRegular
posted in General Q&A
Smokeball on Snapdragon X Elite

Hi All, I am not sure if anyone on here has a laptop with a Snapdragon X Elite.  It is my understanding that the performance of this latest round of ARM chips from Qualcomm is comparable to Apple’s M series chips.  Additionally, the Windows X86 emulation has allegedly reached a point where Smokeball would run without issues despite it being not natively written for ARM. If anyone has any experience with Snapdragon X Elite, please do share it.  Thank you!-Athar. 

733
Ben
9 months ago
B
BrotmanLaw-DanContributor
asked in General Q&A
Disclaimer on Intake Form

Is there a way to add this disclaimer to the new Intake Form templates?This request does not establish a client/attorney relationship. Thank you,Dan Austin / BrotmanLaw

462
B
9 months ago
X
x.liuContributor
asked in General Q&A
Time tracking function requests

Hi  Team,We have recently adopted Smokeball. The real-time time tracking through the timers has a few limitations. It would be great if you could add the following:Show the total amount of time tracked on the list of the timers. At the moment you can’t see how much time you have recorded until after you add the time. Being able to see the total time throughout the day is really handy and has always helped me encourage productivity without having to finalise the time entries, as you may jump back and forth between different tasks so it is not practical to add time to SB all the time. Also a lot of firms have daily targets. The ability to manually adjust the time tracked through the timers. We are humans. There will be situations where eg we go away from the desk to grab a coffee but forget to stop the timer, or reversely, we stop the timer but then we get back to work and forget to restart the timer. At the moment we cannot make any manual adjustments to the timers. The only thing we ca

976
Ben
9 months ago
A
Anonymous
posted in General Q&A
Hotkeys and keyboard shortcuts - do you use them?

There’s been a few conversations here in the community about wanting to use keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys in Smokeball to quickly get something done without extra mouse clicks. For example, CTRL+S to save CTRL+F to find something are pretty common ones in other software.We know @atharkhan would love to use keyboard shortcuts when tagging emails and @JKibler to open and save a memo. Our own @Sara Sultan loves them, and can probably teach us all a thing or two!Do you use keyboard shortcuts too? What would use use them for?Answer our poll and put in your suggestions in the comments or send us a feature suggestion - we love hearing your thoughts.(and, if you’re wondering what’s currently possible in Smokeball, @leonzhou gave an example) 

3311
atharkhan
9 months ago
K
KerrilHContributor
asked in General Q&A
Invoice vs Statement of Account

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.

401
E
Smokeball Team
9 months ago
E
efreemanContributor
asked in General Q&A
Trust Receipt to multiple matters

I have a single trust deposit that needs to be split over 2 separate matters, how do I issue this trust receipt?

371
Tony Hastings
Smokeball Team
9 months ago
K
KateLContributor
asked in General Q&A
Power and Estates Register

Wondering if there is a Power and Estates Register within the Safe Custody Register? Thanks.

401
Tony Hastings
Smokeball Team
9 months ago
S
Smokeball Team
Sam KingSmokeball Team
published in General Q&A
The Smokeball Document Automation Experience

Smokeball is taking a hard look at document automation as we re-evaluate our offerings, and we want to hear from you! What's working for you? What isn't? How can Smokeball improve your document automation experience? Please respond to this post with your thoughts and someone on Smokeball's Product team may reach out to you for more information. Thanks in advance folks!

24312
M
9 months ago
L
Legal SecretaryRegular
posted in General Q&A
End of Month reporting

Hi thereI need to report at the end of each month how much is in WIP (unbilled time & fees), however, if I bring up the “Unbilled Time & Fees” report, it only shows the figures as at today’s date.For example, today is the 17th of the month, I have only just returned from leave, so was unable to print the report as at 30th of last month.How can I obtain the figure as at the end of last month?  Can you please insert a “date” feature, so that we can take a snapshot of the figures as at a certain date?Thank you.

825
M
9 months ago
J
Jenna StorrierContributor
asked in General Q&A
How to stop double saving docs into SB

I have a PA who often gets cc’d into emails, and we both save the email/any attachments into SB. We then send the documents to the client, and they are often saved again into the file. Is there any way to prevent documents/alerts that I can set to notify me if the document appears duplicated?

1322
L
9 months ago
B
BushtoBeachLegalBeginner
asked in General Q&A
Adding a column to the Open Conveyancing Matters home screen?

HiDoes anyone know how to add a column when in the Matters tab, Conveyancing then the Open Conveyancing Matters home page?I’ve tried right clicking on the column titles, but I want to add “Sellers Agent” but the option for that column isn’t available to select - any ideas how to add a column that isn’t in the drop-down menu?Thanks

311
Tony Hastings
Smokeball Team
9 months ago
EstherT
EstherTContributor
asked in General Q&A
Receiving messages from another firm containing attachments- How to save them?

Is there a way to quickly save attachments sent to us from another firm who also uses smokeball and has sent 38 attachments via messages (previously  known as communicate) I have had to go and download each item individually and save it. It does not automatically save the documents. 

401
J
10 months ago
R
radams0305Contributor
asked in General Q&A
How to enter fees

How do I add a fee if our firm works on contingency.  

281
E
Smokeball Team
10 months ago
K
Kath20Contributor
asked in General Q&A
Changing the format of the document container so the CC'd parties can be at the END of the letter, not with the letter adressee at the tomp

Currently, the parties who the letter is addressed TO has the CC’d person’s details come underneath the TO person’s address and the emails are all grouped together at the top of the letterhead.  We would like to format it so that the cc’d parties are listed at the end of the letter.  Is this possible?

303
Ben
10 months ago
K
KirstenPContributor
asked in General Q&A
PayNow/Payments to invoices

I have recently issued new invoices for the month of December. Some had balances carried forward from earlier months’ invoices. The December invoices therefore show total owing on the matter however, now that I am due to dire4ct funds from trust to some of them, I can only direct funds in the amount of the amount owing for the last invoice - not an amount inclusive of the carried forward amount.Example - Clt G is on a payment plan of sorts where they pay a small amount of $90 into  trust fortnightly. They had $1000 remaining from invoice owing in November. $1000 carried forward to the December invoice, but the December invoice was only $50. The invoice sent out for December notified $50 owing for this invoice and a total of $1050 owing all together.At the time of issuing the December invoice I informed the client they had $270 in trust and this amount would be directed towards payment of this invoice.7 days have passed and I can direct $270 to payment of the invoice but if I click the

541
Sam Stephens
Smokeball Team
10 months ago
M
Monica K.Contributor
posted in General Q&A
Enlarge dashboard display?

I’m a new user.Is there a way to enlarge or zoom a dashboard for a visually impaired user?  So far it looks like I can only add/remove items from my dashboard, but I cannot make the font larger or increase the contrast.Edited to add, I think the solution is to set my computer system to display everything in larger font, but that is not always desirable so please let me know if I’ve missed something.  Thanks!

531
Sara Sultan
Community Manager
10 months ago
K
KylieContributor
asked in General Q&A
Email option for precedents

Is there any way of returning to the option to ONLY email precedents through Outlook? there is now a button that has 'send’ and then I have to select email or communicate. It's just adding one more step - whereas previously I could go right to email.

503
Ben
10 months ago
J
JohnBrowningContributor
asked in General Q&A
creating an "ethical wall" (aka chinese wall) to prevent access to matters

Legal ethics sometimes require that members of a law firm be prevented from accessing another firm client’s information (due to, for exaample, a conflict of interest). I know that in Smokeball you can simply “uncheck” a particular staff member from a matter to prevent that person from accessing the matter. However, how about a group of people, or for all matters for a particular client?(our problem - we have hundreds of matters open for a particular client, and going through each one to “uncheck” a particular staff member is time consuming; and, if a staff member is added in the future that can’t have access, we have to re-do the unchecking)It would be great if the “rate sets” concept was incorporated into matter access (meaning, employees could be assigned to group “access” and they would automatically be precluded from accessing matters that are not accessable to that group).

771
Sara Sultan
Community Manager
10 months ago
L
Legal SecretaryRegular
asked in General Q&A
End of Month reports

Hi thereI need to report at the end of each month how much is in Work In Progress (unbilled time & fees), however, if I bring up the “Unbilled Time & Fees” report, it only shows the figures as at today’s date.This is not good enough.How can I obtain the figure as at the last day of last month?  Can you please insert a “date” feature, so that we can take a snapshot of the figures as at a certain date?This is imperative and my boss is wanting me to continue chasing you until you can provide this vital figure.Thank you.

674
Jess
Smokeball Team
10 months ago

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