Smokeball Q&A and Feedback

Is it possible to set different Re: Lines within the same matter?  Eg my default set as Your Medical Negligence Claim but when I write to the Defendant, I want to say OUR CLIENT:   …..YOUR CLIENT…… 

Good afternoon,When we have 2 or more clients with the same address, we create a joint card within the matter by ‘adding another person’ on the card.  We have noticed, when we search for their individual card to update any details, the address on the joint client has not been updated onto their individual cards.I could have sworn that it had done so previously.What is everyone else doing to navigate this?  Do you create the individual contact card first and then merge when opening a matter? or do you create the joint card in the matter and then update the individual card with the address? This seems like extra work.  The more data entry we have to do, the more errors that can happen.  The more clicks and typing we do, the less productive we become.Smokeball - can you please update so that if an address is created in a joint card that their individual card is also updated simultaneously.Thanks 

Can you add more than one intake form and send multiple intake forms in the one email?

I have generated an Custom Intake forms using one of our documents which we like to get signed by our client, can you add a signing field to the intake forms or a declaration box of some sort to confirm that the information they have provided is true and correct.

We have been with SB for 2 years now, coming from Leap. I have liked some features better than features on Leap but unfortunately there are quite a few things that leave me wanting. I am in accounts and I access billing all day and one of the main issues I have (and biggest difference compared to Leap) in billing is recording “people” to receipts or payments. Leap was great, in that, when you click on the “from’ or “to” it would show a list of all relevant people connected to the matter first, then if you needed someone else you would search, the other issue related to this is that only first and last names come up and it’s very unforgiving. Unlike in the Smokeball application, where as, when you start typing names, a larger choice is shown, billing is extremely specific and if you have a space or . in the wrong place or you miss it, you have nothing show up. I have expressed my thoughts regarding this issue a couple of times now with SB. Just thought that I’d pop it on here again too.

Is anyone else experiencing an issue when converting Leads to Matters where the Prospect becomes “Client 1” and there is a blank “Client 2” field, along with several other “!” and “2” fields for almost every information field in the Matter?We will have an estate planning Matter with Client 1 (prospect info) and Client 2 (blank). When I attempt to add a spouse in the Client 2 field, it will change Client 1 to Client 2 and then add a blank Client 3 field. All of the other fields have a 1 and 2 (Estate Details, Beneficiaries, etc), and when you fill one out, it messes up the whole matter. We are constantly having to delete matters and start over from scratch with the “Create New Matter” button.  

Hopefully we’re missing what is an existing feature, but when writing a blank letter, is there an automated way we can add “cc” contacts to the letter from the list of contacts already tied to the matter? See below as it doesn’t appear this option exists.  It would be great to have this option, maybe in the form a new tab listing the contacts?At this point, we type-in relevant parties manually.  We’ll somehow survive, but it would be nice to have SB do the work...  

How can I delete files and any backups? I am required to certify that I “deleted all materials” for a case. I am particularly interested in making a good faith effort to delete backup files.Thanks for any suggestions.Stu Weg

Timekeeper Rates have been set and applied to the matters but the timekeeper’s entries are showing “zero.”  What is at issue?

For divorce matters (pre-decree), I am not seeing “debts” of the parties in the mapped fields. Am I missing something, or is it not in there? And if it is not a mapped field, how can I add it?

The new 9.2 release provides the ability to differentiate between “working” hours and “billing” hours, the latter only to appear on invoices.  Fine.  Appreciate the flexibility.However, when using Time Finder or when editing an entry made prior to the roll-out of this new feature, we have to REENTER the working hours box, as seen below outlined in red.  It won’t let us just save what’s there.  It’s an unnecessary time sink to do this across our practice.Is there a workaround?  Are we the only ones frustrated by this?  

Hi thereThere is a new issue with SB billing.Email addresses entered on Company cards are not pulling through to Smokeball billing when emailing invoices. When emailing an Invoice via Smokeball Billing, no email address details are appearing and you have to manually add email addresses rather than email addresses pulling through from the company card.  It has added a lot of time to September end of month processing.Individuals seem to be working ok only when there is one individual as the client.  If there are multiple individual parties, the option to send an invoice separately to each party has been removed and all parties email addresses may not appear.

Individual matters used to have a billing summary widget on the right side, where you could see unbilled/unpaid totals. How can we get this back??

Is there any future possibility/development of “layered” versioning of documents where, for example, we create a document, send it to another party, receive the redlined version back, and instead of saving the redlined version as a totally separate document, we save it as a new “version” of the same document that can all be kept together and it’s progress/history all tracked and updated? We are coming to Smokeball from NetDocuments and are trying to determine the best practice for managing “versions” of a single document, is there (or can there be) a way to keep those document “stacks” together instead of having to create different, separate documents? We understand we can right-click, properties and view/compare/restore the history of documents edited within Smokeball, but would like to be able to add to the history from external sources (i.e., a client sending back revisions). Thank you for any suggestions or feedback!

Is there a way to print or create a table from the list of documents in a folder.  We have a Pleadings folder and am looking for a way to create a Pleadings Index. 

Hi!Has anyone found that matter stages are no longer working after the last update?On my matters the stages are there, but after the update all progress is lost and even when I have selected the relevant stage in a matter post update, when I go back into that matter, all progress is gone again, and no stages are selected.Anyone know how to fix this?

Since last update I am unable to scroll through my cases alphabetically. I have to choose a page number at botton of display. How do I get rid of that? Thank You. 

Is it possible to delete or amend the Referrer details in a Matter?  I would like to change mine after having done a deeper dive into where the referral came from 

I am constructing a precedent letter to a client where I would like to refer to the date of an event (this conference occurs in every PI matter) - is this possible?

Has anyone found a way to view ALL of the matters, broken up by matter type, since the update to version 9? I can view all of the matters, but they aren’t separated by matter type anymore, like they were in version 8. I have to use the navigation window on the left to switch between matter types (and there are matter types that we don’t use, so it can be confusing). 

Has anyone set up a Smokeball matter that is just a general office/administration file where you save correspondence and other docs that are not related to a specific matter?  Does it throw out any of your reporting etc?  Failing that, where do you house all this stuff?

I’ve had this happen on a couple of invoices. The client has money in trust, and it was applied to their invoice and have $0 due, but the invoice shows unpaid.  How do I change that?  I can’t pay it, because it’s $0 due. Thanks!

Infotrack reports that Smokeball posts Infotrack expenses (filing fees and process service) under the [User] who submitted the expense. Our firm attributes expenses to the [Responsible Attorney]. As a result, our firm must correct each Infotrack entry from the [User] to the [Responsible Attorney] which is a never ending task.  If your firm uses Infotrack then I would like to know how your firm handles the attribution of Expenses.

Can I create phase codes for a matter so I can easily see the time spent on different categories of activity on the same matter?