Smokeball Q&A and Feedback

If we received an operating payment that was $2,000 more than the invoice amount, do we then apply it all into trust initially instead of operating and transfer the trust funds to the invoice? Or do we deposit it accordingly how the payment was received (in operating) and then transfer what is left to the trust account?

We keep having people accidentally bill to closed matters. Is there a way to lock matters billing once they are closed? 

Good morning,   I am looking for feedback from attorneys who have used reception services that intergrate with smokeball like Clerx, answering legal, Lex, etc.  Small firm with two poeple but would really like a system that gets all the detail in a lead, schedules call backs, fills in the data, and really gets the info we need from the lead.  

Hello, we pay most of our disbursements via credit card and would like these to be integrated with xero. I can see we can setup up office payments by cheque - can we also do this by credit card?

I wish to make a minor edit to our email that sends a trust receipt to a client.  I know how to edit an email template, but I can only find invoice buttons, not the trust receipt button, as the support hub mentioned. See screenshot below:I would appreciate some assistance as the support hub explains how to edit the email sending trust receipts, but I don’t have the button for trust receipts, only invoices, invoice reminders, evergreen retainers and deposit requests.  At the moment, we can email a trust receipt, but the email signs off with “Kind regards” and my name, but we want it to say “Yours faithfully” and then our firm name. Thank you!Nancy

I found the following article while looking for something else: https://support.smokeball.com/hc/en-au/articles/6112048755735-Using-the-Safe-Custody-register This is a really interesting feature. Is it available only for Australia? If so, is there a plan to add this feature to the US as well?  It would be so useful for estate planning clients, or business clients, to keep all the “official” executed documents associated with the contact (as if it was that client digital binder) so that they are easily accessible when a client has several matters opened with the firm (instead of keep moving/copying the “executed documents” from matter to matter).

Is there anyway to deactivate the use of the Client Portal? Our firm does not utilize the portal since it tends to confuse our older clients. But whenever we send them an email or a text message the inform us that they are being prompted to access the client portal. 

I have lost the ability to create a statement for the entire life of an account.  The “all time”  selection is gone and if I do a custom date, I can only go back 1 year.  

Does anyone know how I can see what has already been sent to the client portal? /sc 

We’ve recently started experiencing an issue with calendar events and wanted to see if anyone else is running into the same problem.When we update an existing event in Smokeball - specifically when the client has been added as a party - the client receives a cancellation notice, even though the event itself is not being cancelled.At first, I thought this may have been user error or a one-off misunderstanding, but it has now happened multiple times over the past two weeks. I just ran a test myself and confirmed that simply updating the event triggered a cancellation notification to the client.Has anyone else experienced this? If so: Is this a known issue or recent change? Is there a workaround to prevent the cancellation notice from being sent when making updates? Appreciate any insight—this is obviously causing some confusion on the client side.

My Firm is fairly new to SB and love it. I am considering the QB integration to allow my team to view Trust and Cost account balances/paid fees and to decrease entry duplication into SB and QB. We are a mid size firm. Is there anyone that is currently using the integration and can spare some time to talk through logistics?

hi, in SB Billing I finalise all the billing in our firm and sometimes I need to CC the person responsible into the email that sends out the bill to the client, it would be fantasitc to have a drop down list of employees in these fields so that I dont have to manually type out the email address for everyone i want to CC the bill to. Regards CHRISTINE ATL

Every time I manually add a matter tag on outlook, it prompts to add the useless image attachments, probably from ppls signature lines... doing this 30 times a day times 365 days has to add up to hours of unproductive clicking, multiplied by the amt of ppl in the office, any thoughts or ideas please?  

Is there a field to entry an attorney or legal counsel if an expert has obtained prior to sworn statements?

I have one matter that does not open. All other matters open when clicked on, but this one does not. It shows on my homepage as recent after I try to open it, but the matter never comes up. It does not load or show a message, the matter just does not open. I tried right clicking and selecting “open matter” and it still does not work.

We have been using smokeball for a few months and noticed the reaction time for retrieving documents to be terribly slow. Anywhere from a few seconds to over 30 seconds to retrieve one document. We're on a symmetrical 500 GB digital line with a ping of less than 4 regularly. Is anyone else experiencing this type of speed deficit? We're trying to determine if the cloud server is the bottleneck or if maybe old files from closed cases that were migrated might need to be removed to help speed but waiting 30 seconds for a document is not going to suffice.  Thanks

While the current intake form for estate planning permits two people, a couple for example, to complete separate intakes via links sent to them; the process is flawed.The first person or client to complete the intake form will have their details uploaded automatically to the ‘Wills Details’ area of Smokeball but the second person’s details are not uploaded. It also appears that the same form is use for both people which causes confusion with pre-filled data when sent to clients.I understand that the issue likely arises because the intake form does not have the capability to bifurcate when the second person’s details are entered.When will this issue be fixed or what can be done to solve this for us practitioners now.

Need autofill of descriptions in LEDES billing like Timeslips so that there is uniformity in the billing descriptions 

If you change the date in the matter details, should it update the calendar automatically?

Hello All:  Our Firm uses the client portal to send documents to clients. Does anyone have any work around for firewalls that block client access? We used to be able to use this feature pretty easily, but now we are running into a host of problems with client access. Thanks

I would like to allow staff to see their own activity under the Activity view, but not see other people’s. I can’t see a setting for this - is anyone able to assist?

In Wisconsin:What would the Matter Type be for:Individual At Risk Restraining Order (Individual at risk is an adult)The Order of Protection Category shows only for Child.Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

I need to look at other user’s calendars to determine if they are free for an appointment before scheduling.  Am I able to view other calendars in smokeball?  i see a list of calendars on the left side margin but when I check one it doesn’t show me their calendar.

We have this case on flat fee. The case is set up properly. Yet for some reason, SOME time entries still get entered as hourly rates. The rates are inconsistent and make no sense. There is no pattern to this. This happens for different staff members and cases, all at random. This continues to be a significant problem. I’ve submitted tickets on this before. Your system is causing us to waste our time having to go through each individual time entry and change the billing rate. Allow us to bulk edit time entries. Fix the issue

Smokeball’s customer support is absolutely garbage. It takes days for them to respond, they definitely don’t seem to care about their customers or their happiness, and circumvent the questions presented. I’m not sure I could be more disappointed with Smokeball--despite really liking their product.