Collect payments with your custom Intake Form

Smokeball Payments is an integrated payment solution for your firm that you can use to process transactions.

Once you have signed up for Smokeball Payments, you can use it to receive trust or retainer payments as part of the intake process. One common use for this solution is to take pre-payment when your clients book a consultation through an intake form. 

Create a pre-payment intake form

To get started, navigate to the Intake Forms window.

1. Select Create Form and choose either Lead or Matter as a Form type.
2. Enter the Form name and select the relevant States and Matter types you'd like to use this form for.
   
   • If the expected Matter types or States are not appearing here, check to ensure you have selected them in Firm Settings.
3. Select Build custom form in the Form building options section to create a blank form with no information.
4. Click the Create Form button. This will open the Form Builder.
5. Select the Edit button next to sections to add additional sections to the form.
   • For a consultation pre-payment form, some initial sections you may want to create are a section for basic client information, a calendar appointment section, and a section for the payment. 

   • Note: You can mouseover the title of each section and select the pencil icon to edit it.

     

     Select Save sections once done.

6. Select the Payment section and drag and drop the Smokeball Payments component tile from the right side of your screen onto the box with the dotted line in the middle of your screen.
   
7. Enter the amount your client needs to pay and choose the appropriate trust/operating account from the dropdown menu.
8. Toggle the Required option on to make the completion of the Payment section mandatory.
   
9. Customise the rest of the form components (e.g. Appointment, Client Details).
10. Use the toggle in the upper right to set the form to Active once you are finished.
    

Share a Payments intake form with your client

1. Open your lead/matter and select the Intake tab.
2. Select the blue Share form button and the payment form you created.
   
3. Choose to send the form via the Client Portal or email.
   

Client experience

Once your client receives and opens the form, they will have the ability to complete the sections of the form up until payment. On the payment section, they will need to enter their credit card or bank account information.

Once they finish entering their preferred payment details, the client will select Review then Validate Account to confirm the information they entered is valid to complete the transaction. 

Once the card is validated successfully, they can complete any remaining sections of the form.

At the end of the form, the client can confirm all details on the Summary. They then need to select Submit and process payment to complete the intake and begin processing payment.

Your client will then receive a confirmation message and have the option to save the form for their records.

You can easily track your client's progress through their matter's Intake tab. This tab will also let you know if the transaction failed.

You can also select the three dot icon and then select View to see their specific responses. 

Did You Know

• This feature can only take payment into the trust or operating account. It is not able to apply payments to an existing invoice.
• If your client's attempt to pay fails, you will receive an alert in the Notifications Center of the Smokeball desktop app if you are a Grow/Prosper+ user. You will receive a Client Portal message if you are a Boost user.
• You can view a full record of the client's intake form payments on their matter's Transactions tab. The entry will note it is an intake payment under the Description column. 
• You can also view a full record of intake form payments on the Transactions tab of the global Accounts view.