This offering is available for select firms only arranged prior to subscribing to Smokeball.
Have questions about the data migration process provided by our data migration team? We've gathered the most common enquiries and have answered them below.
1. Will my firm need to stop working/be locked out of our current system?
Our goal is to keep your firm running and staff billing. When we are ready to start the final LIVE migration, all staff must stop working in your current system. This will include the one buffer day while we transition your data to Smokeball. Learn more about the timeline of our migration process.
If you do not stop entering data in this period, it may cause errors and delays, or we may even have to stop the migration. We typically try to schedule these migrations after-hours or on the weekend to minimise any interruption to your workday.
2. How long will the migration process take?
The migration process takes anywhere from 6-10 weeks to complete. This depends on the:
- Size of your database
- Number of matters and transactions
- Number of documents being migrated to Smokeball
We endeavour to complete the migration of all contacts, all open matters and their transactions and documents over two days (usually a weekend). However, it may take longer.
Closed/archived matters may also be completed during this time but are given a lower priority. Depending on volume, this can take up to a week or longer to complete.
If there is a high volume of documents on open matters, the upload of those documents may not finish by the morning of Go Live.
You should ensure you have access to all documents from your legacy system until the upload is complete. Closed/archived matters can be migrated after you start using Smokeball.
3. Should I bring over my closed matters?
We recommend you bring over any matters or documents you may need to access in the future. You should consider how much historical data should be retained (e.g. seven years).
4. Will Smokeball retain the Matter number from my old system?
Yes. You will be able to search for matters based on the existing Matter number from your old system.
5. Can my billing data be migrated?
Yes. We can bring over the following:
- Unbilled Activities, Fees and Disbursements
- Unpaid/Partially Paid Invoices
We do NOT bring over:
- Paid invoices and transaction history
- Billed time & disbursement transaction history
- General ledger items
- Full Trust transaction history
6. We house our documents on our internal server. Can you bring these over?
Depending on how your documents are stored and your folder structure, we can migrate documents from your server.
We need to ensure there is an automated way to map your folders to a valid matter in your current system and Smokeball. Your migration specialist will advise once they review your data.
7. Will my documents be migrated with their metadata? How come you do not migrate Trust?
Depending on how your documents are stored, we may be able to migrate some metadata. We will investigate what is possible during the initial planning stage.
8. Will my custom fields be brought over in the migration?
No. We cannot bring over custom fields nor create custom fields within Smokeball for your firm.
9. Why won't Smokeball migrate Trust accounts/balances?
We found the best approach for firms is to not migrate trust balances or history for accuracy purposes. Post-migration you will have a trust transition session with our training team which is a 1-1.5 hour session. They will guide your firm in how to enter trust information and answer any of your questions.
10. Why is the timeline set to 6-10 weeks?
The data migration roadmap is a complex process. Throughout the steps, there is a lot of clean-up work required by your firm and on our end. We want to ensure we migrate your firm's data as accurately as possible the first time round.
11. Can I use smokeball before the migration?
No. We recommend that firms do not use Smokeball until the migration is complete.
Any new data entered into Smokeball prior to the go-live date has a chance to be lost if any re-run is required.
You may update the settings in Smokeball which will be shown to your firm in the configuration overview with your onboarding specialist.
You may also play around creating matters or contacts for testing purposes however we strongly recommend not to enter any real data.