Your firm may use estimates for matter management and budgeting purposes and to help your clients understand how much their case will cost. Use the Communicate Client Portal to notify the attorney, person responsible, and person assisting to receive a notification whenever their matter passes its estimated total billable fees and expenses (both billed and unbilled) thresholds.
Follow these steps:
- Select the gear icon to open Smokeball Settings.
- Select the Time & Billing tab.
- Tick the Send Communicate notifications when matter approaches the estimate checkbox.
- Select Save.
Once you have enabled this option, the Communicate Client Portal will send a single message to the attorney or person responsible whenever a matter passes a threshold. The person assisting on the matter will also be notified.
The thresholds which trigger this message are 75%, 85%, and 100% of the estimate. The Communicate Client Portal will only send one message per threshold. Updating the estimate will cause a single notification to be sent again once the new estimate crosses the re-calculated thresholds.
Note: Thresholds are checked whenever fees or expenses change, such as when new entries are added manually or when AutoTime (Prosper+ only feature) runs and adds new entries.