Bring over existing accounts receivable balances into Smokeball Billing

If you are new to Smokeball Billing and transitioning billing from an existing system, we highly recommend following these guidelines for bringing your existing client balances into our system. These guidelines will ensure that your first billing cycle with Smokeball is as smooth as possible and will minimize potential trust reconciliation issues. Read on to learn more.

Smokeball Billing pre-check

There are several things you need to do before billing in Smokeball:

1. Run the final set of invoices in your previous billing system.
2. Run reports in your old system to generate a list of clients with existing funds and a list of clients with outstanding balances.
3. You must enter all contacts and their related matters into Smokeball before you enter any related billing information.
4. Once Step 3 is complete, run the Matter - Full List report.  

How to enter your clients' outstanding balances

To enter your clients' outstanding as efficiently as possible, follow these best practices:

Create Activity Codes with standard language for time and expense entries

Activity codes will eliminate much of the redundancy involved in entering existing balances. You should create one activity code for fees and one activity code for expenses.

When creating the activity codes, enter descriptions which will match what you want to see on the invoice. You should also set the rate to $0 for all staff because every client's balance will be different and should be entered as you apply the activity code. 

Enter prior balances as two entries: how much you were owed in expenses and how much you were owed in legal services rendered (fees). You should also pay special attention to balances which are entered under the attorney responsible for the matter, as these balances will be attributed to the staff associated with the entry in the Income Allocation Reports. 

Enter all prior balance entries on the same date

When entering balance entries with the activity codes you created, it is highly recommended to use the same date for EVERY entry. You should pick a date that is clearly before when your firm starts your activity in Smokeball. This can be the final date in your old system, a weekend, or a holiday.

For example, if your firm was to start using Smokeball on August 1,  then you could assign all your old balance entries to July 4.  Just be sure to choose a date where there is no overlap between entries you create after you officially start working in Smokeball or overlap with AutoTime activity (if your firm is on a tier plan that includes this feature). 

Consider interest on outstanding balances

Be careful when entering balances with interest. If you enable interest in Smokeball on a balance that already has interest, then you may inadvertently charge compound interest. To avoid this potential issue, you can instead just enter the original balance and let Smokeball calculate the interest for you. While this second method might result in some small differences in calculation, it makes it clear that additional interest has not been charged. We highly recommend reaching out to our staff if you are unsure on how to proceed with interest on outstanding balances.

Create Smokeball invoices off of the outstanding balances

After you have entered all prior balance fees and expenses, you need to process those entries into invoices. You can only receive payments on old balances if the invoices occur through Smokeball.

The quickest way to do this is to navigate to the Invoices View, select the Create Invoices tab, and use the date filters and checkboxes to create invoice drafts for the outstanding balance entries. The issue date for the invoices should match the date you used when creating the balance entries. When creating the invoices, you have the option to save them as drafts if you wish to review them one final time or finalize them immediately. 

Enter your clients' funds

Select the Create New button in the upper-right corner of the Smokeball web app and select Trust Deposit. Note: You can also deposit funds into the operating retainer by using the Account dropdown menu.

We recommend choosing a deposit date which matches the date you chose when entering the existing client balances or the actual date of the original deposit. This ensures that the funds and balances you bring over from the old system will be distinct from any new data that is entered after you begin working with Smokeball.

Verify

The easiest way to verify that you have successfully brought over all existing accounts receivable balances is to run the Matter Balances Report. This shows the trust balance, operating retainer balance, and unbilled amounts. This report can cross-reference the records from your previous system. Just make sure to de-select the exclude matters with $0 balances option to ensure you capture everything. 

Additional Resources

If you have any questions about bringing existing balances over to Smokeball that this article did not answer, please submit a support ticket for additional assistance.

You can also watch an archived webinar on existing balances. Although this video features an older interface of Smokeball, the process remains the same.