Smokeball makes it very easy to keep track of your time for billing. Since Activity Intelligence already tracks all your time spent on documents, emails, memos, and more, it is easy to use AutoTime to automatically convert any activity into billable entries.
You can continue to track your time manually in Smokeball. However, you can utilize tools like Activity Intelligence to make billing easier.
Firms that use Activity Intelligence and/or AutoTime find they are spending less time tracking time, bill 10-30% more, and increase profitability.
Below are some suggested paths for how Smokeball clients bill. Any of these sound like you? Select the link to get some best practices.
If you are not sure which path to take, talk to your Account Manager for the best way to bill for your firm.
I am meticulous and use a timer and track my time immediately for every thing I do
I want to have billing and accounting integrated together
I struggle to keep track of time, spend time going back trying to remember everything I did and could be losing billable hours.
- Most small law firms lose potential billable hours due to the difficulty of contemporaneously keeping track of everything they do.
- AutoTime was built for you.
- If there are activities you complete that Smokeball does not already track, you can easily log all your activity in Smokeball or on our Mobile App.
- AutoTime will eliminate the extra time spent on non-billable admin tasks by automatically creating a time entry and, more importantly, helping you capture more billable hours.
- Review the articles on AutoTime
I am meticulous and use a timer and track my time immediately for every thing I do.
- You can continue to manually track your time in Smokeball using.
- You can set up Activity Codes to help with manually entry of time or even use a timer in Smokeball billing.
- Use Activity Intelligence and Time Finder as helpful tools to capture more billable time.
- Time Finder goes through all Activity Intelligence and helps you make sure you didn't miss any billable time.
- If you find yourself adding a lot of time manually using Time Finder, you may want to start using AutoTime to save yourself manually adding time.
- Learn more about Smokeball Billing.
I want a complete billing system that includes advanced accounting reports, HR/Payroll, and general ledger.
Most of our clients end up using an already existing integration for accounting software like QuickBooks Online. In a minimal of instances, some clients choose to continue to use their previous billing/accounting system.
Talk to your Account Manager about best practices of transitioning billing to Smokeball or if you may want to consider keeping your current billing system.
- Smokeball Billing integrates with QuickBooks Online for back end accounting.
- There are several helpful features in Smokeball Billing that help make back end accounting easier. Smokeball does not handle HR/Payroll and general ledger items for the firm.
- Learn more about how the QuickBooks Integration works.
- If you already have used a robust billing system that does both invoicing and accounting, you may want to continue to use that system for billing and accounting.
- Unfortunately, no software will help you do 100% of the functions from front to back and give you the productivity and profitability tools that Smokeball does.
- Even if you choose to go this path, you can still utilize the productivity and profitability and tools in Smokeball.
- Activity Intelligence and Time & Expenses can be exported to a .CSV file to utilize in other billing/accounting platforms.