What is smokeball?
Smokeball is a cloud-based legal practice management software designed to help small law firms and solo practitioners streamline their day-to-day operations. The software offers a range of features to assist with matter management, document automation, email management, time tracking, task management, and more.
Smokeball Pricing
Source: Smokeball website
Smokeball is a legal practice management software that offers various pricing plans to its users. Here are the details of each plan:
- Smokeball Start: This is the basic plan that starts at $29/user/month. It includes features such as time and expesne tracking, billing, online payments. This plan is ideal for solo practitioners and small law firms.
- Smokeball Grow: This plan starts at $99/user/month. It includes all the features of the Core plan plus additional features such as document management, daily digest of calendar events, library of automated court forms. This plan is suitable for small to medium-sized law firms.
- Smokeball Prosper: This plan starts at 149/user/month. It includes all the features of the Grow plan plus additional features such as automatic time, lead management, email marketing, workflow templates etc. This plan is suitable for larger law firms and enterprises.
All the plans come with a 7- day free trial, unlimited training and support, and a satisfaction guarantee.
Does smokeball offer only time tracking feature?
No, Smokeball offers more than just time tracking. While time tracking is one of the features offered by Smokeball, the software is a comprehensive legal practice management solution that provides many other features to help lawyers manage their daily tasks and workflows.
In addition to time tracking, Smokeball offers features such as matter management, document automation, email management, task management, calendar syncing, document management, workflow automation, custom reporting, and more.
Smokeball also offers specialized plans for family law and personal injury attorneys that include specific features such as automated court forms, child support calculators, medical record retrieval, settlement calculators, and demand letter automation.
Overall, Smokeball is designed to streamline the day-to-day operations of legal professionals, providing them with tools to help them work more efficiently and effectively.
Smokeball Pricing FAQ
Here are some frequently asked questions (FAQs) about Smokeball pricing:
Is there a free trial available?
Yes, Smokeball offers a 7-day free trial for all of its plans. This allows users to test the software and its features before making a purchase.
What is included in the Smokeball pricing plans?
The Smokeball pricing plans include different features depending on the plan chosen. The basic plan, Smokeball Core, includes matter management, time tracking, document automation, and email management. The more comprehensive plans, Smokeball Complete and Smokeball Enterprise, include additional features such as document management, task management, and workflow automation. The specialized plans for family law and personal injury attorneys include specific features tailored to those practice areas.
Are there any additional fees for using Smokeball?
Smokeball offers add-ons such as eSignature, payment processing, and virtual receptionist services for an additional fee. However, these add-ons are not required to use the core features of the software.
Is there a minimum contract term for Smokeball?
Smokeball offers both annual and monthly billing options, with discounts available for annual billing. There is no minimum contract term, so users can cancel at any time without penalty.
What kind of support is included with Smokeball?
Smokeball offers unlimited training and support to all its users, including personalized training, live webinars, and a library of resources and guides. The company also offers a satisfaction guarantee, ensuring that users are fully satisfied with the software.
Time Analytics as an Alternative
Smokeball offers many useful and industry-specific features. However, its steep pricing is a hurdle many firms aren’t able to get over.
Hence, we want to suggest a more affordable alternative – our own Time Analytics.
The application is a timesheet-based time and performance tracker. It contains several crucial features that can help any law firm manage its daily workflow.
One of Time Analytics’ best features is the overall user-friendliness. It is based on a clean and non-distracting user interface that takes mere minutes to track time.
Hence, the app doesn’t require any training, and anyone can use it accurately. Don’t worry about your staff’s computer skills or forgetfulness, as Time Analytics works around them.
Time Tracking with TA
The application gives you two options for everyday time tracking:
- Manual entries
- Using an automatic time clock
Both are extremely simple. First, the manual entries are made directly in the program’s timesheets. All the employees have to do is fill in a few fields and note the time spent on the task.
On the other hand, if you want to prevent any discrepancies, you can use the automatic timer. Simply choose a task from the pre-existing list, and click the Stop or Start button.
Both options include marking the tracked time as either billable or non-billable. This will prevent your practice from giving its precious time away for free.
Electronic Timesheets
Having a solid proof of work is an important aspect of growing a firm’s reputation. That’s why Time Analytics provides its users with powerful electronic timesheets.
The documents contain all employees’ time entries you can see in two overviews:
- Daily for the task-switching team members
- Weekly for the employees dedicating their time to bigger cases
The documents contain all information on how your team is spending time at work. this includes time spent on different tasks, cases, and clients, as well as time off tracking.
Tracking Team Members’ Performance
A law firm is only as strong as all of the people working in it. This is why owners and higher-ups should keep an eye on the employees. However, this can create discontent, as it often crosses into micromanagement.
Time Analytics prevents said micromanagement by taking the information from the timesheets and turning it into visual performance reports.
Take overtime tracking, for example. If an employee is often staying at work long into the night, you can see it from their time reports. then, you can assist them by assigning them an assistant or reducing their workload.
You will also be able to see
- Productivity reports
- Time utilization (the ratio of billable and non-billable hours your employees are pulling)
- Profitability of each team member
These are all great opportunities to show your appreciation towards your best performers.
Case and Client Reports
Time Analytics is an extremely convenient solution. We say this because it doesn’t ask for much information, but focuses on the quality of the input.
Thus, you will be given an accurate insight into all cases’ profitability and client performance. The tools helping you do that include
- Billability insights – see whether your clients demand free consultations and set some new rules if it’s costing you too much
- Profit generation management – learn which projects are keeping you profitable
- General performance – identify and prioritize the most important tasks and learn which aspects of your tactic aren’t workin
Additional Proof of Work
Billing a client can be an issue. Many don’t quite understand what exactly you are doing for them. Time Analytics can help you overcome this challenge.
Namely, the application gives you the option of delivering itemized reports of your activity connected to all cases. Simply run the filters you need and create an invoice appendix.
All timesheet entries contain the employees’ hourly billing rates, as well as the time they’ve dedicated to all cases they’ve worked on. This information in one place is a great basis for invoicing.
The app lets you inspect the documents and make final changes if you need to. then, you can export the appendices and send them along with your invoice.
TA’s Pricing
Time Analytics has two pricing plans – Starter and Optimum.
Starter ($5.99 per user per month)
- Client and case time tracking
- Timesheets
- Overtime and time off tracking
- Time utilization
Optimum ($8.45 per user per month)
- Customized onboarding
- Email reminders
- Invoicing
- Revenue reports
You can give both plans a try in a 14-day free trial.
Time Analytics Pricing FAQ
Will you charge us after the free trial expires?
No. the trial doesn’t require any credit card information. If you are happy with the product you need to select the pricing plan of your choosing. Only then will you be charged.
How to calculate the total cost for my firm?
Simply multiple the number of active users (users marked as Enabled in the Team section) by the price of your selected plan.
Is my data safe?
Time Analytics takes client and data safety extremely seriously. Our servers are protected 24/7 and all entered data (including passwords and credit card information) is encrypted.
Getting started with with Time Analytics
Time Analytics is a user-friendly tool. It allows users to track their time with ease within minutes without affecting their work which is always good for productivity.
With transparency at its core, the distribution of tasks is done effectively making sure employees get that much needed stress free environment of work.
When we talk about transparency, it is always important to have transparent invoicing which will always benefit in growing that trust with the client which in turn improves the relationship with the Client. A happy client is always good for business.
