Tag Archives: Setup

Lesson #117

Setup – Rush Type Master function

If you charge clients rush fees for expedited services, and/or pay resources more for expedited work, set up your rush fees in RB’s Rush Type Master. Do this before setting up billing rate tables and instead of setting up billing rate tables for rush charge choices. All of the rush types you create will automatically be inherited by the billing and pay rates you create, reducing the total number of rate tables you need to create.

Use the Rush Type Master to set increases of your base rates for different turnaround times. Store all of your expedite (rush) delivery types and set their default billing and pay information in the Rush Type Master. Rush types increase your base billing and pay rates by a flat fee or a percentage. Rush types and amounts for billing clients can be different from those for paying resources in the same rush table.

Rate tables inherit default rush rates

When creating billing and pay rate tables later, all of your rush rates will automatically fill in the tables. You can override your rush defaults in individual rate tables to accommodate any special pricing or pay arrangements that should be included in that particular table.

RB comes with a default list of rush charge types that you can edit, delete, merge, de-activate, and add new. The default view of the Rush Type Master lists all of your active rush types and displays all of their information, such as if they are by percentage or flat rate, the amount, and how they appear on invoices, so you do not have to drill down to see any details.

You can narrow down the list to a single rush type or group of types that are similarly named. You can also view all rush rates, including those you have de-activated but not deleted or merged. (Deactivated rush rates do not appear as a choice when billing or in the default view of the list here.)

You can sort the list by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, RB will revert back to the default order). Export the list as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

Information included in rush rates

There are 3 required fields in the Rush Type Master:

• Rush Type is the name your biller will see when they are choosing which expedite they want to use for an invoice.
• Bill Rush Name is the description your clients will see on their invoices when an expedite is billed.
• Pay Rush Name is the description your resources will see on their detailed pay statements when payroll is run.

All of these names can be the same or different, but it’s recommended to keep them the same for consistency and ease of use purposes.

For each rush type, you also designate flat rate or percentage for how you calculate rush charges on invoices and pay statements. You can have mixed calculation methods in the same rush type.

Along with the calculation method is the default amount the rush adds to the base billing/pay rate of the transcript (which can be zero if it varies for each billing/pay rate). For example, if you bill using a flat rate, do not include the total cost of the transcript + rush per page in the rush type, just include the expedite portion. When billing, RB calculates the rush charge amount by adding the expedite amount to the O&1 base rate.

You can also set preferences for how the rush charge will appear on invoices.

TL;DR: Reduce the number of billing and pay rate tables you need, plus save time when creating them by setting up a list of expedite/rush charges first. Rush charges can be by % or flat rate and include other default information that can be overridden in individual rate tables.

RB concepts in this lesson

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service, such as reporters.

Lesson #116

Setup – Service Item Master function

Regular charges that you bill to your clients are called service items in RB. Service items are listed on your invoices to provide itemized details for your clients and third-party payers. In-house they provide information to help you analyze your revenue streams.

You store and organize all the service items you bill to clients in the Service Item Master. Then during Turn In you select services from lists instead of entering items by hand. If you have RB Connect your clients and resources also select services from lists, eliminating longhand requests from clients and an assortment of descriptions in turned-in jobs. Instead service item descriptions are consistent throughout your system.

Service Item Master set-up

There are 9 main categories in the Service Items Master List, called Service Groups, which represent the most commonly used billable items for court reporters. These main categories are preset by the system and cannot be modified by the user.

Within these main groups are subgroups that further organize your services so you do not have to scroll through your entire list of billable items to find a service to add to an invoice.  You can add/edit/remove subgroups that organize your miscellaneous services in the Service Item Subgroups function. After setting up your subgroups enter your company’s billable services with their details into these subgroups in the Service Item Master. You will use these items for setting billing rates.

Customize the defaults

The Service Item Master comes with a set of default service items already organized into subgroups. You can:

• Add/edit/merge/delete/de-activate service items in Misc. Charge subgroups.
• Edit the name of service items in the Attendance Service Group.
• Set default billing and pay information for all individual service items.
• If you have clients who require that invoices be submitted electronically, you can enter LEDES codes in your service items.

Once you have set up your service items with their defaults, you can set up multiple billing rate and pay rate tables with custom rates for service items to cover different invoicing and resource pay scenarios. The options that you set in each service item copy to the billing and pay rates tables you create, saving time because you only have to update the defaults that need changing.

At any time, you can update service item rates and options. The default view in the Service Item Master lists all active service items within their service groups and subgroups to make it easy to locate an item. You can restrict the view to a single service group, a single subgroup, or service item name. You can also view all items, not only active items, that fit your search criteria.

You can:

• Add new service items
• Delete service items that are not needed.
• Merge service items into other service items.
• If you do not want to delete or merge an item you can de-activate it. (Deactivated service items do not appear as a choice when billing.)
• If you have multiple billing or pay rate tables that need the same rate or option changed (including LEDES codes), you can update them all at once within Service Item Master with the Mass Update feature.

Information you can include in each service item:

• Service item Subgroup
• Service item name (the only required field). The name is important because it is how the service will appear in Turn-In, on invoices, and in RB Connect.
• Unit type, such as pages, miles, or hours. RB prints the unit type on detailed invoices next to the number of units so your clients have a better idea of what they are being billed for. You can set up your own unit types in Lists.
• Account number of the related revenue account. You can customize your accounts in Chart of Accounts.
• Whether the item is active (will appear as an option when billing) or not
• Default billing rate (amount you charge per unit for the service item) and minimum billing amount, if applicable
• Whether you pay resources a flat amount ($) or a percentage of what’s billed (%) for this service item
• Default pay rate (amount/percentage you pay per unit) and minimum pay amount, if applicable
• If the billing rate or pay rate increases when an order containing this service item is expedited
• If the service item is a taxable court cost or sales taxable
• If the service item is discountable (if you offer a negotiated discount on a firms’ invoices, what’s discountable is specified at the service item level, and the discount percentage the client will receive is entered in their Firms setup.)
• If you award clients points for ordering services, and the service item should be included in the revenue calculation to accumulate points
• If you have sales representatives or pay incentive commissions to resources who bring in their own clients, and the service item should be included in the calculation of commissions
• If you want to include the service item name and/or amount when an invoice is printed with “no details”
• If you want to make the service item available for clients to request when they are scheduling online, or for resources to select when they are turning in jobs online using RB Connect
• If you want to include the service item on production sheets
• If you want RB to calculate charges for this service item based on the number of pages in the transcript and pages to deduct like Original/Copy service items do
• UTBMS codes (if you want invoices to be LEDES compliant). If an insurance company requires different codes than the standard, you can update their billing rate tables only without modifying the service item master list.

The list of service items in the Service Item Master displays all of this information for each item listed, so you can see it upfront. You do not need to go into individual service items unless you want to edit/delete/merge/mass update rate tables. You can sort the list by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, RB will revert back to the default order).

Export the list as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

TL;DR: Set up service items, including default billing and pay info. Group related service items so you can locate them quickly in their subgroups when billing, instead of scrolling through a long, undifferentiated list of all miscellaneous service items. If you have RB Connect, your clients and resources will be able to select service items the same way.

RB concepts in this lesson

Award Points: Used to encourage clients to book with your agency by rewarding them with points for different services.

Firm: Companies you do business with.

RB Connect: Online repository, calendar, and access to your office for clients and resources.

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service, such as reporters.

Lesson #115

Setup – Service Item Subgroups function

Any billable services that you include on invoices must be set up as Service Items in RB. You could have over a hundred service items to cover all the types of billable services you provide. To make it easier to add billable services to invoices, they are broken down into 9 basic service groups: Original, Copy w/ Original, Copy, Additional Copy, Rush, Exhibit, Mileage, Attendance, and Misc. Charge.

However since you can still have potentially a hundred or more miscellaneous charges to bill, RB breaks down service groups further into Service Item Subgroups. This way, you can locate individual service items quickly when billing based on their subgroup instead of searching through a long uncategorized list of service items.

RB includes some default subgroups and you can add/edit/delete subgroups in the Misc. Charge group to better fit your company. Since the idea with subgroups is to make billing easier by limiting the amount of time it takes to find an individual service item, take some time upfront to consider what would be logical groupings of your billable services and make Service Item Subgroups for each of those categories.

An example of a Service Item Subgroup would be Exhibits. You have multiple items for exhibit billing: Color Copies, B&W Exhibits, Bates Stamping, etc., that could all be categorized as Exhibits.

You can update your subgroups at any time but you cannot delete any subgroups containing service items that you have already used on invoices.

Create your own subgroups

The default view in Service Item Subgroups is to list all subgroups, but you can narrow the view to the Misc. Charge Service Group to make it easier to see if you need to add a subgroup or update one in this group by editing its name to better fit your needs. (You can view but you cannot add subgroups to or edit the other Service Groups.)

You can sort the list by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, RB will revert back to the default order). It might be helpful when setting up subgroups to export the list of existing subgroups to share with others, work with in other applications, or print out.

Creating new subgroups is easy. All you do is click New, give the subgroup a name, and save. Your new subgroup will automatically be added to the Misc. Charge Service Group for you to use in other functions. Some common subgroups are Production, Exhibits, Delivery, Video, and Video Conference.

After setting up a subgroup you can then enter its related service items using the Service Item Master.

Using subgroups

Service Item Subgroups come into play when adding a client’s requested services to either a job or case party, or when adding service items to an invoice during Turn In. You can also use them to narrow the results of reports such as the Additional Resource Production Report or Misc. Sales report and to see subtotal breakdowns in interactive reports such as Client Analysis.

TL;DR: To make finding a particular service item quicker set up Service Item Subgroups, then arrange your company’s billable services into these subgroups.

RB concepts in this lesson

Job: Usually the reporting of a deposition but can also be any kind of service you provide with your reporters or other resources, such as realtime, videoconferencing, or read & sign. More >

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service such as reporters, videographers, interpreters, scopists, account executives, other agencies that cover jobs for you, or a conference room.

Service Groups: The most commonly used billable items for court reporters such as Original or Copy. These main categories are preset by the system and cannot be modified by the user. The catch-all Misc. Charge Service Group is where you enter billable service items that are not a separate Service Group.

Service items: Regular charges that you bill to your clients.

Lesson #114

Setup – Chart of Accounts function

Although RB is not a general accounting system, it uses account numbers to keep track of sales, cash receipts, accounts receivable, payables, and other transactions in a basic double-entry bookkeeping system. You can set up RB’s accounts to match your general ledger or accounting software.

For example, if you use QuickBooks, you can use QuickBooks Integrator to import your RB data directly into your QuickBooks. But before you can import RB invoices and payments into QuickBooks, you must set up your RB business units’ accounts to match your QuickBooks setup.

If RB’s default set of accounts is not accurate to your in-house setup, you can add, edit, and delete accounts to match RB9 to your general ledger or accounting software.

Set up account types first

The first step in matching RB to your in-house setup would be to customize your account types in the Lists function. Basic accounting rules group all finance-related things into 5 fundamental types of accounts: Assets, Liabilities, Equity, Income, and Expenses. RB includes these and other account types, which you can edit/delete and add your own. Entries here appear in the Account Type drop-down in individual accounts in the Chart of Accounts function.

Set up your Chart of Accounts

Each account in Chart of Accounts is tied to an Account Type, and includes an account name and reference number (account number). RB uses these accounts for different financial activities in your company’s business units.

The default view in Chart of Accounts shows all accounts in the system in numerical order by account number. It also includes the account names, their account types, and whether the account is active or not. You can restrict the view to a single account type or multiple account types.

You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, RB will revert back to the default order). You can export your Chart of Accounts as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

You can keep the default accounts set up by RB or customize the default Chart of Accounts by adding, editing, and deleting accounts. If an account is not used but you don’t want to delete it, you can make it inactive so it will not appear as a choice in account lists elsewhere in RB.

If you are going to process credit card fees in RB, you must set up two accounts in Chart of Accounts so RB will separate out those fees:

1. An Expense-type account for the fees
2. An Other Current Assets-type account for undeposited processing fee funds

Then you can assign those accounts to handle those fees in your business units.

Designate accounts to use

After you have set up your accounts, you designate which ones to use for different financial activities. Where you use accounts in RB:

• When setting up business units, you can leave the default accounts set up by RB or select which accounts handle which types of transactions for each of your company’s business units.
• When setting up billable services (called service items in RB), you select an account to associate with each service item.

TL;DR: Use RB’s default accounts as is, or customize the Chart of Accounts to match your in-house system or QuickBooks.

RB concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately.

Service items: Regular charges that you bill to your clients.

Lesson #113

Setup – Users and Groups function

You can run RB as a single user, but if you have other in-house personnel who need access to your RB, set them up as users. Then give them user names and passwords to access RB, and store work-related and personal information about them. Group them according to their access levels and job functions, so they can perform their jobs and receive internal messages, but not access areas of RB you do not want them to use. 

Groups give users defined access

Users and Groups is the tool you use to manage RB users, individually and grouped according to permissions, rights, and notifications. There are 2 default groups in RB: Administrators, which grants group members full access to all areas of RB, and Users, which is the basic group every RB user is part of and grants them limited access to only essential areas of RB.

The initial user of your RB system is designated as an administrator so they can enter other users and grant them permissions. They can add other users to the Administrators group, and anyone who is an administrator in RB can perform the same functions. There is no limit to how many administrators your system can have.

Security Groups

Administrators can set up Security Groups in addition to the default groups, which can have different access to RB functions. For example, you could set up a Calendar group, in which you give access to all Calendar functions in RB and maybe some select functions in other modules, such as the repository and entities.

When setting up a new group, the only required information is the Group Name. Other information you can add to a group is a group description, group members (RB users), and security permissions/function access.

There are 2 levels to security permissions: Simple access, meaning users in the group can search and view information; and more comprehensive access, meaning they can also edit and delete information. Most functions offer comprehensive access only, but in some functions you can limit access to read only. Functions that offer both access levels are generally more critical areas, such as cases, jobs, and invoices, which you might want to allow some users to view, but not change.

In addition to setting up Security Groups, administrators can:

• Add or delete users from each group (one user, several, or all users at once).
• Change which functions are accessible in a group (except the Administrators group).
• Delete groups (except the Administrators and Users groups).

Users can be members of more than one group, so you do not have to have a lot of groups to cover every option. If someone’s responsibilities overlap different areas, such as someone who oversees both calendaring and billing, administrators can give that person access to both areas through membership in multiple Security Groups.

While members of the Administrators group have all of the capabilities described by default, they can also grant members of other Security Groups the same capabilities if desired.

Message Groups

In addition to Security Groups, RB also has Message Groups, which allow you to send a message to all the members of a group simultaneously. Members of a Message Group can also send messages to the group. There are no required Message Groups, nor are users required to be a member of any Message Group to use RB.

Similarly to Security Groups, the only requirement when setting up a Message Group is a group name. Administrators can also add a group name, and add or delete members. Administrators can edit or delete existing Message Groups.

With either group, you can sort the list by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, RB will revert back to the default order).

Adding users

When you open the Users and Groups function, it lists all of the users who are already entered into your RB system, along with their user name, email address, whether they are an active user, and when they last logged into the system. You can sort the list by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, RB will revert back to the default order). You can also export the list as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

Administrators can add users to RB at any time. When entering a new user, the only required information is their full name, RB login name, and password. When saving a new user, RB will prompt you to tie them to your company’s business units (BUs). You can tie them to one or more of your company’s BUs.

If you are using email addresses as user login names, you will be required to enter the user’s email address instead of a login name. We recommend this option because everyone knows their email address, so it is easier for them to remember than a unique user name for their RB user ID. The option to use email addresses for RB login is a general system preference.

General information

In addition to required information, you can store users’ contact information, such as their work email address, and other work related information, including their work phone number, start date/termination date, title and department (which you choose from lists you customized in the Lists function), the user’s supervisor, and any information you want to include that is not covered elsewhere in the user’s listing.

In addition to storing info about the user, this is also where administrators can:

• Reset the user’s password for them if they forgot their password and don’t want to change it themselves (administrators do not have a way to retrieve passwords).
• Let the user back into RB if they got locked out for making too many incorrect attempts to log in (using wrong user name and/or password). Administrators set how many tries users get to log in correctly before being locked out in System Preferences.
• Deactivate the user if they no longer work for the company or otherwise don’t need to be assigned or contacted anymore. Deactivated users can no longer log into RB, and their names will not appear in the system by default.
• Delete a user if they never did anything in the system. RB tracks and logs user interactions, so if someone has added or updated information in RB, they cannot be deleted from the system because their interactions are part of your audit trail.

Personal info

Personal information about a user includes their home address, date of birth, and personal phone numbers. When entering the user’s street address or P.O. box number, skip the other fields and enter the zip code. RB will fill in the city, state, and country for you. After entering the user’s address, you can view maps and directions to it in RB.

After saving a new user, 2 other panes appear in their listing: Groups and Business Units. Groups will have the default Users group listed, and Business Units will list any BUs you tied to the user. You can add or delete groups and business units you want to associate with the user here.

Who gets RB access?

Clients or resources who need access to their information in your system are not the same as RB users who are your staff, managers, or other company personnel who need access on a more global level. If you want to give your clients and resources access to their calendars, financial info, files, and other relevant info, add RB Connect to your RB system, where they can have their own online RB offices automatically populated with their information exclusively. Add RB Connect Mobile to give them similar access on their iPhones and other mobile devices.

TL;DR: Store work and personal information about company personnel. Give them access to specific functions in RB through Security Groups, and communicate internally with multiple users at once through Message Groups.

RB concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately.

Job: Usually the reporting of a deposition, but can also be any kind of service you provide with your reporters or other resources, such as realtime, videoconferencing, or read & sign. More >

RB Connect: Online repository, calendar, and access to your office for clients and resources, including interactive transcripts, downloadable invoices and e-commerce for clients, and online turn-in, one-touch job acknowledgements, and downloadable pay statements for resources. More >

RB Connect Mobile: Clients and resources can access your RB Connect on their smartphones and tablets in an interface optimized for mobile devices. More >

Lesson #112

Setup – Lists function

Lists in RB allow users to choose an entry from a set of available values, saving time and reducing errors that result from keying in entries. RB includes initial values and defaults for lists used throughout the system, and you can run your business using these defaults. You can also edit, hide, merge, or delete most of these entries. You cannot create new lists, but you can add your own entries to most RB lists.

Managing lists

When setting up your RB system, take some time to customize its default lists to better match your company. You can revise a list at any time you have new options to add or unused options you’d like to remove/hide.

You can set each list’s default entry, which will appear in any field tied to that list. Default entries cannot be deleted. If you want to delete a default-designated entry, you must set a different entry in the list as the default. Then you can delete the other entry if it is not required by RB.

If you no longer need a particular entry, but want to keep its historical data, you can merge it into an existing entry of the same data type.

If you don’t want to delete an entry or merge it into another entry, but you also don’t want it to appear as a list option in RB, you can de-activate it. It will still exist in the database, but it will be hidden.

You can export any list as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, share, print, or use in other applications.

Lists can be customized for:

• Accounting: Although RB is not an accounting system, it does track many financial aspects of your business, can be used with QuickBooks, and replaces separate billing software.
  Set up categories for types of accounts, financial transactions, payments, payment terms, and units of service items (e.g., pages, miles, or hours). Also set up billing and pay rate groups, parent structures for related billing or pay rates. (You could have 100s of billing and pay rates, which can quickly become overwhelming without some sort of organizing capability.) You will assign each billing rate table, firm, contact, and party to a case to a billing rate group, and assign each pay rate table and resource to a pay rate group.
• Cases: RB is a case-based system. Case attributes will be automatically applied to jobs tied to a case.
  Set up categories for types of cases, sides represented in a suit, notes, and case statuses, such as in progress or settled.
• Connect: RB Connect is the RB9 plug-in that gives your clients and resources direct access to your office via the internet. (RB Connect Mobile is an RB Connect plug-in that gives users most of the same functions but in an interface designed for smart phones and other mobile devices.)
  Set up designations for support ticket ratings, support ticket status (e.g., Awaiting Response or Closed), and resource time-off request status (e.g., Pending or Approved).
• Contacts: Contacts are people who work at firms that schedule jobs with you.
  Set up categories for types of contacts, notes, work turnaround preferences, credit ratings, and tags to organize contacts. Also set up gender classifications, work titles, and salutations.
• Firms: Firms are companies you do business with: They schedule depositions with you, e.g., a law firm, or they are a third party that pays you, e.g., an insurance company.
  Set up categories for types of firms, notes, credit ratings, collection actions, and tags to organize contacts. Also set up designations for account status, class (the quality or ranking of a firm), and client sources (how clients heard of you).
• Invoice: Set up categories (Groups) for invoice headers and messages, so you can find what you want when invoicing without having to scroll through all of your invoice headers or messages. Also set up categories for invoice and notes types to use as search filters.
• Jobs: Set up categories for types of expert witnesses, client referrals, jobs, notes, job status, tasks, and task status.
• Locations: Set up categories for types of locations, notes, and tags to organize locations.
  Not all job locations should be entered in the location database, so they would not need categories here. Examples would be law firms or other businesses in your Firms database, resources such as other court reporting firms, your own conference rooms or business units, one-off locations you won’t use again, and virtual locations, such as Zoom meetings.
• Other: Set up categories for types of anniversaries and other events, how notes in Notes Logs were received (e.g., System, Email, or call), and award point redemption like gift cards or cash.
• Production: Set up designations for how products are delivered to clients, e.g. USPS, courier, or FedEx.
• Repository: Set up designations for types of files that you will store in the central repository.
• Resources: Resources are people or things that provide your business with services, such as reporters, other court reporting agencies you work with, and your conference rooms.
  Set up categories for types of resources, notes, and tags to organize resources. Plus set up categories of time periods you pay resources, certifications, specialties, priority levels (e.g., staff or overflow), salutations, and reasons for resources’ time-off periods (e.g., vacation or personal time).
• Tracking: Tracking is a stand-alone function in RB9 used to monitor where production items are in your production cycle and physical space.
  Set up categories for archival status, types of service items (such as DVD, Editing, Exhibit, Scanning, Synching, and Transcript), and priority of tracked items. Plus set up media classifications (e.g., Confidential or Under Protective Order) and media formats.
• Users: Users are people on your staff who directly access RB, as opposed to contacts and resources who access your office through RB Connect.
  Set up categories for departments in your company and position titles.
• Witnesses: Set up categories for notes types to use as search filters.

TL;DR: Many lists in RB can be customized by adding/editing options to better fit your company.

RB concepts in this lesson

Award Points: Used to encourage clients to book with your agency by rewarding them with points for different services.

Billing Rate Groups: Umbrella structures aimed at categorizing your billing rates. Instead of one long list of billing rates, Billing Rate Groups create a series of shorter lists to search through when invoicing clients.

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with.

Firm: Companies you do business with.

Header Group: Parent structure that contains related invoice headers as its children.

Job: Usually the reporting of a deposition, but can also be any kind of service you provide with your reporters or other resources. More >

Location: Place where jobs occur, such as court rooms, hospitals, schools, doctors’ offices, or private residences.

Message Group: Parent structure that contains related invoice messages as its children.

Pay Groups: Categories of time periods your company uses to pay resources, e.g., Monthly, Weekly, On Demand. Group resources according to their pay period (frequency) to reduce errors when running payroll.

Pay Rate Groups:  Umbrella structures aimed at categorizing the rates you pay resources, such as by experience levels, percentage paid on services, or affiliates. Instead of one long list of pay rates, Pay Rate Groups create a series of shorter lists to search through when invoicing clients.

RB Connect: Online repository, calendar, and access to your office for clients and resources, including interactive transcripts, downloadable invoices and e-commerce for clients, and online turn-in, one-touch job acknowledgements, and downloadable pay statements for resources. More >

RB Connect Mobile: Clients and resources can access your RB Connect on their smartphones and tablets in an interface optimized for mobile devices. More >

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service, such as reporters, videographers, interpreters, scopists, account executives, other agencies that cover jobs for you, or a conference room.

Tracking: System for keeping track of where production items are in your production cycle and physically in your office.

Users: You and your staff who directly access RB.

Lesson #110

Customize your RB setup

You can run your business using the setup defaults that RB includes. Or use this module to edit them, delete any you don’t need, and add your own options to tailor RB to your work processes. You can update any Setup function at any time. In this module, you can:

• Customize lists by adding, editing, merging, and deleting list entries. Set the default entry that appears in any field tied to a list.
• Set up users, store work-related and personal information about them, and give them user names and passwords to access RB. Group them according to their access levels and job functions, so they can perform their jobs and receive internal messages. 
• Customize the default Chart of Accounts to match your general ledger or accounting software.
• Set up service items and group related service items so you can locate them quickly in their subgroups when billing, instead of scrolling through a long, undifferentiated list of all miscellaneous service items.
• Enter billing, pay, and rush rates for services, including e-billing information.
• Set up billing rate groups for different categories of clients so you don’t have to scroll through all of your billing rate tables each time you invoice a client. Set up pay rate groups for resources too.
• Group service items into billing sets to speed up billable services selection because you only have to choose the set, not each of the items individually.
• Set the year’s pay dates and their corresponding cutoff dates for each pay period. 
• Create your own invoice headers and messages for different circumstances.
• Set up tracking items to match your production workflow, then define the steps each item goes through in your process.
• Define preferences for how your RB-PDF transcripts will appear and what options they will include. Create multiple transcript preference profiles to cover different transcript requirements.
• Create stamps like “Original” or ”Certified Copy” to apply to transcripts.
• If exhibit file names and exhibit references in transcripts follow a pattern, for example they are numbered consecutively, save production time by setting up those patterns before producing hyperlinked transcripts.
• Set up exhibit stamp templates that will automatically include RB job information and number PDF exhibits sequentially.
• Set global preferences for difference features in RB.

Setup functions by name

• Lists
• Users and Groups
• Chart of Accounts
• Service Item Subgroups
• Service Item Master
• Rush Type Master
• Billing Rates
• Pay Rates
• Billing Sets
• Pay Dates
• Invoice Headers
• Invoice Messages
• Tracking Steps – RB9-only function
• PDF Transcript Preferences – RB9-only function
• PDF Transcript Stamps – RB9-only function
• Link Exhibits Patterns – RB9-only function
• Exhibit Stamps – RB9-only function
• System Preferences

TL;DR: Customize RB to match your business better.

RB concepts in this lesson

Job: Usually the reporting of a deposition, but can also be any kind of service you provide with your reporters or other resources. More >

RB-PDF Transcript: PDF version of a transcript with built-in transcript-specific features like hyperlinked exhibits, word lists/indexes, errata sheets, and enhanced headers/footers containing case and depo information.

Service items: Regular charges that you bill to your clients are called service items in RB.