Concept #5
Prefill
When you prefill a job, case, or invoice, RB automatically adds related parties and/or service items — saving time and reducing the chance of incomplete invoices.
Without prefill, you have to enter parties and services one at a time every time. With prefill, you check first for previously entered choices — such as parties to a case or a client’s standing orders — and add some or all of them at once. Prefilling saves time and reduces the chance of overlooking something by automatically including related parties and/or services.
Standing orders
If your clients have certain services they always want — for example the original ASCII file and a condensed transcript — you can enter these standing orders in their profile. Both firms and contacts can have standing orders — which can be different if contacts at a firm have their own service requirements in addition to or in place of the firm’s requirements. You can add these standing orders when prefilling parties.
Prefill parties
Parties and their requested services can be entered at any time:
- In a case starting in the pre-trial discovery phase where you can prefill services from firms’ and contacts’ standing orders.
- To a job where you can prefill from a case.
- In Turn In when creating invoices where you can prefill from the job, case, and recent related turn-ins.
- If you have RB Connect, resources enter parties and services when turning in jobs online. You can give them the option to prefill parties from the job, case, or previous turn-ins.
The Recent Turn-ins option when creating invoices is useful because when parties are added to a case during pre-trial discovery, it’s usually so they can access the case calendar and repository files through RB Connect. They might not have any preferred services. However it’s highly likely that parties to a case that have ordered services on previous jobs in the case will order the same services for similar jobs on the same case, which would be included in Recent Turn-ins so you can easily add them to an invoice.
Prefill services
When you prefill parties in Turn In who have standing orders or previously ordered services, RB creates invoices that automatically include those service items. You can save time entering other service items in batches using Prefill Services.
Use Prefill Orders & Services to include service requests from:
- Billing Sets: Like a fast food combo meal, you can select a preset list of services commonly ordered together.
- Firm’s and/or contact’s preferred services: If you didn’t include them when prefilling parties, you can add them when prefilling services.
- Case’s preferred services: If the party to the case requested services for all jobs on a case.
- Job’s preferred services: If the party to the job requested services when scheduling the job.
These readymade lists might include services that were not ordered for the job being billed. That’s okay: After prefilling you can remove any services not ordered for this invoice.
TL;DR: Instead of entering parties and services one at a time every time, use Prefill to automatically add parties and/or services to a job, case, or invoice.
Related RB concepts
Billing Sets: Like a fast food combo meal, RB Billing Sets are preset groups of service items. Selecting billable services by set, instead of individually, speeds up the billing process.
Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with, such as attorneys, paralegals, secretaries, legal assistants, claim adjusters, and court clerks.
Firm: Business you provide services to, usually law firms, but can also be other court reporting firms, vendors, insurance companies, corporate clients, and courts.
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.
