AG/Acclaim Legal
Services
Office Management
Software Updates and Enhancements
Acclaim Solaria 3.91 Release
Bug Fixes
List Windows
n When viewing the Client, Attorney, Cases, and Staff list windows, they will now default to the "A" list instead of the "Recently Used" list for new users. In addition, opening the recently used list of staff will now open faster than it did in previous releases.
n When viewing the Staff Invoices list and selecting the “Sent” radio button at the top of the window, it was not remembering this selection after leaving the window and coming back to it. This has been fixed.
Calendar
n When viewing the Weekly calendar in which one of the days has a scrollbar because it has more items than can be shown, the scrollbar will now continue to show correctly after leaving the calendar and returning.
Staff Maintenance
n When making a change to a commission item for a staff person, it was creating unnecessary history in the edit log for the changed item along with other items. This has been fixed.
Clients
n When merging clients and using a Microsoft Access database, it was failing when it tried to remove the old client's addresses. This has been fixed.
n When merging clients, the client selection list was sometimes showing expired addresses for clients. The selection list has been changed to not show expired addresses unless all other addresses have expired for the client.
Assignments
n
When viewing an assignment, client names could get
changed in the database if the user accidentally entered something in the
client name field and pressed Enter. It was saving the new entry as the client
name before doing a lookup of the name. This has been fixed. Clients, attorneys,
callers, and cases will no longer be saved upon Enter or the Save Changes
button unless the user had originally clicked on the associated Edit button and
pressed OK from the edit window.
n When entering an assignment and searching for a client, the search results would show an expired address for the client if the address had an effective date that was after the effective date of a non-expired address. The searching has been changed to not show expired addresses unless all other addresses have expired for the client.
n When entering an assignment and searching for a contact, the search results will now show all clients and attorneys that the contact is associated to, and include both client and attorney names in the list.
n
When sending an assignment to a Microsoft Word merge
document, and there are other appearances on the assignment, it was using the
last appearances address for the requesting client's address. This has been
fixed.
n When sending an assignment to the DepoManage repository, it was not sending the new “Transcript Received On” date for the turn-in date. (It was still sending the date that the turn-in task was completed.) This has been fixed.
n Assignment confirmations were not including the case court name if they were sent via email. This has been fixed.
n When sending confirmations via email, the Outlook ICS appointment links will now contain a link to the map for the assignment location.
n When reassigning tasks to other staff, the "Reassign Task" window was opening at the bottom of the screen. This has been fixed to open in the center of the screen.
Orders/Invoices
n When viewing an order or invoice that has products on it that are no longer active, it was displaying the product unique ID instead of the product description. This has been fixed.
n When printing paid client invoices and using the printed interest text “Before Balance Due” (in Preferences), it was not printing the interest amount, causing the totals to be incorrect. It will now continue to print the interest amount even after the invoice is paid.
Notes
n When turning on the "Apply Note To Current & Future Assignments" checkbox on a note, a SQL error was being returned. This has been fixed.
Reports
n The Accounts Payable report bucket totals at the bottom of the report were not always adding up to the same amount as the "Total Payable" on the report. This has been fixed. The buckets were not always including invoices with negative amounts due on them, nor excluding invoices that had a paid date or had no due date.
Enhancements
Client/Attorney Maintenance
n When overriding product prices, you can now copy a single product price to other clients/attorneys, assignment types, and/or delivery types with the “Copy Prices To…” button. This is similar to the “Copy Prices To…” button on the Product Prices window in Settings.
Collections
n You can now edit the collector on any collection, even completed collections. Select the collection and click “Edit”. Only the collector will be enabled on a completed collection.
n If “All Companies” is checked at the bottom of the window, the company initial will be displayed after each client name.
n “Collection(s)” and “Collector(s)” can now be renamed for each company using the System Language window.
n The following new reports were added for Collections:
1. Accounts Receivable
2. Aging
3. Payments Received
These reports are similar to the financial reports with the same name; however, they will only look at invoices in collections and print by the collector assigned to them. You can print the reports for all collectors or for selected collectors only.
n A new type of note was added to the Notes window to allow users to enter collection-only notes for each client, rather than for each collection. This keeps other client notes separate from notes that pertain to collections for a client. The “Collection Notes for Client – [CLIENT NAME]” notes will show automatically from the Collection window, and within the notes list from the Client Maintenance window. (Notes for each collection can still be entered and have not been removed.)
Invoices
n Client Invoices that are moved into collections will continue to have an “Unpaid” status instead of an “In Collections” status. This allows you to see all unpaid invoices in one place, and see the number of days past due with the status.
A new column named “In Coll.” was added to the Invoice list window to indicate which invoices are in collections.
The “In Collections” status on the left panel remains so that you can view only the invoices in collections.
n The “Recalc” button will continue to display and will be usable for all non-voided invoices, even after payments have been made on them. This allows users to fix older invoices that have incorrect amounts due/paid on them.
n When printing invoices (for both client and staff), the invoice number will be repeated at the top of subsequent pages for the same invoice.
n When printing invoices (for both client and staff) and choosing the Email destination, they will now use formatted HTML which improves the look of the invoice in the body of an email message.
n When printing interest/discount text on a client invoice that uses a {DATE} parameter (from the Invoices tab of System Preferences), it will always use the invoice sent date for the date, even if the invoice has a re-sent date.
Statements
n Statements can now be run based upon invoice sent dates rather than invoice due dates. This setting was added to the Invoices tab of System Preferences. It will default to run statements based upon invoice due dates, as they currently run. The aging buckets at the bottom of the statements will always be based upon invoice due dates.
n The invoice “Sent Date” was added to the statements as the first column of the details.
n Statements will now print the header information on each page. In addition, a page number will print at the bottom. The page number will be reset to 1 for each statement when printing them in batch.
Acclaim Solaria
3.90 Build 13 Patch Release
Bug Fixes
Assignments
n Staff getting commissions on an assignment were always being copied on client confirmations. This has been fixed to only copy the staff on the client confirmations if the staff are set up for this in Staff Maintenance.
n When sending files to DepoManage and the same repository (folder) is being used by both Solaria and DepoManage, it was reporting that files did not exist and could not be copied to DepoMange. This has been fixed.
Tasks
n When reassigning staff to a task, the selection window was opening at the bottom on the screen. This has been fixed.
Reports
n The Email Notifications for Staff report was failing to print. This has been fixed.
Acclaim Solaria
3.90 Release
Enhancements
Preferences
n A preference was added under the Assignments tab of Preferences called “Calculate Task Due Dates”. It has a checkbox, that when checked, will calculate the due dates on tasks using business days only (i.e. it excludes Saturday and Sunday).
n A preference was added under the Orders tab of Preferences called “Calculate Delivery Dates”. It has a checkbox, that when checked, will calculate the delivery days on orders using business days only (i.e. it excludes Saturday and Sunday).
n The “Invoice Sent Date & Due Date Based Upon” options were removed from the Staff tab of Preferences. This feature is being moved to Guarantee Types, as discussed below.
n A
new preference was added under the Interfaces tab called “Integrate with
Categories & Types
n On the Commission Templates setup window, a down-arrow button was added next to the Pay Rate column header:
Click on this button to copy the rate type and pay rate from the first product line to all other product lines in the list. This makes it easier to set up the same commission rates for all products on a template.
n On the Confirmation Statuses setup window, you can now assign a color to each confirmation status. This color will be used on the Manager view of the calendar to highlight the assignments in which staff have been given the same confirmation status (described below).
n A new drop-down list was added for each item in the Guarantee Types setup window. The drop-down list contains date options to use to calculate the staff invoice sent dates. Select from either “Assignment Date”, “Client Invoice Date”, or “Transcript Received Date”.
When a staff invoice is created, it will calculate the sent date based upon the guarantee type the staff is set up for (or the “Originals” guarantee type if doing split invoices for staff). It will set the sent date equal to the date selected on the guarantee type (such as the transcript received date on the Assignment Deponents window). The due date is then calculated from this date by adding the guarantee type number of days.
n If
you are integrating with
My Settings
n A new menu option called “My Settings” was added under the Settings menu. All users will be able to view and change their user settings from here. They will not be able to change their user access role nor set themselves to inactive from here. In addition to changing their user name, login name, and password, users can change the following default settings for themselves:
o The company to load at startup.
o The default company to display in the calendar, either the current company or all companies.
o The default date to display in the calendar, either the last date viewed or the current date.
Home
n An “All Department Order Tasks” window has been added in the Options panel when viewing the Home page. It will display all incomplete order tasks for a selected department. Only users with “Can View All Tasks” access in Staff Maintenance will see this option. B007
Schedule Calendar
n On the Manager view of the calendar, if the staff on an assignment have all been set to the same confirmation status, you will see a colored box if the confirmation status was assigned a color in Categories & Types.
Once the staff are all confirmed on the assignment, it will show the green checkmark instead of the colored box.
Attorney Maintenance
n The “Order/Invoice Remarks” field has been moved to a new tab called “Invoice Remarks” on the Attorney Maintenance window. It has also been expanded to allow more information to be entered into it.
Client Maintenance
n The “Order/Invoice Remarks” field has been moved to a new tab called “Invoice Remarks” on the Client Maintenance window. It has also been expanded to allow more information to be entered into it.
Case Maintenance
n A new tab called “Invoice Remarks” has been added to the Case Maintenance window. It allows you to enter a large amount of information that needs to be shown to users doing billing. A new “Case Remarks” button (shown in red) has also been added to the Invoice window to allow you to see the invoice remarks that were entered on the case.
Staff Maintenance
n The commissions list on the Staff Maintenance window can now be sorted by clicking on the column headings.
n A new checkbox was added to the Commissions tab named “Receive Copy of Assignment Confirmations”. Turning this on will copy the staff person on all email confirmations that go to the requesting client/attorney/contact/case for an assignment that the staff could potentially get commissions on.
n A new tab called “Invoice Remarks” has been added to the Staff Maintenance window. It allows you to enter a large amount of information that needs to be shown to users doing billing. A new “Remarks” button (shown in red) has also been added to the Staff Invoice window to allow you to see the invoice remarks that were entered for the staff.
Activity List Windows
n All users will now be able to resize the columns in the activity list windows as they desire and Solaria will remember the column sizes each time they log back in. (Previously, this was only available to “master users” and would change the lists for all users.)
n An “Over 120 Days Old” option was added to the date range filter at the top of the Orders, Invoices, Staff Invoices, and Transactions list windows.
Send to MS Word
n A new export was added for collections called “Collection Information – All Invoices by Case”. The MS Word merge document named “COLLCASE.DOC” was added for this export. It will export the information about a collection and group the invoices by case.
Send to Repository
n Assignments located in a conference room with an associated address will now include the address when they are sent to the DepoManage repository.
n If there are any files that it could not be copied to the repository, or if there are any missing email addresses, a report will automatically display after the send is complete listing these.
Assignments
n The type of contact was added to the Caller information section of the Assignment Details window.
n You can now enter an attorney as the caller on an assignment by entering part of their name or phone number and tabbing out of the field. The search results list will display matching contacts as well as matching attorneys. The attorneys will be listed with a contact type of “Saved Attorney”.
n If the entered caller is not associated with the current client and attorney shown on the assignment, you will be asked if you want to replace them with the ones associated with the caller. If you do not want to replace the information, you will then be asked if you want to associate the caller with the current attorney shown on the assignment (if the caller is not a saved attorney).
n You can now enter the expected delivery type, delivery date, and pre-order information on an assignment. These fields were added to the Assignment Details window in the “Assignment Information” section. They can be entered if you have information about the expected order when the assignment is taken. These will be printed on the staff confirmations if they were entered and will be used for default delivery information.
n The “Filed Originals On” date field was moved to the bottom of the Deponent Update window.
n When searching for locations, you can now search client addresses on the Search Locations window. Also, if an address is associated to a client, it will display the client name below the contact information on the Assignment Details window. The client name will print on the confirmations.
n Once an assignment has been sent to the DepoManage repository, it will display a message at the bottom of the Assignment Details window showing when it was sent. (This was previously displayed in the “Assignment Information” section of the window.)
Confirmations
n You can now double-click on a service/staff item in the Manager or Staff Assignments windows to open the confirmation window.
n Emailed staff confirmations will now print the company name at the top of the message content above the assignment number.
n If you have set up staff confirmations to include previous orders on them, they will now print the previous orders from the last assignment with the same case and requesting attorney. If none are found, it will print the orders from the last assignment for the case.
n The “Services You Will Provide” section on the staff confirmations was renamed to “Services To Be Provided” and will list all services on the assignment and which staff are assigned to them. If you only want to print the service for the person receiving the confirmation, you can turn on “Exclude Other Services” in the Confirmations section of Staff Preferences. (Emailed confirmations to multiple staff will always include the full list of services and which staff are assigned to them.)
n You can send all staff confirmations for an assignment at once by selecting all of the services listed on the Staff Assignment or Manager calendar windows and clicking “Send Confirmation”. Sending them to an Email destination will send one message to all of the staff selected. Sending them to a printed destination will create one print job with each staff person’s confirmation on separate pages.
n When using the “Email Notifications” option in Reports ► Staff, it will send one email message per assignment to all staff assigned to them unless “Exclude Other Services” is checked in Preferences.
n You can confirm all staff for an assignment at once by selecting all of the services listed on the Staff Assignment or Manager calendar windows and clicking “Confirm”. The confirmation status information will all be saved the same on each of the selected services.
Deponent Updates
n On the Deponent Update window for assignment worksheets, you will now be able to enter a date for when the transcript is received. The “Transcript Received” button has been replaced by a “Transcript Received On” field. You will see this field if the “Complete Turn-In Sheet” task is active and required.
Entering a date will complete the “Complete Turn-In Sheet” task. Staff invoices will use this date for the “Original Sent On” date if they use the guarantee type that uses the transcript received date. Changing the transcript received date will update these staff invoices if there is no sent date yet.
n The “Filed Originals On” field was moved to the bottom of this window from the Assignment Details window. It will be shown if the “File Originals” task is active and this task will be marked as completed when a date is entered here.
n It will now require you to enter an ending time if a starting time was entered (and vice versa).
Client Invoices
n If any invoice remarks were entered for a case, you will see a red “Case Remarks” button in the middle of the Invoice window. Click on this button to see the text of the invoice remark.
Staff Invoices
n When staff get paid for flat-rate items, it will now pull in the quantity of the item from the client invoice instead of setting the quantity to 1.
n You can now override the commission template being used on a staff commissions invoice. A drop-down list of templates was added to the top of the Staff Commissions Invoice window. Changing the template will adjust the items on the invoice to use the new rates except for items that were manually entered. Note that this could result in items getting removed if the template no longer gives commission on an item, or added if the template now gives commission on an item that was not given commissions previously. It will default to “Per Staff Setup” using the commissions according to the staff maintenance setup, which could apply more than one template to the same invoice. The commission template cannot be changed once a payment has been made on the staff invoice.
n If any invoice remarks were entered for a staff person, you will see a red “Remarks” button near the top of the Staff Invoice window. Click on this button to see the text of the invoice remark.
Reports
n The staff payroll report will now separate the expense items from other items on each invoice and show a subtotal for each. Also, an “(E)” will be printed in front of the description for expense items.
n A new report was added for the Staff section of reports called “Staff Commissions Setup search”. Using this report, you can search for the staff that receive commissions on a specific case, client, attorney, or contact.
n Under the Attorney reports, the MS Word Merge – Address Labels have been changed to list the client name below the attorney name (in separate fields). A new Word document and tab file is used for this called “ATTYLBLS.DOC” and “ATTYLBLS.TAB”.
n A new report was added in the Attorneys section. It is called “Non-Requesting Attorneys” and will list all attorneys who have been on assignments but have never requested an assignment.
n The Assignments Taken report within the Clients report section was enhanced to allow you to group the results by caller instead of attorney. The window allowing you to select the clients and enter the date range now has two radio buttons to choose from: Group By “Client – Attorney” or “Client – Caller”. Choose “Client – Caller” if you want to list the number of assignments taken per caller instead of per attorney under each client.
n When viewing the “Gross Sales Per Month” report for more than 12 months, the colors were not showing correctly in the graph. The graph has been fixed to support up to 24 months.
Custom Lookup Fields
n A preference was added under the Company tab of Preferences called “Use Custom Lookup Fields”. When this preference is checked, you will be able to create custom lookup fields under Categories & Types for the Client, Attorney, and Case Maintenance windows. These fields will not be used by the system, but can be queried on outside of Solaria.
n Two new options were added under Categories & Types when the preference to “Use Custom Lookup Fields” has been turned on: “Custom Lookups” and “Custom Lookup Values”. Enter the name of the fields you want to create in “Custom Lookups”, then enter the values for each field in “Custom Lookup Values”. Here, you will also set which maintenance windows to display the fields on.
n If “Use Custom Lookup Fields” has been turned on, you will see a new tab called “Custom” on the Client, Attorney, and Case Maintenance windows. This tab will display each of the fields you created as drop-down lists containing the values you entered for each field.
About Window
n The full version of Acclaim Solaria will now be shown in the “About” window. It will now include the build number, making it helpful for support.
Bug Fixes
Client Maintenance
n When merging clients, if both clients happen to share an address, the merge would fail with an error. This has been fixed.
Assignments List
n When searching for assignments and entering a client name that is more than 50 characters in length, it was selecting the incorrect client (with similar first 50-charcters in the name) after returning to the assignments list window. This has been fixed.
Transactions List
n When printing the transactions list, the “Payee or Payor” column was sometimes overlapping the invoice number on long names. This has been fixed.
Send to Repository
n When sending assignments to the DepoManage repository and sending email notifications to attorneys, it was not always copying the contacts on the email message when it should. This has been fixed.
Confirmations
n The “Send Confirmations” button was hidden on canceled assignments. This has been fixed. (This bug was introduced in the 3.90 release.)
n The report to send email notifications to staff for all assignments on a specific date was sending blank email messages. This has been fixed. (This bug was introduced in the 3.90 release.)
Orders
n If a product task is set up as assigned to a department with no lead staff person, it was creating order tasks with a staff assignment when it should be unassigned. This has been fixed.
Invoices
n When printing detailed invoices, it was sometimes putting extra decimal places on the units (listed after the description). This has been fixed.
n When an assignment did not have a case on it, it was printing the case from a previous invoice when printing invoices in bulk. This has been fixed.
n When adding a staff invoice manually and selecting a different type of invoice than what is currently displayed, it was not switching to the other type of invoice. This has been fixed.
Collections
n Sorting on the Promised and Action Date fields was not working correctly. This has been fixed.
n The default view for collections will now show all “New” collections, rather than “All Statuses”. This is to avoid pulling up all collection in the database when you go to the Collections window.