RB9 & RB Connect 2019 updates

If you use linked jobs instead of tasks for some assignments, such as video of a deposition, you can delete the linked job at the same time you cancel the main job.

Colors selected for different job statuses in System Preferences > Calendar > Job Status Color appear in results grids for:

• Jobs (List View)
• Jobs (Monthly View)’s daily jobs popups
• Send Job Confirmations/Cancellations
• Tasks
• Quick Assignments
• Send Assignment Notifications/Cancellations
• Daily Calendar Audit
• Tasks in Progress
• Turn In
• Letters
• Post Invoices

Time-Off Remarks now appear in the Resource Availability grid and as a search filter.

You can now edit Time-Off Reason and Remarks from the View Time-Off window.

If you would rather send individual assignment notices as you assign tasks in Quick Assignments instead of doing a batch notification when finished, you have the option to send the notice when you drag and drop a resource on a task.

In addition to emailing and texting resources these notifications, you can also print them individually or in batches from the Assignment Notifications/Cancellations results pane.

Scheduling Notes field in the Additional Info pane of individual jobs can be used for any information you want to share with staff, but not with clients or resources.

You can more easily locate invoices in a job’s Turn In window because the background color for invoices is yellow while witness and service line items have white backgrounds.

Also, text for invoices in progress is black, text for posted invoices is green, and text for voided invoices is red to quickly differentiate them from each other.

Before posting and sending an invoice, you can use the new Delete Services function in the invoice to remove multiple services from the invoice at the same time.

When adding pay for resource’s miscellaneous expenses, such as parking and tolls, you can select Save & New in the New Additional Pay screen for continuous and faster data entry. It retains the current resource’s information, minimizing re-keying for each entry.

In the witness repository of a turned-in job, set which contacts can access a file and then copy that accessibility to other files within the same witness repository all at once.

When you generate a FedEx or UPS shipping label in RB9, it automatically adds the estimated shipping cost to the shipment’s entry in RB9. For other shipping methods, you can enter an estimated amount, if desired. Estimated Shipping Cost appears in the Shipping function’s results grid and in individual detail windows.

Click a button to export your current Aged A/R Report as an Excel spreadsheet with each client’s overdue amounts broken down by age, plus a list of all of their overdue invoices including basic details.

If you have RB Connect, your resources can acknowledge jobs with one click in an emailed Assignment Notification. A new data field in the Assignment Notification Form is a link through your RB Connect to your RB9 Calendar that automatically sets the task’s Acknowledged Date to the current date. The AcknowledgementURL data field must be included in the body of the email or worksheet must include the data field and be embedded in the email for the link to work.

Due to popular demand, we have added the RB8 option for delivery methods for consolidated statements to firms. You can select Email, Print, or Don’t Send (if a firm does not want to receive monthly statements).

When uploading your company logo in Business Units (BUs) to include on your invoices, statements, and transcripts, you can use either .jpg or .png file formats.

If more than one person enters payments into RB9, you can use the Created By filter in the Receive Payments screen to separate only the checks you entered to get a total amount and reconcile.

• Witness, Job Location, Job Location City, Job Location State columns added to Quick Assignments’ main grid.
• Total Pay column added to Post Invoices screen next to the Invoice Amount column.
• Created By and Created [timestamp] columns added to Receive Payments grid.
• Warning column added to Resources grid.
• Statement Type added to Send Statements search criteria.
• Quick Assignments has been added to the list of results grid you can customize the column order of in Setup > System Preferences > General > Rearrange Grid Columns.
• In RB Connect, resources’ Tasks in Progress lists outstanding tasks in chronological order from the oldest first to today.

When sending clients notices that transcripts and other files have been uploaded to RB Connect, you have more information in the Accessible Contacts list so you can more easily select the correct contacts to send alerts too.

An Access Level column has been added to the grid so you can see each contact’s relationship to the ordering party. In addition, Sold To contacts are selected by default, while Grant Access contacts are indented.

In Collection Letters, added email option to “One collection letter per invoice” option. However, we recommend using this option for sending single invoices only. Sending multiple invoices with this option will embed multiple collection letters in one email body.

In Receive Payments, added grand total amount and outstanding balance amount to the grid footer.

When using RB9’s Mail Composer, you can now check the documents attached to the email before sending them out.

When viewing an individual job, case, witness, invoice, or entity, you can see the description of any uploaded files in the repository panel without having to click into each file’s details.

You can find a firm in RB9 Lookup Firm windows by entering the name of someone who works there in your search criteria.

Lists of results appear with alternative grid-row coloring for better viewing of separate line data.

When monitoring task assignments, you can now search by Priority Level and Resource Type.

Expand or collapse invoice listings in a job’s Turn In window.

Digital signature backgrounds are now transparent so they no longer obscure transcripts when applied.

• If you receive payment prior to when late charges would accrue, the Late Charges and Finance Charges fields in Receive Payments are grayed out and uneditable.
• You can update the Payer field to an invoice’s Bill To firm when applying payments to invoices.
• You can send invoices directly from the Aged A/R window.
• You can include a Resource Grand Total page at the end of your Pay Statement report on both the Print Office/Resource Copy – Summary and Print Office Copy – Detail versions.

You can set system preferences for different column layouts for some RB9 functions, such as the calendar in list view, repository file listings, or entity listings.

Previously, you could only view outstanding tasks in Tasks in Progress lists. Now, you have the option to see completed tasks along with their completion date in search results for jobs that have not been invoiced yet.

Mobile-optimized version of RB Connect, RB Connect Mobile, is released. With this release, new options in Connect Branding Preferences were added for users who have the RB Connect Mobile plug-in.

“Grant Access From” label in Contact entries changed to “Have Access To” to avoid confusion. Contacts who are seniors to other contacts, can be granted access to the other contacts’ activities in RB Connect.

Previous versions of RB9 only allowed users to enter email address and password for SMTP authentication. And the email account had to be the same as the sender’s email address. So if an RB9 user wanted to use an email sender service, such as Mailgun or Postmark, they couldn’t enter the API key. 

This version changed System Preferences and User Preferences to separate sender's email address and authentication. Now you can type an account name that is not the sender’s email address. Plus passwords can be up to 80 characters.

Show rush text on invoice and Show rush amount on invoice options no longer appear in New/View/Edit Service panel in Turn In when the service’s Service Group is Original, Copy w/Original, Copy, or Additional Copy.

Job’s Production/Billing Notes added to View/Edit Invoice Panel in Turn In and on Production Sheets.

Both contacts and resources can access contextural help from any screen with a Help button, or access the user guide from the main menu under Help.

Added options to include job confirmation and assignment notification notes to Job Printout reports.

In a job detail window, if you change an existing task to a new type of task that has a different turn-around time, a popup will appear asking if you want to change the due date of the task if the new task’s Due Date would be different than the original task’s Due Date.

If you do not want your resources to see who also worked on a case, you can hide the Previous Resources pane in job detail windows in your RB Connect-Resource site. You can also hide the Related Files pane if you do not want to give resources access to files other than the current job’s transcripts and exhibits. This option applies globally to your company’s RB Connect-Resource site.

If you handle both job scheduling and job turn in, you can now turn in a job from its job detail window in Calendar functions using the More > Turn In option in any job detail window.

You can automatically include directions to job locations in Assignment Notification and Job Confirmation forms and emails with the new JobLocation > Directions merge field.

You can now view a task’s start time and any notations entered in the task’s job, such as “V” (for video) in the Tasks grid so you don’t have to open the task to see this information.

If you don’t want to give a contact access to a specific file in the Witness-level repository in Turn In, you can remove their access. For example, if Witness A has a PDF transcript, video, and exhibits in the repository, you can designate that Contact 1 can access only the PDF transcript and exhibits, while Contact 2 can access only the PDF transcript and video file. This eliminates the need to create duplicates of the same witness (e.g., Witness A-1 and Witness A-2) to upload different combinations of the same files to.

You can set up multiple FedEx and UPS accounts in RB9 to select from when printing labels.

You can have more than the default email account for your company, plus more than one personal email account.

Job calendars now list resources assigned to tasks in the jobs displayed. In Jobs (List View) a column was added to the grid. In Jobs (Monthly View), a column was added to every day’s footer that includes scheduled jobs. If no resources are assigned, column displays N/A.

Job Location, plus Job Location City and State appear in the main Tasks grid.

If you search Tasks in Progress for all resources’ outstanding work product, all tasks are grouped by resource, with each resource’s tasks’ Average Days Old and Total Estimated Pages listed in the footer of their task grouping.

When adding services to invoices in Turn In, Prefill Service from Billing Set and Prefill Service from Preferred Services have been combined into a single option, Prefill Service, which includes both types of prefills in one screen.

Directly access 90-day payment history, client activity, and collection letters function from each firm in Aged A/R search results.

To use QuickBooks with RB9, a port must be opened from your router/firewall. To check that it is open, a button has been added to QuickBooks system preferences.

If you use the Full-Text Search plug-in, your clients can now search Transcript Packages by words: All of the words entered, any of the words entered, or the exact phrase.

In RB Connect, Job Date From and Job Date To fields have been added to Contacts’ Repository search criteria, so users can look for files by the date or date range of a scheduled job.

Show only notified tasks for future tasks flag added to Resource–Jobs Connect preferences, so resources do not see tasks in their RB Connect before they have received notification that they have been assigned to those tasks.

A new Notification Type, “Repository,” has been added to Contact Notification Emails in Entities. Now in addition to designating which of a contact’s email addresses to send notifications about jobs or accounting issues to, you can designate a third email address for sending notices to when files are uploaded to relevant repositories.