The Rocket Matter Winning Streak Has Run Out

I had previously written about how thrilled I was with the time and billing features of Rocket Matter. That excitement was based on the one invoice that I had sent to one client, and that appeared to have been processed effortlessly. Ooops. It seems that I was a bit premature with my enthusiasm.

When I received the sales pitch from Rocket Matter ("RM"), great emphasis was placed on the Rocket Pay component of the system. Rocket Pay is what we might otherwise call a merchant account. You use it so that the clients/customers can pay you with credit cards. As described to me by the RM sales folks, my clients would get an email invoice. In that invoice there would be a link the clients could click on so that they could pay their invoices with a credit card or an echeck (echecks is a newish for me and my clients, and very exciting feature). Awesome. It would all be done under one roof, and I could then close my current merchant account with Intuit/QuickBooks.

In concept the process is great. In actual implementation and operation, Not So Greattttt.....

Turns out that RM has a partner company that handles the merchant services side of Rocket Pay. Partnering is quite common. I partner in my practice all the time. I use contract attorneys. I use a subpoena service to obtain records. RM is a technology partner. Unfortunately for Rocket Pay that technology partner, a company called TouchSuite, is where the problem starts and continues. I had not actually surveyed that first client that I wrote about before I posted my earlier review. Turns out she first tried to pay her bill with a credit card. The card was repeatedly rejected by Rocket Pay. So, she (we thought) then paid by echeck. I saw the payment posted in RM, and started doing my happy dance.

After a couple of weeks my client got back to me. The money she had "Paid" for her bill had not been withdrawn from her checking account. She was finding the delay distracting. Did I mention she is a lawyer? And she was questioning the efficiency of the new software system that I had been touting to all my clients. Something along the lines of my clients would never put up with such a horrible system... Can you say Unhappy Client?

I got on the phone with RM technical support. As always the tech support folks at RM were fantastic. They started working with me immediately to find out what was going wrong. With similar immediacy, we learned the problem sourced back to TouchSuite. Turns out the ability to actually pay by echeck Does Not Exist!  All the buttons are in place, the link works, but the actual system to make it happen has not been implemented by TouchSuite! The payment was credited to the client in RM, but the money will never appear in my bank account! How do you like that for partner communications. RM is selling a product that its merchant services partner does not even provide! And I am working for clients for free!

Not questioning why, but simply committing to fixing it (as any great customer service company would, and as I have promised my disgruntled client) the folks at RM started working on a fix. Still don't have an answer on how we undo the client payment that will never be received, but the folks at RM will figure that out. Unfortunately any complete fix will require the involvement of TouchSuite, and here is where I am at with them.

When I starting installing RM I went through the merchant services application process with TouchSuite. Mind you I have been through this twice before with other merchant accounts. The last time was with Intuit, and it took ten minutes. The application process with TouchSuite was overwhelming. It spread out over days. I thought I was applying for access to Fort Knox, the White House, and the Vatican all in one. Eventually, or so I thought, the application process was completed and approved. I was wrong!

From what I understand now TouchSuite failed to timely process the application at its end. Apparently there is some other company called Forte that receives the application and processes it further? So, I got to repeat the application process. TouchSuite did fill in most of the information on the application for me so that all I had to do was sign it.  Guess what? They filled in the application wrong, and it was again rejected by Forte!

It looks like we are now on Round 3 of submitting stuff TouchSuite and then to Forte. I got to spend the better part of yesterday trying to re-apply only to have processing links fail, emails sending me to non-existent destinations, one person at TouchSuite having me do one thing while another person at TouchSuite was having me do something else... What the heck, it doesn't matter. The alternative would be me working on client matters that I will never get paid for....

Where are we right now?  Who knows? We have been testing RM for two, three months now. We closed out all of our Abacus Accounting matters yesterday, and were intending to go 100% live with RM this week. The plan was to send out our first full set of RM bills to all of our clients on July 1. Does not look like that is going to happen. I wonder if my mortgage company will give me extra time to pay my bill when I tell them my TouchSuite dilemna?

By the way, I still have plenty of love for the tech support folks at RM. Absolutely extraordinary! If I did not know that they were working over the top to make things right I would have jettisoned the whole system yesterday. I will say this, I have never been more impressed by a technology company's tech support than I am with RM.

Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information about Harding & Associates Family Law 

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Client Portals

We went paperless at our law firm years ago. With the passing of those years email has become the communications channel of choice for our firm and our clients. When a piece of paper comes in on a case it is scanned into an electronic file cabinet and a pdf copy is mailed to the client. Same thing for paper we generate. Scanned into an electronic file cabinet, and a copy emailed to the client.

A divorce case can generate a lot of paper. Keeping all of that paper organized is not a skill that many clients have or want. We repeatedly get requests from clients that we send them second and third copies of their documents. When we meet with clients the files that they bring with them to the meetings . . . well . . . let's just say some are more organized then others.

That got me thinking, how could I make all that paper handling easier for our clients? The answer was pretty simple: a secure online file cabinet for each client's matter, that the client could log into to view and download copies of all of the pleadings, discovery docs, correspondence, and records for their case. I cannot claim credit for the original idea in this regard. Client portals have been around for years. They just haven't been practical for small law firms to set-up. Fortunately, and as with all things tech driven, that has changed. Dropbox, Box, SugarSynch, iCloud, Google Synch have all transformed the way stuff can be stored online. These online storage services have for a while now been making it easy for you and me to save our stuff online. The client portal that I am writing about here is more than just an individual Dropbox account. I wanted something that could be personalized for each one of my clients, and something that each one of those clients could take ownership of.

A couple of days of pleasant online research empowered me with the knowledge that there are an abundance of providers delivering limitless storage capacity for a system like the one I was envisioning. I settled on ShareFile from Citrix (a preferred vendor of ours thanks to their great GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting products). Impressed by the friendly sales and support personnel, the extensive video training and documentation on their website, and the comfort that I had with the system when reviewing it, I made the jump.

So far so good.  I paid the $1200 for an annual plan and set things up. First, with ShareFile's help, we created a main law firm site. A nice little extra touch from ShareFile, when they set up our site they even personalized it with our law firm logo. Then we slowly began rolling out individual boxes for each of our cases (indexed by the last name, and then first name of the client). We call each of these boxes file cabinets. We created a default template that is inserted into each new case's file cabinet. The sub-folders for that template include pleadings, discovery, client communications, correspondence, records, uploads from client folder (so that clients can deliver stuff to us) and a few others.

We are rolling it out slowly. As a new case comes in we set up the file cabinet for that client. Then we start uploading pdf docs into each specific sub-folder within the file cabinet. The client receives an email from us with instructions on how the system works, and with a temporary password. The client then logs into the system, creates a permanent password, and begins accessing his or her stuff in his or her file cabinet. This client portal process does add a couple of extra steps to our usual scanning and indexing of stuff, but not a real bother.

The response from our clients has been overwhelmingly fantastic. Every single client loves it.!Their file cabinet keeps things organized for them. The docs are available 24/7. The clients can download the docs to their computers, or print out paper copies. If they have stacks of documents and records that they need to send to us, they can scan them at home, upload them to their file cabinet, and not have any size limitations that they might run into when trying to transmit via email. When we upload a doc to a client's file cabinet the client gets an email letting them know. When the client downloads that doc we get an email letting us know. Really cool. And it is not just pdf files that can be saved. Any file type is doable. Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, Pages docs, Numbers spreadsheets, PowerPoints, Keynotes, these client portals (be it ShareFile, or Box, or Dropbox, etc., etc.) are compatible with all of them.

These client portals are web based, so they are accessible wherever you have internet access and a browser, Citrix is a big company and so far we have not suffered from any down time at its end. Another nice feature for us is the ShareFile app. This password protected app allows us and our clients to log into the system remotely with our smartphones and tablets. These features enhance the mobility of our practice and facilitate my obsession with practicing law remotely. Of course all of the cloud storage vendors have similar apps.

$1200 may sound like a lot, until you think about it. We get unlimited boxes/file cabinets and unlimited storage. UNLIMITED. From now until forever everyone of our cases will have its own online file cabinet that will never fill up! And the price is only going to come down with time. Combine that with how thrilled our clients are with it and it is money well spent.

Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information about Harding & Associates Family Law 

#Harding&AssociatesFamilyLaw #californiafamilylaw #divorce #family law #superlawyers #americanacademyofmatrimoniallawyers #Pleasantondivorce #AlamedaCountyDivorce #ContraCostaCountyDivorce #lawyers