Introducing the latest and greatest version of Centerbase! We're excited to showcase what our team has been working hard to refine and update in the last month and a half. We will be updating Centerbase servers with this new version today, December 6th.  Some of the newest features and updates that we've introduced in our December Version include:

 

New Features and Updates

*SPR = Software Performance Report

1. Conflict Check 

Users now have access to a brand new way to perform a conflict check on item-types such as Contacts, Clients, Matters, and PNC. We're excited to share how you can use our new Conflict Check feature!

Watch our video below for a walk-through of our new Conflict Check feature!

 

Accessibility

By default, Conflict Check is only enabled for Centerbase Admins.

Admins can enable conflict check for other users by going to System Settings, Users, selecting a User, clicking the Permissions tab, and then scrolling down to "Can Conflict Check." There will be a checkbox that the Admin can select or unselect. 

 

There are two ways to access Conflict Check. Either from the Actions menu on an item or on the Navigation Bar. 

 

Accessing Conflict Check from the Actions menu:

You can access the conflict check by clicking on the Actions button, and it will appear in the drop-down menu on any of the following items:

• Contacts
• Clients
• Matters
• PNC

 

 

 

Navigation Bar:

In order to access Conflict Check from your navigation bar, you must add it in the System Settings. To do so, click the cog in the lower left-hand corner of your homepage, select System Settings, and then go to Navigation Bar. 

 

 

Once you've selected Navigation Bar, you can add another item to your current item list by selected the Add button at the bottom. 

 

Title your new item, and select the Action Button. From the Actions dropdown, select "Conflict Check," which will be located under "Legal Pages." 

 

Select Save when you are done and Conflict Check will be added to your main Navigation Bar. 

 

 Performing the Conflict Check 

Once you've navigated to the Conflict Check page, you may search for any item with the top three fields, "Any," "Must Have" and "Exclude." The Conflict Check will perform a search on all item types have been uploaded to Centerbase. 

To search for phrases, add quotes around your search term. Ex: “John Forbes” will only find records that have John Forbes next to each other.

Prefix searches are also supported using the “*” at the end of your word(s). Ex: He* will search for any records that have words beginning with “He,” like "Hermaan" or "Herold."

 

"Any" Search Box

This is the only field that is required when performing a conflict check. Users can use it to get records that match any of the terms that are entered. It will also search for inflection words (extra letter or letters added to nouns, verbs and adjectives in their different grammatical forms.)

 

"Must Have" Search Box

This field specifies any additional terms that you need to include in your search. Please Note: You must have already completed the "Any" search box to use the "Must Have" search box. 

 

"Exclude" Search Box

This search box allows you to filter out any term or phrase you want to exclude from your search.  Please Note: You must have already have completed the "Any" search box to use the "Exclude" search box. 

 

Once you're done, you can click the Run button to perform your conflict check. The "Results" grid will display the results of your search as shown below. 

 

You can also export the results to either an Excel spreadsheet or CSV file. To do so, simply click on the download button in the top right. The Excel spreadsheet will display the results in the "Match" column by bolding the terms. 

 

2. Changes to Payment Display

Users now have a clear way to view what payments and credits are on a bill.

• The new green "P" icon indicates that there are applied credits or prepaid balances on a certain payment.

• Since payments and credits can be allocated differently depending on your site settings, the number of credits and payments are calculated separately.
• This will display each accounts' opening balance, which is used for calculating the running balance for the account.
• The settings will default to today's date, and you may manually change them.

• This new credit/payment split allows you to allocate both the credits and the payments in any way you want.
• Previously, any applied credit/prepaid amounts would always have to be auto-allocated. Users are now given complete control over the way these allocate.

Important notes:

To simplify our interface, we removed the ability to manually change the amount applied for payments on the payment/credit history dialog. However, including or excluding payment with the checkboxes still lets you choose on the fly which payments you want to include on a bill. Unchecking a payment with applied Credit/Prepaid will unapply them immediately, so be careful if you want to preserve them.

 

3. General Ledger

Users now have the ability to look at all transactions of an account for any given date range. 

• This new capability can be found under Reports > Accounting.
• This will display each accounts' opening balance, which is used for calculating the running balance for the account.
• The settings will default to today's date, and you may manually change them.

 

4. Ability to Void Checks (SPR #4516)

Users now have the ability to remove a check from billing while still keeping a record of the check in Centerbase.

• Any type of check can now be voided with the Void button located in the top right-hand corner of the check menu.

• Voiding a check will set its amount to 0, set the check as "Voided," and make the check uneditable.
• Checks with linked line items or a linked Trust Transaction will void those as well (set amount to 0 and make them uneditable.)
• Checks with other linked items, like refunds, trust bank transfers, or vendor bill payments will require deleting those items when voiding the check.
• A confirmation message will show up to warn users if voiding a check will consequently delete other items, shown below: 

 

 

 

5. System Health - Billing Codes

Centerbase Admins can now check their existing billing codes as part of the system health.

• In System Settings, under System Health, users can navigate to the Billing Codes page.

• This allows users to check if there are any problems with billing codes.
• The page runs a check on all the billing codes in the system, checking if:
  • They have a type (time or expense) and a category.)
  • If there are any Expenses, it ensures that there is also an Expense Type. 
  • On the Billing Codes System Health page, you will be able to see with expense Types are missing or if the Categories are missing.

 

 

6. System Health - Billing Entries

Centerbase Admins can now check their existing billing entries as part of the system health.

• In System Settings, under System Health, users can navigate to the Billing Entries page.

• This allows users to check if there are any problems with billing entries.
• The page runs a check on all the billing codes in the system. The top sections checks if:
  • Each entry is associated with a valid Matter.
  • Each entry has a valid entry type.
  • Each entry has a billing code.
• In the bottom section, the system runs a check to verify that each time entry has a valid timekeeper.

 

 

7. Re-Index of Utility Stored Procedures (SPR #4559)

Users can now rebuild all indexes on all tables within their database. 

• Access your Utilities by navigating to System Settings > Utilities.
• Here, you have the option to Re-Index all of your tables.

 

 

 

Please Note: In order to improve overall performance, this action should only be performed after the initial import. 

 

8. New Filter on Generate Bills

We've now added a new filter to Generate Bills, helping you avoid the duplication of pre-bills. 

• The new filter is titled "Last Bill," and will exclude matters that have had a bill generated in the past X number of days, weeks, etc. This saves time by helping avoid the duplication of pre-bills. 

 

 

Other Tweaks and Improvements 

*SPR = Software Performance Report

• Improved matter loading performance. (SPR #4500)
• Updated Outlook 365 integration to not show All Day Events as "Busy" by default. (SPR #4569)
• Added validation on payments to not allow them to save if they will not be fully allocated to fees, expenses, interest, etc. (SPR #4572)
• Updated our Word integration to handle more types of documents and newer versions of Word. (SPR #4578)
• Expanded Outlook 365 synchronization to include activities on or after the past 30 days (not just on or after today.) (SPR #4602)
• Import Updates:
  • Removed timeout issue when importing/merging from the PC Admin Tool. (SPR #4553)
  • Greatly improved performance when importing dates and numbers. (SPR #4561)
  • By default, formulas and billing will not be populated/calculated when an import is finished. This allows you to run imports much more quickly, but will not update all of the information related to billing and formulas, allowing you to run several imports and then run these utilities after they are all done. There is a setting under System Settings -> System Configuration -> Advanced Configuration -> Import to adjust this behavior. (SPR #4567)
  • Added Utility for populating Activity colors from a user lookup field. (SPR #4618)

Issues Resolved

*SPR = Software Performance Report

• Various Fixes to the General Ledger Report. (SPR #4475)
• Fixed issue with Checks saving a custom payee. (SPR #4476)
• Made sure only positive value checks can be made. (SPR #4477)
• Fixed issue where auto-payments from unapplied were incorrectly showing up in the system health. (SPR #4481)
  
• Fixed various issues with Workflow Task Nodes that would not handle all day events, nor set lookups properly. (SPR #4485) 
  
• Fixed issue where some documents downloaded with an old file name. (SPR #4486)
  
• Word Add-in: Fixed issue where some buttons would get clicked and not do anything in some cases. (SPR #4487)
  
• Fixed an issue where grids would lose their sort order when running a new query. (SPR #4494)
  
• Fixed ZenDesk widget on System Settings page. (SPR #4495)
  
• Fixed issue where some auto payments were not covering interest. (SPR #4496)
  
• Updated Associate Folder to also link documents already in the folder to the record they're associated with. (SPR #4537)
  
• Fixed an issue where matters with long names could not download a generated statement. (SPR #4538)
  
• Fixed issue where billing codes could not be edited if the customer did not have accounting. (SPR #4539)
  
• Various fixes to Reconciliation to better handle things that were saved for later. (SPR #4540)
  
• Updated check line items to always have the same date as the check they are a part of. (SPR #4541)
  
• Fixed an issue that would happen if an account was deleted but there were trust accounts associated with it. (SPR #4544)
  
• Fixed an issue where the calendar would sometimes not display properly until it was refreshed. (SPR #4545)
  
• Fixed deadlock issues that would sometimes occur if generating bills and PDFs at the same time. (SPR #4546)
  
• Fixed issue where trust bank transfer checks would not always set the Payable To field. (SPR #4547)
  
• Updated Trust Account System Utility to handle existing trust accounts as well as new trust accounts. (SPR #4595)
• Corrected issue with interest over 1,000 causing invoice view totals to show incorrectly on the web form. (SPR #4614)
• Updated Office 365 API to accommodate changes by Microsoft and corrected issues with bi-directional sync. (SPR #4602, 4608, 4570)
• Updated the auto-allocate procedure so that it is clear when there are errors in the calculation because of fees without a timekeeper. (SPR #4615)
• Resolved the problem where the payment dialogue would never save again if it got an error one time. (SPR #4616)
• Corrected the issue on line item grids with an infinite loop that caused drop downs to become non-responsive. (SPR #4617)
• Fixed the issue with 2-factor authentication not saving Display name, email, or phone.
  (SPR #4619)
• Changed the chart preview on the home page edit to fix the issue with loading previews. (SPR #4620)
• Resolved the issue where saving payments did not hit some validations for allocations. (SPR #4621)
• Corrected the typo where the dialog before issuing a refund showed a "Yes" button, but asked to click "OK." (SPR #4622)
• Fixed the issue when printing a deposit with more than 18 non-cash items. Had been limited to a number of item boxes on a standard deposit slip. (SPR #4624)
• On trust accounts, added a procedure to run when deleting accounting accounts. If any trust accounts have a null bank or liability account, it tries to set them based on matter, client, and system settings. (SPR #4626)
• Added a new setting to set merge duplicates batch size. (SPR #4628)
• Added validation on Trust Accounts when saving payments from trust to check so that the trust account's accounts exist and have an adequate balance. (SPR #4629)
• Resolved issue with checks and vendors bills where deleting a row while editing certain cells would cause the grid to become non-responsive. (SPR #4632)
• Fixed billing tab of matters/clients showing old values after saving even though data had been saved. (SPR #4639)
• With Allocations, changed manual allocation dialog to have a max size and added a scrollbar if contents too large. (SPR #4643)
• On the Payment/Credit History dialog, updated the balance column to 'unapplied' which displays the unapplied amount of payments and credits. (SPR #4644)
• Changed error messages to stay onscreen until the user clicks 'OK', rather than have the message close after a timeout. (SPR #4645)