We're excited to announce that we have released the latest version of Centerbase with lots of new enhancements and improvements! All Centerbase databases were updated last night, February 13th, 2019.

Some of the newest features and updates that we've introduced in our February Version include:

 

New Features and Updates

Negative Billing Entries

Users can now create negative billing entries and generate bills from them. 

Negative billing entries provide an easy way for users to credit or refund a client. If a bill has an overall negative total, it can be refunded to the client or applied to other bills on the same matter. 

 

 

• Please Note: Once a negative bill has been at least somewhat refunded or applied, the entries and total cannot be changed unless all refunds and applied are deleted.
• When a negative bill is posted, the accounts associated with the negative billing entries get debited and, by default, client overpayments gets credited.
• This can be changed in the Accounting Settings on the matter, client, or system, with the Negative Bill Prepaid Account setting.
• Negative bills are included with matter balances when auto applying to posted bills.
• When a bill with a positive total has negative billing entries, the sum of the negative entries will be auto-allocated to the positive entries upon posting.
• Please note: There is currently no way to manually allocate this distribution.
  
  

 

Payment Reversals

Users can now "undo" the effects of a payment.

If the Payment has already been applied to a now posted bill, or otherwise been locked down, users can create a "Payment Reversal" to return billing and accounting in order to nullify the effect of the original Payment. 

 

• The new Reverse Payment button allows a user to take the existing, saved Payment and create an equal and opposite Payment Reversal.
• The resulting Payment Reversal will have the exact same total, distributions, and allocations as the original Payment, but in negative amounts.
• Payments and their respective Payment Reversals cannot be edited once a Payment has been reversed. Unlike most unmodifiable Payments, Payment Reversals can be deleted if they don’t have any associated trust bank transfers or if the Payment Reversal is from a Payment with applied Credits/Prepaid, whose original Payment has also been reversed.

If the original Payment got transferred either to or from Trust, and there was an associated Trust Bank Transfer, the Payment Reversal will have a Pending Trust Transaction either to or from Trust.

 

Line of Credit Report

We've added a brand new report to improve users' billing processes. 

With our new report, users can calculate interest against Hard Cost Expenses for a matter. There is now a tab in System Settings under Billing called Variable Interest Rates. The tab contains a start date, end date, and interest rate. It will show all of the rates that are in so far, allowing users to remove, edit, or add rates. This operates similarly to Centerbase's rate table logic. 

 

 

The Line of Credit Report will:

• List Hard Cost Expenses for a matter and calculate interested accrued as of a specified date. 
• Allow users to filter by "Matters" and "As of Date."

 

You may download the new Line of Credit report on our downloads page here. 

 

Linking and Adding in Imports

Centerbase Administrators can now import new Items, set links, and set lookups to Items already in Centerbase. 

Previously, Items had to be imported, and then the new Items had to be merged with their duplicates in Centerbase. Now, users may choose the new Link and Add merge option, and if the Item already exists in Centerbase, it will be used in the import process when linking and setting lookups. 

• This means if the Item already exists in Centerbase, we don’t create any duplicates that need to be merged, saving time, space, and preventing possible errors.
• In addition, if the imported Item matches an Item in Centerbase, but the imported Item has a value for a field that the existing Item does not have a value for, the existing Item will get the imported value.
• This option will never override existing values, only add values where there weren’t before.
• If more than one match exists in Centerbase, the Item will be ignored. Run duplicate checking with the same settings beforehand to make sure none exist.
• If there isn’t a match in Centerbase, a new Item will be created.

 

Please Note: You must download the new version of the PC Administrative Tool here in order to get this update. 

New System Utilities

New functionality has been added to System Utilities to give users more control and configurability. 

Users can now:

• Copy values from one field to another. To learn more, please read our full article here. 

 

• Set orignator(s) based on a user lookup field or percent share field. Choosing multiple lookups will set multiple originators and requires a percent share filed for each one. To learn more, please read our full article here. 

 

Report Tab Permissions

Permissions can now be set on each report tab so anyone with rights to the specific tab can view all reports on it. 

A new permission has been added, called AccessAllReports, which replaces the CanManageBilling permission for a user to access a report. This permission can be set in the Users tab under System Settings > Permissions. 

 

 

• There is also a new per-tab security setting for users/groups, allowing them to view a report tab even if they don’t have AccessAllReports set to true.
• A Users/Groups dropdown list has been added to Tabs under System Settings > Report Manager.

 

Ability to Change Default Rate Table

Users can now change the system to set default rate tables that new matters/clients will default to a new set of rates. Old matters/clients can also remain on the old default rate tables. 

 

Default rate tables can be set in System Settings > Rate Tables > New Default Rates

 

 

Additionally, when creating new rate tables, if a non-default table is created, there is a new button that says Make Default, which is located near the Save Name button. 

 

 

Clicking the Make Default button brings up a dialog with options for how to handle older matters/clients that were on the default rate table. 

 

 

Other Tweaks and Improvements

*SPR = Software Performance Report

Quickbooks Improvements 

• Capacity to handle more than 100 accounts in Quickbooks has been added.

Miscellaneous 

• Users now have the option when temporarily unposting a bill to leave payments on the bill. (SPR #5037)
• Production and Origination now supports decimals for % share. (SPR #5033)
• Added back the ability to set a custom date on line items on a check (different from the check date.) All line items will still default to whatever the check's date is (not necessarily today's date.) (SPR #5060)
• Added the bill date to the consolidated bill summary page (SPR #5053)

Issues Resolved

*SPR = Software Performance Report

• Fixed issue with Date Controls not updating if the Write Check page is open. (SPR # 4855)
• Reports larger than 100% width are handled better. (SPR #4854)
• Fixed an issue with reports that had queries being deleted. (SPR #4853)
• Fixed the problem with report filters defaulting to "{DateSettings." (SPR #4866) 
• Fixed the issue with PC version task list being limited to 500 rows. (SPR 4865)
• Updating W-9 Received to a checkbox. (SPR #4872)
• Conflict Check updated to handle e-mail addresses better. (SPR #4869)
• Added an origination filter/column to the Rates by Matter report. (SPR #4867)
• Fixed an issue where certain all-day events would sometimes show as having a time on the calendar.
• Fixed an issue where billable expenses could not pull from a protected account. (SPR #4926)
• Fixed an issue where a couple of deadlines for LawToolbox could not be calculated in Centerbase. (SPR #4931)