Tag Archives: MR9

Lesson #118

Setup – Billing Rates function

Billing rates are the amounts you charge for services. These rates are organized into tables — so you can charge different clients different amounts for the same service items by applying different billing rate tables instead of having to enter rates each time you bill someone. You might charge different billing rates for the same service items based on negotiations with clients, networking rates with other agencies, or rates requested by an insurance company. Your multiple billing rate tables can contain the prices for all of your service items — so you can easily apply the correct prices when invoicing specific firms by selecting the appropriate table.

Set up Billing Rate Groups first

Before you start creating billing rate tables, set up Billing Rate Groups in the Lists function. Billing Rate Groups are groups of similar tables, so when billing you can search through a subset of your billing rate tables instead of the whole long list of tables each time you invoice a client. Set up basic categories/groups — such as Standard, Preferred, and for specific clients. You can also designate which Billing Rate Group is your default group that will appear when setting up new billing rate tables, new firms, new contacts, etc.

After setting up groups, use the Billing Rates function to add your billing rate tables within the groups. You can set up as many billing rate tables as you need in each group.

Add as many billing rates as you need

You can set up billing rate tables in 2 ways:

• From scratch
• From an existing table — copying and updating an existing table is a quicker way to create a new table because the existing table’s rates and details are duplicated in the new table for you to update.

Another way to save time is to set default billing rates, pay rates, and options for service items in the Service Item Master, then change them for specific situations by creating different rate tables with custom rates for the service items.  Every billing rate table you create in MR9 will automatically inherit all service items set up in the Service Item Master — including all default rates and options for each item as well. So if you set up defaults in the Service Item Master then you only have to update them as needed in individual rate tables.

Give each billing rate table you create a clearly specific name so your billing staff can easily understand when it should be used. Some examples would be Standard Rates, Preferred Rates, Medical-Technical, and Rates for [a specific law firm]. You can further segment your market by state and/or city if you charge different rates by location.

Add as many billing rates as you need

In each billing rate table you can customize the billing rate for each item. If there are service items that do not pertain to this billing rate, leave their billing rate at $0 and MR9 won’t bill for them when this billing rate table is used.

In addition to each service item’s billing rate you can also customize:

• The minimum invoice amount for the service item.
•  If the billing amount and pay amount for this service item will have the Expedite/Rush amount added to it.
• Whether the item is court taxable and/or sales taxable.
• If you offer discounts on this particular service item. The percentage of discount that a client will receive on the service item is entered in their Firms setup.
• If you use the Reward Points System and the service item should be included in the revenue calculation to accumulate points.
• If you pay commissions on the service item.
• If you want the service item name and billing amount to appear on invoices. (If you set a firm to always print details on invoices in their Firm setup, then their invoices will be fully itemized, displaying all service items and billing amounts overriding whatever is specified here.)
• If you have the MR Connect plug-in, you can allow clients to request the service item when submitting an online records request.
• If the service item needs your production department’s involvement, you can have it appear on Production Sheets which show them all of the parts that have been turned in and the related service item(s) to be fulfilled.
• LEDES codes required by clients for e-billing.

In addition to customizing the billing rates you can also make adjustments to each Rush Type in the table if needed. All Rush Types are automatically inherited from the Rush Type Master. You can also include any relevant notes or comments in a rate table.

Manage billing rates

You can update any information in a billing rate table at any time except its Billing Rate Group. You can delete any billing rate table that hasn’t been used. If you can’t delete a table, you can de-activate it so it does not appear in lists. And you can update rates in multiple billing rate tables at once in the Service Item Master.

To find a billing rate table to copy, update, delete, or de-activate, you can search your entire set of billing rate tables or narrow your search to a specific Billing Rate Group, state, city, and/or billing rate table name. You can also choose to search all tables or only active tables. MR9 lists the results by Billing Rate Group and includes each table’s name, its state and/or city (if applicable), and its Active status.

You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR9 will revert back to the default order). Export your search results as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications. You can also sort and export the service item and rush type lists in each billing rate table.

Attach billing rates to entities

After setting up Billing Rate Groups and billing rate tables, attach entities to the rate tables. You connect billing rates to firms, contacts, and parties to an order. You can do this when you set them up or at any time afterwards. Contacts inherit billing rate tables from their firms but you can select different tables for contacts from their firm’s. Parties will default to the billing rate tables in their contact profile. You can override the default when adding parties to orders or when turning in parts.

Apply billing rates

When creating an invoice in Turn In, MR9 will select the billing rate table connected to the designated Bill To contact. You can select a different rate table for this invoice and you can override any charge on individual invoices.

TL;DR: Set up multiple billing rate tables so you can automatically charge different amounts to different clients for the same service items based on prices you negotiate with clients.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Billing Rate Groups: Umbrella structures aimed at categorizing your billing rates. Instead of one long list of billing rates, Billing Rate Groups create a series of shorter lists to search through.

Bill To Contact: The contact responsible for paying the invoice for an order.

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with, such as attorneys.

Firm: Company you do business with. They schedule depositions with you, e.g., a law firm, or they are a third party that pays you, e.g., an insurance company.

MR Connect: Online repository, orders, and access to your office for clients and others. More >

Lesson #116

Setup – Service Item Master function

Regular charges that you bill to your clients are called service items in MR9. Service items are listed on your invoices to provide itemized details for your clients and third-party payers. In-house they provide information to help you analyze your revenue streams.

You store and organize all the service items you bill to clients in the Service Item Master. Then during Turn In you select services from lists instead of entering items by hand. If you have MR Connect your clients also select services from lists, eliminating longhand requests from clients. Instead service item descriptions are consistent throughout your system.

Service Item Master set-up

There are 9 main categories in the Service Items Master List, called Service Groups, which represent the most commonly used billable items for court reporters. These main categories are preset by the system and cannot be modified by the user.

Within these main groups are subgroups that further organize your services so you do not have to scroll through your entire list of billable items to find a service to add to an invoice.  You can add/edit/remove subgroups that organize your miscellaneous services in the Service Item Subgroups function. After setting up your subgroups enter your company’s billable services with their details into these subgroups in the Service Item Master. You will use these items for setting billing rates.

Customize the defaults

The Service Item Master comes with a set of default service items already organized into subgroups. You can:

• Add/edit/merge/delete/de-activate service items in Misc. Charge subgroups.
• Edit the name of service items in the Attendance Service Group.
• Set default billing and pay information for all individual service items.
• If you have clients who require that invoices be submitted electronically, you can enter LEDES codes in your service items.

Once you have set up your service items with their defaults, you can set up multiple billing rate tables with custom rates for service items to cover different invoicing scenarios. The options that you set in each service item copy to the billing rates tables you create, saving time because you only have to update the defaults that need changing.

At any time, you can update service item rates and options. The default view in the Service Item Master lists all active service items within their service groups and subgroups to make it easy to locate an item. You can restrict the view to a single service group, a single subgroup, or service item name. You can also view all items, not only active items, that fit your search criteria.

You can:

• Add new service items
• Delete service items that are not needed.
• Merge service items into other service items.
• If you do not want to delete or merge an item you can de-activate it. (Deactivated service items do not appear as a choice when billing.)
• If you have multiple billing rate tables that need the same rate or option changed (including LEDES codes), you can update them all at once within Service Item Master with the Mass Update feature.

Information you can include in each service item:

• Service item Subgroup
• Service item name (the only required field). The name is important because it is how the service will appear in Turn In, on invoices, and in MR Connect.
• Unit type — such as pages, miles, or hours. MR9 prints the unit type on detailed invoices next to the number of units so your clients have a better idea of what they are being billed for. You can set up your own unit types in Lists.
• Account number of the related revenue account. You can customize your accounts in Chart of Accounts.
• Whether the item is active (will appear as an option when billing) or not
• Default billing rate (amount you charge per unit for the service item)
• Default markup type (fixed dollar amount or percentage) and amount
• If the service item is a taxable court cost or sales taxable
• If the service item is discountable (if you offer a negotiated discount on a firms’ invoices, what’s discountable is specified at the service item level, and the discount percentage the client will receive is entered in their Firms setup.)
• If you award clients points for ordering services, and the service item should be included in the revenue calculation to accumulate points
• If you have sales representatives and the service item should be included in the calculation of commissions
• If you want to include the service item name and/or amount when an invoice is printed with “no details”
• If you want to make the service item available for clients to request when they are scheduling online using MR Connect
• If you want to include the service item on production sheets
• UTBMS codes (if you want invoices to be LEDES compliant). If an insurance company requires different codes than the standard, you can update their billing rate tables only without modifying the service item master list.

The list of service items in the Service Item Master displays all of this information for each item listed, so you can see it upfront. You do not need to go into individual service items unless you want to edit/delete/merge/mass update rate tables. You can sort the list by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR9 will revert back to the default order).

Export the list as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

TL;DR: Set up service items, including default billing and pay info. Group related service items so you can locate them quickly in their subgroups when billing, instead of scrolling through a long, undifferentiated list of all miscellaneous service items. If you have MR Connect, your clients will be able to select service items the same way.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Award Points: Used to encourage clients to book with your agency by rewarding them with points for different services.

Firm: Companies you do business with.

MR Connect: Online repository, orders, and access to your office for clients and others.

Lesson #115

Setup – Service Item Subgroups function

Any billable services that you include on invoices must be set up as Service Items in MR9. You could have over a hundred service items to cover all the types of billable services you provide. To make it easier to add billable services to invoices, they are broken down into 9 basic service groups: Original, Copy w/ Original, Copy, Additional Copy, Rush, Exhibit, Mileage, Attendance, and Misc. Charge.

However since you can still have potentially a hundred or more miscellaneous charges to bill, MR9 breaks down service groups further into Service Item Subgroups. This way you can locate individual service items quickly when billing based on their subgroup instead of searching through a long uncategorized list of service items.

MR9 includes some default subgroups and you can add/edit/delete subgroups in the Misc. Charge group to better fit your company. Since the idea with subgroups is to make billing easier by limiting the amount of time it takes to find an individual service item, take some time upfront to consider what would be logical groupings of your billable services and make Service Item Subgroups for each of those categories.

An example of a Service Item Subgroup would be Exhibits. You have multiple items for exhibit billing: Color Copies, B&W Exhibits, Bates Stamping, etc., that could all be categorized as Exhibits.

You can update your subgroups at any time but you cannot delete any subgroups containing service items that you have already used on invoices.

Create your own subgroups

The default view in Service Item Subgroups is to list all subgroups, but you can narrow the view to the Misc. Charge Service Group to make it easier to see if you need to add a subgroup or update one in this group by editing its name to better fit your needs. (You can view but you cannot add subgroups to or edit the other Service Groups.)

You can sort the list by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR9 will revert back to the default order). It might be helpful when setting up subgroups to export the list of existing subgroups to share with others, work with in other applications, or print out.

Creating new subgroups is easy. All you do is click New, give the subgroup a name, and save. Your new subgroup will automatically be added to the Misc. Charge Service Group for you to use in other functions. Some common subgroups are Production, Exhibits, Delivery, Video, and Video Conference.

After setting up a subgroup you can then enter its related service items using the Service Item Master.

Using subgroups

Service Item Subgroups come into play when adding a client’s requested services to either their entity listing, as a party to an order, or when adding service items to an invoice during Turn In. You can also use them to narrow the results of reports such as the Misc. Sales report and to see subtotal breakdowns in interactive reports such as Client Analysis.

TL;DR: To make finding a particular service item quicker set up Service Item Subgroups, then arrange your company’s billable services into these subgroups.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Service Groups: The most commonly used billable items for court reporters such as Original or Copy. These main categories are preset by the system and cannot be modified by the user. The catch-all Misc. Charge Service Group is where you enter billable service items that are not a separate Service Group.

Service items: Regular charges that you bill to your clients.

Lesson #114

Setup – Chart of Accounts function

Although MR is not a general accounting system, it uses account numbers to keep track of sales, cash receipts, accounts receivable, payables, and other transactions in a basic double-entry bookkeeping system. You can set up MR’s accounts to match your general ledger or accounting software.

For example, if you use QuickBooks, you can use QuickBooks Integrator to import your MR data directly into your QuickBooks. But before you can import MR invoices and payments into QuickBooks, you must set up your MR business units’ accounts to match your QuickBooks setup.

If MR’s default set of accounts is not accurate to your in-house setup, you can add, edit, and delete accounts to match MR9 to your general ledger or accounting software.

Set up account types first

The first step in matching MR to your in-house setup would be to customize your account types in the Lists function. Basic accounting rules group all finance-related things into 5 fundamental types of accounts: Assets, Liabilities, Equity, Income, and Expenses. MR includes these and other account types, which you can edit/delete and add your own. Entries here appear in the Account Type drop-down in individual accounts in the Chart of Accounts function.

Set up your Chart of Accounts

Each account in Chart of Accounts is tied to an Account Type, and includes an account name and reference number (account number). MR uses these accounts for different financial activities in your company’s business units.

The default view in Chart of Accounts shows all accounts in the system in numerical order by account number. It also includes the account names, their account types, and whether the account is active or not. You can restrict the view to a single account type or multiple account types.

You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR will revert back to the default order). You can export your Chart of Accounts as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

You can keep the default accounts set up by MR or customize the default Chart of Accounts by adding, editing, and deleting accounts. If an account is not used but you don’t want to delete it, you can make it inactive so it will not appear as a choice in account lists elsewhere in MR.

If you are going to process credit card fees in MR, you must set up two accounts in Chart of Accounts so MR will separate out those fees:

1. An Expense-type account for the fees
2. An Other Current Assets-type account for undeposited processing fee funds

Then you can assign those accounts to handle those fees in your business units.

Designate accounts to use

After you have set up your accounts, you designate which ones to use for different financial activities. Where you use accounts in MR

• When setting up business units, you can leave the default accounts set up by MR or select which accounts handle which types of transactions for each of your company’s business units.
• When setting up billable services (called service items in MR), you select an account to associate with each service item.

TL;DR: Use MR’s default accounts as is, or customize the Chart of Accounts to match your in-house system or QuickBooks.

MR concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately.

Service items: Regular charges that you bill to your clients.

Lesson #113

Setup – Users and Groups function

You can run MR9 as a single user, but if you have other in-house personnel who need access to your MR9, set them up as users. Then give them user names and passwords to access MR9, and store work-related and personal information about them. Group them according to their access levels and job functions, so they can perform their jobs and receive internal messages, but not access areas of MR you do not want them to use. 

Each MR9 user needs a license to gain access to the application. Although account sharing is allowed, our recommendation is for each user to have their own unique Named User License for security, data integrity, and auditing purposes.

Groups give users defined access

User account administration is a critical stage of your setup phase as it allows you to bolster your security posture by managing the access each of your users has within RB9. Users and Groups is the tool you use to manage MR9 users, individually and grouped according to permissions, rights, and notifications. There are 2 default groups in MR9:

• Administrators – grants group members full access to all areas of MR9.
• Users – basic group every MR9 user is part of and grants them limited access to only essential areas of MR9.

The initial user of your MR9 system is designated as an administrator so they can enter other users and grant them permissions. They can add other users to the Administrators group, and anyone who is an administrator in MR9 can perform the same functions. There is no limit to how many administrators your system can have. We recommend maintaining at least two members in the Administrators Security Group to ensure that if one admin is locked out, the other can quickly restore their access.

Security Groups

This feature enables precise permission management, ensuring users have the exact access required for their roles. By limiting exposure to sensitive information, administrators can effectively maintain data integrity across the organization.

Security Groups can be created with well-defined permissions to limit group members’ access to specific functions. For example you could set up an Orders group, in which you give access to all Orders functions in MR9 and maybe some select functions in other modules, such as the repository and entities.

When setting up a new group, the only required information is the Group Name. Other information you can add to a group is a group description, group members (MR9 users), and security permissions/function access.

There are 2 levels to security permissions:

1. Simple access — Users in the group can search and view information, i.e., a read only level.
2. Comprehensive access — Users can also edit and delete information.

Most functions offer comprehensive access only, but in some functions you can limit access to read only. Functions that offer both access levels are generally more critical areas, such as orders, parts, and invoices, which you might want to allow some users to view, but not change.

In addition to setting up Security Groups administrators can:

• Add or delete users from each group (one user, several, or all users at once) — MR9 indicates which users are active making it easy to remove unnecessary group members.
• Change which functions are accessible in a group (except the Administrators group).
• Delete groups (except the Administrators and Users groups).

Users can be members of more than one group, so you do not have to have a lot of groups to cover every option. If someone’s responsibilities overlap different areas, such as someone who oversees both calendaring and billing, administrators can give that person access to both areas through membership in multiple Security Groups.

While members of the Administrators group have all of the capabilities described by default, they can also grant members of other Security Groups the same capabilities if desired. Due to the sensitivity surrounding user account administration, access to the Users and Groups function should be limited to those belonging to the Administrators Group only.

Message Groups

In addition to Security Groups, MR9 also has Message Groups, which allow you to send a message to all the members of a group simultaneously. Members of a Message Group can also send messages to the group. There are no required Message Groups, nor are users required to be a member of any Message Group to use MR9.

Similarly to Security Groups, the only requirement when setting up a Message Group is a group name. Administrators can also add a group name, and add or delete members. Administrators can edit or delete existing Message Groups.

With either group you can sort the list by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR9 will revert back to the default order).

Adding users

When you open the Users and Groups function it lists all of the users who are already entered into your MR9 system — along with their user name, email address, whether they are an active user, and when they last logged into the system. You can sort the list by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR9 will revert back to the default order). You can also export the list as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

Administrators can add users to MR9 at any time. When entering a new user, the only required information is their full name, MR9 login name, and password. When saving a new user MR9 will prompt you to tie them to your company’s business units (BUs). You can tie them to one or more of your company’s BUs.

Even though it is not required, we recommend you include the user’s email address in their listing as it is important for password reset emails, Notifications and Messages, and 2-step verification at log-in.

If you are using email addresses as user login names, you will be required to enter the user’s email address instead of a login name. We recommend this option because everyone knows their email address, so it is easier for them to remember than a unique user name for their MR9 user ID. The option to use email addresses for MR9 login is a general system preference.

General information

In addition to required information you can store users’ contact information — such as their work email address, and other work related information, including their work phone number, start date/termination date, title and department (which you choose from lists you customized in the Lists function), the user’s supervisor, and any information you want to include that is not covered elsewhere in the user’s listing.

In addition to storing info about the user, this is also where administrators can:

• Reset the user’s password for them if they forgot their password and don’t want to change it themselves (administrators do not have a way to retrieve passwords).
• Let the user back into MR9 if they got locked out for making too many incorrect attempts to log in (using the wrong user name and/or password). Administrators set how many tries users get to log in correctly before being locked out in System Preferences.
• Deactivate the user if they no longer work for the company or otherwise don’t need to be assigned or contacted anymore. Deactivated users can no longer log into MR9, and their names will not appear in the system by default.
• Delete a user if they never did anything in the system. MR9 tracks and logs user interactions so if someone has added or updated information in MR9, they cannot be deleted from the system because their interactions are part of your audit trail.

Personal info

Personal information about a user includes their home address, date of birth, and personal phone numbers. When entering the user’s street address or P.O. box number, skip the other fields and enter the zip code. MR9 will fill in the city, state, and country for you. After entering the user’s address you can view maps and directions to it in MR9.

Pay Info

If the user you’re setting up is a Sales Rep, specify their Commission Rate so it will be included when calculating invoices.

After saving a new user, 2 other panes appear in their listing: Groups and Business Units. Groups will have the default Users group listed, and Business Units will list any BUs you tied to the user. You can add or delete groups and business units you want to associate with the user here.

Who gets MR9 access?

Clients who need access to their information in your system are not the same as MR9 users who are your staff, managers, or other company personnel who need access on a more global level. If you want to give your clients access to their orders, financial info, files, and other relevant info, add MR Connect to your MR9 system where they can have their own online MR9 offices automatically populated with their information exclusively.

TL;DR: Store work and personal information about company personnel. Give them access to specific functions in MR9 through Security Groups. Communicate internally with multiple users at once through Message Groups.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately.

MR Connect: Online repository, orders, and access to your office for clients and others. More >

Named User License: Each MR9 user needs a license with their own user ID and password to gain access to the application. 

Lesson #112

Setup – Lists function

Lists in MR9 allow users to choose an entry from a set of available values — saving time and reducing errors that result from keying in entries. MR9 includes initial values and defaults for lists used throughout the system, and you can run your business using these defaults. You can also edit, hide, merge, or delete most of these entries. You cannot create new lists, but you can add your own entries to most MR9 lists.

Managing lists

When setting up your MR9 system, take some time to customize its default lists to better match your company. You can revise a list at any time you have new options to add or unused options you’d like to remove/hide.

You can set each list’s default entry which will appear in any field tied to that list. Default entries cannot be deleted. If you want to delete a default-designated entry, you must set a different entry in the list as the default. Then you can delete the other entry if it is not required by MR9.

If you no longer need a particular entry — but want to keep its historical data — you can merge it into an existing entry of the same data type if it is not required by MR9.

If you don’t want to delete an entry or merge it into another entry— but you also don’t want it to appear as a list option in MR9 — you can de-activate it if it is not required by MR9. It will still exist in the database but it will be hidden.

You can export any list as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, share, print, or use in other applications.

Lists can be customized for:

• Accounting: Although MR is not an accounting system, it does track many financial aspects of your business. Its data can be used with QuickBooks, and it replaces separate billing software.
  Set up categories for types of accounts, financial transactions, names for types of custodian fees, payments, payment terms, and units of service items (e.g., pages, miles, or hours).
  Also set up billing rate groups: parent structures for related billing rates. (You could have 100s of billing rates, which can quickly become overwhelming without some sort of organizing capability.) You will assign each billing rate table, firm, contact, and party to an order to a billing rate group .
• Connect: MR Connect is the MR9 plug-in that gives your clients and third parties direct access to your office via the internet.
  Set up designations for MR Connect support ticket ratings and status (e.g., Awaiting Response or Closed).
• Contacts: Contacts are people who work at firms that order services from you.
  Set up categories for types of contacts, notes, work turnaround preferences, credit ratings, and tags to organize contacts. Also set up gender classifications, work titles, and salutations.
• Firms: Firms are companies you do business with: They order services from you, e.g., a law firm, or they are a third party that pays you, e.g., an insurance company.
  Set up categories for types of firms, notes, credit ratings, collection actions, and tags to organize firms. Also set up designations for account status, class (the quality or ranking of a firm), and client sources (how clients heard of you).
• Invoice: Set up categories (Groups) for invoice headers and messages so you can find what you want when invoicing without having to scroll through all of your invoice headers or messages. Also set up categories for invoice types and notes types to use as search filters.
• Locations: Set up categories for types of locations, departments within locations, doctor specialties and titles, notes, ways subpoenas are served, and tags to organize locations your runners visit.
• Orders: Set up categories for types of cases, special kinds of dates, sides represented in a suit, notes about the related case or parties, how orders are received by your company, and case statuses — such as in progress or settled.
• Others: Set up categories for types of events to acknowledge — such as client birthdays and anniversaries, how notes in Notes Logs were received (e.g., System, Email, or call), and award point redemption like gift cards or cash.
• Parts: Set up types of actions to take with requests — such as Contact Client — and actions taken — such as Call Made or Email Sent, admissibility of records, types of record being obtained e.g. Medical or Billing, categories of scheduling actions — such as mail requests or pick up records, part statuses — such as records obtained or part canceled, and categories of subpoenas — such as for a person or document.
• Production: Set up designations for how products are delivered to clients, e.g. USPS, courier, or FedEx.
• Repository: Set up designations for types of files that you will store in MR9 — such as notices and delivery receipts — to aid in finding files once stored. Some designations are pre-set by MR9 and cannot be deleted or edited, except options to show or hide on MR Connect.
• Tracking: Set up categories for items/services you want to track — such as records and process serving — and the priority of tracked items — such as rush or low.
• Users: Users are people on your staff who directly access MR9 — as opposed to contacts who access your office through MR Connect.
  Set up categories for departments in your company and position titles.

TL;DR: Many lists in MR9 can be customized by adding/editing options to better fit your company.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Award Points: Used to encourage clients to book with your agency by rewarding them with points for different services.

Billing Rate Groups: Umbrella structures aimed at categorizing your billing rates. Instead of one long list of billing rates, Billing Rate Groups create a series of shorter lists to search through when invoicing clients.

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with.

Firm: Companies you do business with.

Header Group: Parent structure that contains related invoice headers as its children.

Location: Place where records are stored — such as hospitals, schools, doctors’ offices, or businesses.

Message Group: Parent structure that contains related invoice messages as its children.

MR Connect: Online repository, orders, and access to your office for clients and others. More >

Notes Logs: Un-editable internal-use only notes entered either by a user or automatically by MR9 appear in chronological logs in the database record where they occurred, such as an order, part, invoice, or entity. More >

Order: An order in MR9 is usually a request for all records related to a case or to serve a subpoena for an appearance at a legal proceeding as opposed to a work order.

Part: A part of an order is a work order/request for a single record that is included in the entire body of records for a case or patient.

Tracking: System for keeping track of where production items are in your production cycle and physically in your office.

Users: You and your staff who directly access MR9.

Lesson #110

Entities – Business Units function

A Business Unit (BU) can be any entity within your company whose revenue you want to track separately. This could be a branch office, affiliate, another company you own, or an internal division that you want to monitor independently from other segments of your company.

Depending on the size of your company, you could have just one business unit or multiple BUs. The ability to create multiple BUs allows you to track orders and revenue down to individual offices/divisions/etc.

Many functions and reports in MR9 can be filtered to show results for one business unit, several BUs, or all BUs. Some reports group data by business unit, such as the Daily Register and Monthly Journals which give each business unit its own page(s) breaking down sales and receipts, plus grand total pages that combine information from all of your business units.

Information you can view/edit in individual BU listings in MR9 includes their address and contact information; financial info like tax ID; scheduling, production and billing preferences; which accounts to use for different types of financial transactions; your company logo to include on your invoices and statements; and miscellaneous information and notes.

Adding BUs to your database

Because MR9 comes with a built-in set of default values, forms, and templates, you only need to set up one thing to start using MR9: a business unit. MR9 requires you to set up at least one BU so you can process receivables. Update the default BU included in MR9 with your company name and ID — the minimum amount of information you need to include — and any other info you want to use in MR9 such as company address, contact info, billing preferences, custom accounts, and your company logo.

After designating a single business unit, you can start using MR9, plus you can create additional BUs and customize MR9 to your company. You can update your set-up at any time — adding/editing/deleting BUs and MR9 defaults — to better meet your needs.

You can enter business units from scratch, or save time and reduce entry errors by copying an existing BU and editing it to create a new BU. All of the BU’s details are copied into the new BU, except company logos.

Search for business units

You can search for business units by city, or you can view all of your business units in the business units main grid. You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR9 will revert back to the default order).

From the Business Units results grid, you can view and update any listed BU’s details, add new BUs, and export the grid as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

Basic BU information

The only information you are required to enter about a business unit is its name and ID. The name will appear in your report headers, invoices and statements, so it might be simply your company name. Different BUs can have the same name.

The ID, however, must be a unique maximum 10-character designation. Keep IDs brief, yet meaningful. For example, you could combine abbreviations for the location and the service provided (LA-DEP for Los Angeles – Deposition; LA-VID for Los Angeles – Video).

In addition to the business unit name and ID, enter the BU’s location and contact information under General information. Like the BU name, this information will appear in your report headers, invoices and statements, so enter this info as you want it to look on these documents.

Other General information tips

While you can have hundreds of business units in MR9, we recommend setting up as few as possible so that when designating a business unit, you don’t have to scroll through a long list of BUs to find one.

If you are entering the BU’s street address or P.O. box number, skip the other fields and enter the zip code. MR9 will fill in the city, state, and country for you.

If you have entered the BU’s address, you can view maps and directions to the address in MR9. You can also add your own directions to or notes about the BU’s listing.

Additional information

In the Additional pane, enter miscellaneous information about the business unit, including your company’s tax ID associated with the BU, and which BU payments for invoices and statements associated with this BU should be sent to. For example, if you have a P.O. box that you want payments sent to, set it up as a separate BU and select it for remittances.

This is also where you enter your company’s web address, and any information about the business unit that is not covered in other BU fields.

Preferences

Preferences set in business units will be used automatically in other MR9 functions. In the Preferences section, you enter the business unit’s production and billing preferences.

If you add late charges to invoices, this is where you enter the number of days before you assess a late charge. After the defined number of days passes, the late charge specified in the firm being billed will be automatically added to the invoice amount.

You can also choose to show or hide per unit rates when printing detailed invoices that you send to clients.

Accounts

Default financial accounts are included in MR9, but you can set up your company’s own accounts and/or designate which accounts MR9 should use for different types of financial transactions involving the business unit. For example, if you use QuickBooks for accounting, set up your BUs’ accounts to match your QuickBooks. Then you can import your MR data directly into your QuickBooks using MR9’s QuickBooks Integrator, eliminating the need to re-key financial data.

If you accept credit cards, you set up credit card payment processing fee accounts in your business units, then when processing fees are applied to invoices in Receive Payments, they are included in the corresponding accounts.

Invoice/Statement Logo

Upload your properly-formatted company logo into each business unit to automatically include your logo on financial correspondence from MR9.

By default MR9 will print your BU name, address, and contact numbers in standard text on invoices and statements. If you plan to use a company logo, ensure that the image file you upload includes your company info, as the logo will replace the standard text to give your invoices and statements a custom appearance.

After initial setup, add more information

When you save a new BU, MR9 asks if you want to restrict access to this BU. Usually you will not want to restrict access: you will want the BU to appear as a selection when entering new orders and performing other functions in MR9. However, there are times when you do not want people selecting a specific BU.

For example if you want a BU that is only used for new orders coming from client requests through MR Connect, set up a restricted BU for web orders and select it as the default BU for online requests in Contact – Online Order preferences. It will then be used when records requests come from MR Connect but it will not appear as a selection when your staff is setting new orders.

BUs in MR9

When entering a new order, assigning a business unit is required because whichever BU you select here will follow the order through its entire process. Any revenue generated or any reports you run based on business units will have anything pertaining to this order tied to the BU you select here. You select a business unit in User Preferences to be your default for new orders, but you can override the default when setting a new order.

You also select a default business unit to be displayed on report headers. Each report you print out in MR9 displays BU information from the default you select. You can select a different BU from your default BU.

Business units are used in many MR functions. Additional examples:

• When generating FedEx or UPS labels in Shipping, it defaults to your preferred business unit’s address and phone number, which can be changed for individual shipments.
• When setting up MR9 users, you can designate which unrestricted BUs they are associated with. You can add or remove individual users’ access to different BUs at any time.

Give others access to BUs

If you have MR Connect, you must give your contacts access to your business units. Without access to a business unit, your contacts can’t see 0rders related to that BU in their MR Connect. MR9 doesn’t automatically grant MR Connect access because it doesn’t know which BUs should be visible to MR Connect users and which shouldn’t, so you have to denote that yourself in the general Connect preferences (don’t forget to do this when adding new BUs).

Business unit access in MR Connect is different from access in MR9. Your contacts don’t have the option to select business units; access here just means that they can see their orders that are assigned to specific business units by your staff.

Since all orders must have an associated business unit for billing and reporting purposes, we recommend setting up a restricted BU for MR Connect record requests as mentioned above and set it as the default BU for contacts in the general Connect preferences. That way you funnel all new online requests into one place, instead of having them mixed in with orders set up in-house that default to your main BU. Then when you formally schedule a pickup from an online request, you can select the appropriate BU to assign to the order.

TL;DR: Set up business units to cover discrete areas of your business that you want to track performance and other metrics independently. You only need to set up one business unit to start using MR9.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with — such as attorneys, paralegals, and secretaries.

MR Connect: Online repository, orders, and access to your office for clients and others. More >

Lesson #109

Entities – Locations function

Locations are places where records are stored or where witnesses you are serving subpoenas on reside or work — such as hospitals, businesses, doctors’ offices, or schools. Enter locations into MR9 instead of re-keying location information each time.

Automatically include driving directions to locations in runner worksheets and store location-relevant files in their own repository. If there is something you want to remember about a location — whether it’s contact info, location directions, warnings, or anything else — store it in their MR9 listing.

Add locations to your database

You can enter locations from scratch in this function, or add them on the fly within an order part.

Before entering a location into MR9, check to see if they are already there to avoid duplicate entries. MR9 does not prevent you from adding multiple instances of the same location. If there are duplicate entries, you can merge them, however, not all data will carry over from the location that is being merged. The only information that will be saved from the merged entry is from the Tags, Repository, and Notes Log panes.

Search for locations

To find locations in your MR9 database, you can use the search criteria, singly or in combination:

• Location Name or a/k/a (also known as)
• Street address
• City
• State (one, several, or all)
• Zip code
• Location Type (one, several, or all)
• Tag
• Active locations only or all

Each listing displayed in the Locations results shows all of this info except any tags; and includes the location’s contact person, phone numbers, and any warnings about the location. You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR9 will revert back to the default order).

From the Locations results grid, you can view and update any listed location’s details, add new locations, and export the grid as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

Basic location information

Whether you are viewing an existing location listing or adding a new location, the detail window is broken up into a series of panes that contain related fields. The first pane, General, contains the location’s contact information, directions to the location, other basic information, and any warnings. When entering a new location, the only required information is the location name.

Other General information tips

If you commonly refer to the location by another name, include that alias in the a/k/a (also known as) field. When looking up the location, you can search by the alias instead of the location name. In search results the alias will appear in parentheses after the location name.

If you are entering the location’s street address or P.O. box number, skip the other address fields and enter the zip code. MR9 will fill in the city, state, and country for you.

If you have entered the location address, you can view maps and directions to the address in MR9. You can also add your own directions to the location’s listing. Any instructions entered here will appear in the Directions field of a job when the job will be at this location.

If you have information about a location that users should know when scheduling jobs, enter those notes in the Warning field. This information appears in red under Location Warning in jobs.

If you are no longer scheduling jobs at a location and you do not need to contact them anymore, you can deactivate their listing instead of deleting it so you retain all of your historical data about the location but they will no longer appear in searches for active locations anymore.

Additional

While you only have to include the location’s name before saving a listing in your MR database, you can enter other information at the same time or anytime later at your convenience. In the Additional pane, enter information about records pickup and subpoena delivery such as the method for delivering subpoenas, a different location for retrieving records from (ROI), and who on your staff handles the location.

Doctor Info

If the location is a doctor’s office, clinic, or something similar, you can include information about the doctor, including their title and specialty. (After you save the location, you can add other hospitals/clinics/practices the doctor is affiliated with/has hospital privileges with.)

After initial setup, add more information

Once you save a location in MR9, additional panes, fields, and functions become available. You can:

• Enter more information.
• Update existing information.
• Merge locations if you find duplicates.

You don’t have to go into the Locations function to update a location listing. Most MR functions that include a location field allow you to directly access that location’s listing, which you can view and edit.

Also, if you have multiple locations that you need to update the location type for, you can use Bulk Update to change them all at once.

Additional panes in saved location listings include:

Notification Email

If a location has more than one email address or has someone else on staff who should receive their emails, you can designate which email address to use for orders.

Tags

If you use tags (keywords or phrases) to monitor and send mass mailings to locations, you add tags to location listings, either by keying in tags or selecting them from the tag list you made in Lists. Each location can have an unlimited number of tags, and you can delete tags from a location when they no longer apply. (You can also use the Tag Manager to add or remove tags quickly from multiple locations at once.)

Repository

Keep files related to the location in your MR database. When viewing an individual location, you can see the description of any uploaded files in the repository panel without having to click into each file’s details. You can upload, download, or delete files here, and update file information, such as file type and description.

Notes Log

The system enters some notes about locations automatically in their individual Notes Logs, and you can also enter notes yourself about a location in their Notes Log for internal purposes. When you add a note to the Notes Log, you can include what type of note it is, how you communicated with the location, details about what occurred, and if needed, designate who should follow up and set a date and time for a reminder to be sent to them via MR’s message system.

Export location data for other uses

In these additional panes, you can export the information as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV(comma-separated values) file to save, share, print, or use in other applications.

TL;DR: Maintain a database of locations in MR9, including contact information, files related to the location, notes about the location, and more.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Firm: Business you provide services to — usually law firms, but can also be other court reporting firms, vendors, insurance companies, corporate clients, and courts.

Lesson #107

Entities – Contacts function

Contacts are people who work for firms you do business with. Examples of contacts are attorneys, paralegals, secretaries, legal assistants, claim adjusters, and court clerks.

Maintain a deep database of your contacts in MR9 in the Contacts function. If there is something you want to remember about a contact — whether it’s their contact info, standing orders, anniversaries, or anything else — store it in their MR9 profile. 

Add contacts to your database

You can:

• Enter contacts from scratch in this function.
• Copy an existing contact at a firm and update only the new contact info.
• Add them on the fly within a firm, case, job, or invoice.
• If you have an existing database of contacts in another application, you can import the data into MR9 from an Excel spreadsheet in the Bulk Import function.

Before entering a contact into MR9, check to see if they are already there to avoid duplicate entries. MR9 does not prevent you from adding multiple instances of the same contact. If there are duplicate entries, you can merge them — however not all data will carry over from the contact that is being merged. The only information that will be saved from the merged entry is from the Notification Email, Tags, Preferred Services, Anniversaries, Award Points, Repository, and Notes Log panes.

Search for contacts

To find contacts in your MR9 database, you can use the search criteria, singly or in combination:

• Full Name, AKA, first name, or last name
• Firm (which you can search for by name, AKA, number, or the name or number of a contact at the firm)
• Contact Type (single, several, or all)
• Email address
• Client Rep
• Sales Rep
• Tag
• Phone number
• Active contacts only or all
• Contact number

Each listing displayed in the results shows all of this info except any tags — and includes the main address of the contact’s firm, the type of firm, whether the firm is currently active, and any warnings about the contact and firm.

Customize how you view contact listings

The grid in which you view contact listings is customizable to your individual preference:

• Re-arrange the columns so the most important information is most prominent
• Stick up to 10 columns to the left side of the grid so they do not scroll when you have a results grid wider than your screen.
• Stretch/shrink columns to fit the results.
• Hide columns you don’t need to see.
• Choose which column(s) to sort results by.
• If you select more than one column, choose in what column order to sort the list.
• Choose whether to sort info by ascending or descending order in each selected column.
• Save your custom grid as your default.

You can save your custom grid as your default. Your customizations do not affect other users, and you can restore the original MR9 grid layout anytime.

From the Contacts results grid, you can view and update any listed contact’s details, add new contacts, and export the grid as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, share, print, or use in other applications.

Contacts are tied to firms

When entering a contact in MR9, the first, most important information is their firm. If you are entering a new contact without starting from their firm, MR9 will automatically open the firm panel so you can select the firm before entering other contact information. If the contact’s firm is not in your MR9 database, you can add it here on the fly.

Once you have designated which firm the contact belongs to, you can proceed to enter the contact’s information. Some fields will auto-fill with the firm’s information — such as phone numbers and billing information — which you can override in the contact listing. Until you save the contact you can change which firm the contact is tied to. After saving a new contact you can view maps of the firm’s location, get directions to the location, and view/update firm details from the contact’s detail screen.

Basic contact information

In addition to which firm the contact works for, the only other required information about a contact is their full name. When entering the contact’s name we recommend that instead of entering the name in the Full Name field, you enter names in the separate first and last name fields, then select which order you want the names — first name first or last name then first — to appear in the Full Name field. (You can also select options that include their preferred salutation and middle initial.) This way you can use the First Name/Last Name filters when searching for contacts in the main Contacts window.

You can save time entering contacts’ full names by setting up Autofill in System Preferences. You select which name parts are included — first name, last name, salutation, middle initial — and in what order. MR9 will automatically fill out the Full Name field for you as you enter the individual name fields.

In addition to the contact’s name the General pane of their listing contains their contact information, their nickname/AKA, other basic information, and any warnings.

Other General information tips

If you enter the contact’s primary email address in the General pane, you can email the contact directly from within their MR9 listing by clicking the button next to the email field.

If you have information about a contact that your staff should know when scheduling or invoicing jobs, enter those notes in the Warning field. This information appears in red under Contact Warning in ordering clients and parties in orders, part repositories, and in the Invoice panel in Turn In.

If a contact is no longer ordering records with you and you do not need to contact them anymore, you can deactivate their listing instead of deleting it so you retain all of your historical data about the contact but they will no longer appear in searches for active contacts anymore.

Additional information

Store the client’s preferences for receiving invoices and statements (email, print, don’t send) in the Additional pane. You can also enter their federal ID number if it’s different from their firm’s, and unlimited notes about the contact for your calendaring and production/billing departments. Style the text with different options — such as bold face, italic, text sizes, and colors — to enhance the readability of your notes.

If you have MR Connect, this is where you set up the contact’s login credentials. After saving the new contact this is also where you:

• Reset their password.
• Unlock their account if they tried to log in too many times with the incorrect credentials, and MR Connect locked them out.

Marketing

Use the Marketing pane to specify what type of contact the entity is for marketing and billing purposes plus enter personal information about the contact, including their home address. Some of the billing information will automatically populate from the contact’s firm listing — such as default billing rates — but you can change it for the contact.

You can also designate which staff member receives commissions on this client’s orders. If an account manager or sales representative went out and got this client for you, set them as the Sales Rep. This information will be used for allocating sales commissions and to generate Sales Commission Reports.

After initial setup add more information

Once you save a contact in MR9 additional panes, fields, and functions become available. You can:

• Enter more information.
• Update existing information — including resetting the contact’s MR Connect password.
• View the contact’s financial & order trends.
• Copy the contact to create a new contact with the same firm information.
• Merge contacts if you find duplicates.

You don’t have to go into the Contacts function to update a contact. Most MR9 functions that include a Contact field allow you to directly access that contact’s listing to view and edit details.

Also, if you have multiple contacts that you need to update the same information for — such as assigning a new sales rep or changing the billing rate — you can use Bulk Update to change them all at once.

If a contact moves to another firm, you cannot change the firm in the contact’s listing. Instead you have to de-active the current listing and set up a new listing for the contact at their new firm. You can use MR9’s Merge To sub-function to save some of the contact’s historical data from the original listing in the new contact listing.

Additional panes in saved contact listings include:

Notification Email

If a contact has more than one email address or has someone else on staff who should receive their emails, you can designate which one(s) to use for:

• Notifications for orders they place.
• Invoices and statements (if the contact’s firm does not request consolidated statements).
• Repository file upload alerts.

If you entered an email address in the General pane it will automatically populate each of these notification email slots. You can change, delete, and add email addresses for any of these email types.

Tags

If you use tags (keywords or phrases) to monitor and market to contacts, you add tags to contact listings, either by keying in tags or selecting them from the tag list you made in Lists. Each contact can have an unlimited number of tags, and you can delete tags from a contact when they no longer apply. (You can also use the Tag Manager to add or remove tags quickly from multiple contacts at once.) Label entities with tags (keywords or phrases) to mark them as part of specific groups, which you can use for different purposes, such as monitoring or marketing.

Grant Access To

In MR9, orders, parts, and invoices are tied to the Scheduling Contact (attorney). So by default if you have MR Connect, related information is accessible by that contact only. But in real life the attorney isn’t the one who will be accessing MR Connect and requesting records, paying invoices, or downloading the repository files. Instead, it is paralegals or secretaries that take care of that work on behalf of the Ordering Contact.

In Grant Access To, you select contacts at the same firm who can access this contact’s information on MR Connect. In addition to giving access to paralegals and secretaries who work for this contact and to the attorney’s senior(s) at the firm, you can also grant access to contacts at other firms.

Have Access To

Similar to Grant Access To, use Have Access To to grant this contact access to other contacts’ MR Connect — including contacts at other firms. Use Have Access To when you want to give one contact access to multiple other contacts’ MR Connect accounts instead of going into each of the other contacts’ listings and granting access one by one.

Any contact that you give access to this contact’s MR Connect will automatically list the contact in their Have Access To pane.

Preferred Services

Add your clients’ standing orders to their contact profiles. Then you can use Prefill Services on an order or invoice to easily select all of the service items a client expects.

When listing which service items are included in a contact’s standing orders, you can also include relevant details — such as how many units of an item they usually order, how many business days the order is due in (MR9 will calculate the due date for a specific job excluding weekends and holidays), the delivery method, their preference on rush deliveries, and any additional instructions for the service item. Any information entered here will appear as the default for records ordered by the contact and can be overridden in individual parts.

Anniversaries

Add important personal dates to contact profiles and set reminders so you never forget those dates. Important anniversaries could be birthdays or the anniversary of when they became your client. When setting reminders you determine how many days and at what time of day to send an alert and which staff member(s) the alert should be sent to.

You can use Anniversary Inquiry to print labels for cards to send to clients celebrating upcoming anniversaries based on these saved dates.

Award Points

Award Points are used to encourage clients to book with your agency by rewarding them with points for different services. If you have MR Connect you can allow contacts to request point redemptions online. You set up your own rewards — such as cash or gift certificates — plus designate what services earn points.

If your state does not allow reward programs, use points to track your clients’ order history and see who your best customers are by which contact’s calls generate the most revenue instead of by firm only.

If you reward contacts with points, you can monitor a contact’s points in the Award Points pane plus view their points history — which includes which services earned how many points on which invoices, current status of those points, how they were redeemed, and any notes about the points.

You can also designate which contact(s) within a firm will receive points earned by this contact — and allow the contact to view and redeem their points online via MR Connect.

You can boost a contact’s points-earning ability by automatically multiplying their points. For example if this is one of your best clients, you might want to award them double-points for every point-eligible service you offer. Or award extra points for special promotions that are limited in time then revert back to the original point scheme afterwards.

Repository

Keep files related to a contact — such as signed contracts — in their MR9 listing. When viewing the contact’s listing you can see information about uploaded files — including their description — in the Repository pane without having to click into each file’s details. You can upload, download, or delete files here, and update file information — such as which groups can access the file.

If you have MR Connect you can give contacts access to specific files in their repository. You can also view the download history of each file in the repository — including when it was downloaded and by which contact at the firm.

Notes Log

The system enters some notes about contacts automatically in their individual Notes Logs, and you can also enter notes yourself about a contact in their Notes Log for internal purposes. Some examples of automatic Notes Log entries are notes recording when a sales rep has been assigned, when statements are sent to the client, and if the client information was updated using the Bulk Update tool.

When you add a note to the Notes Log you can include what type of note it is, how you communicated with the contact, details about what occurred — and if needed, designate who should follow up and set a date and time for a reminder to be sent to them via MR9’s message system.

Export contact data for other uses

In these additional panes you can export the information as Excel spreadsheets or CSV(comma-separated values) files to save, share, print, or use in other applications.

View financial/job trends

In a contact’s Account Overview highlights of their financial and order activity history and trends are displayed visually. A table displays the contact’s total receivables since they became your client and active orders and parts. One line graph displays revenue generated, a second line graph displays orders scheduled/canceled, and a third line graph displays parts scheduled/canceled.

The line graphs are interactive. Hovering over a point in a line on a graph displays that month’s total $ amount or number. The line graphs default to the contact’s trends over the last six months. You can also view the contact’s trends over a year or 2 years.

TL;DR: Maintain a deep database of your contacts in MR9, including contact,  billing, and personal information, files related to the contact, notes about the contact, and more. View interactive graphs of their financial and order activity trends.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Award Points: Used to encourage clients to book with your agency by rewarding them with points for different services.

Client Rep: Representative who oversees orders on behalf of the client — as opposed to sales reps who are your account executives.

Firm: Business you provide services to — usually law firms.

Ordering Contact: Contact at the firm that is responsible for a job with your company. Can be different from the contact who scheduled the job.

MR Connect: Online repository, orders, and access to your office for clients and others. More >

Lesson #106

Entities – Firms function

Firms are businesses that schedule or pay for services — such as law firms or insurance agencies. If a client has multiple locations/branches, you can designate the company’s headquarters as a parent firm for the other branches so they are connected in your MR9 database.

Maintain a deep database of these client companies in MR9 in the Firms function. If there is something you want to remember about a firm — whether it’s contact info, their employees, financial history (including collections), or anything else — store it in their MR9 profile. 

Add firms to your database

You can enter firms from scratch in this function, import them from other applications, or add them on the fly within an order, part, or new contact (someone who works at the firm). If you have an existing database of firms in another application, you can import the data into MR9 from an Excel spreadsheet in the Bulk Import function.

Before entering a firm into MR9 check to see if they are already there to avoid duplicate entries. MR9 does not prevent you from adding multiple instances of the same firm. If there are duplicate entries, you can merge them — however not all data will carry over from the firm that is being merged. The only information that will be saved from the merged entry is from their orders and contacts, and the Tags, Collection Notes, Repository, and Notes Log panes.

Search for firms

To find firms in your MR9 database you can use the search criteria singly or in combination:

• Firm Name or a/k/a (Also Known As)
• City
• State (one, several, or all)
• Firm Type (one, several, or all)
• Parent Firm (which you can search for by name, number, or the name or number of a contact at the firm)
• Client Of (which you can search for by first name, last name, full name, or number)
• Sales Rep (which you can search for by first name, last name, full name, or number)
• Tag
• Active firms only or all firms in your database
• Firm number

Each listing displayed in the results shows all of this info except any tags — and includes the firm’s main street address, zip code, and any warnings about the firm. With so much information displayed in the results you might find exactly what you need without having to drill down further.

Customize how you view firm listings

The grid in which you view firm listings is customizable to your individual preference:

• Re-arrange the columns so the most important information is most prominent.
• Stick up to 10 columns to the left side of the grid so they do not scroll when you have a results grid wider than your screen.
• Stretch/shrink columns to fit the results.
• Hide columns you don’t need to see.
• Choose which column(s) to sort results by.
• If you select more than one column, choose in what column order to sort the list.
• Choose whether to sort info by ascending or descending order in each selected column.
• Save your custom grid as your default.

You can save your custom grid as your default. Your customizations do not affect other users — and you can restore the original MR grid layout anytime.

From the Firms results grid you can view and update any listed firm’s details by clicking its hyperlink in the grid, add new firms, and export the grid as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV(comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

Basic firm information

Whether you are viewing an existing firm listing in your MR9 database or adding a new firm, the firm’s detail window is broken up into a series of panes that contain related fields. The first pane, General, contains the firm’s contact information, other basic information, and any warnings.

With almost 20 fields and options in the General information pane alone, it might seem overwhelming to enter firms into MR9. However when entering a new firm, the only required information is the firm name. (If creating a new firm within an order, you will also be required to enter at least one contact for the firm.)

Other General information tips

If you commonly refer to the firm by another name or an abbreviation, include that alias in the a/k/a (Also Known As) field. When looking up the firm, you can search by the alias instead of the firm name. In search results, the alias will appear in parentheses after the firm name.

If you are entering the firm’s street address or P.O. box number, skip the other fields and enter the zip code. MR9 will fill in the city, state, and country for you. When you include an address in a firm’s listing, you can view maps and directions to the address in MR9. You can also add your own directions to the firm’s listing.

If you have information about a firm that users should know when scheduling or invoicing orders, enter those notes in the Warning field. This information appears in red under Firm Warning in ordering clients and parties in orders, parts, and in the Invoice panel in Turn In.

If a firm is no longer requesting services from you and you do not need to contact them anymore, you can deactivate their listing instead of deleting it so you retain all of your historical data about the firm but they will no longer appear in searches for active firms anymore. You can also deactivate all their contacts at the same time, if desired.

Additional information

Store detailed billing information (including payment terms, fees/charges/rates, C.O.D status, and tax info), the client’s preferences for invoices (list services or not) and statements (consolidated or not and sending method) in the Additional pane. You can set defaults for some of this information to save time when entering new firms. Then change the settings for individual firms as needed. (When you change a firm’s Late Charge Rate or Finance Charge Rate, MR9 automatically records the change in the firm’s Notes Log so you have a paper trail.)

You can also enter unlimited notes about the firm here for your receiving and production/billing departments. Style the text with different options — such as bold face, italic, text sizes, and colors — to enhance the readability of your notes. If this firm is a branch or subsidiary of another firm in your database, you can select that firm here as the parent firm/headquarters.

Addresses

If the firm wants invoices and statements and/or shipments sent to a different address from their general address, you can include dedicated addresses for those purposes in their listing. And like the main address, you can view maps and directions to those addresses in MR9.

Marketing

Use the Marketing pane to specify what type of firm the entity is for marketing and billing purposes — including selecting default billing rates. You can also designate which people are the client representative and sales representative on this client’s orders.

Collections

When setting up a new firm, you can assign one of your staff to be responsible for your collections efforts with the client — and designate the firm’s credit status with your company, e.g., In Collection or COD (Cash on Delivery).

After initial setup, add more information

Once you save a firm in MR9 additional panes, fields, and functions become available. You can:

• Enter more information, including employees at the firm you have contact with.
• Update existing information.
• View the firm’s financial & ordering trends.
• Merge firms if you find duplicates.

You don’t have to go into the Firms function to update a firm. Most MR9 functions that include a Firm field allow you to directly access that firm’s listing which you can view and edit.

Also if you have multiple firms that you need to update the same information for — such as assigning a new sales rep or changing the billing rate — you can use Bulk Update to change them all at once.

Additional panes in saved firm listings include:

Notification Email

If a firm has more than one email address you can designate which one(s) to use for:

• Email notices from MR related to jobs they schedule
• Invoices and other accounting information

Tags

If you use tags (keywords or phrases) to monitor and market to firms you add tags to firm listings — either by keying in tags or selecting them from the tag list you made in Lists. Each firm can have an unlimited number of tags and you can delete tags from a firm when they no longer apply. (You can also use the Tag Manager to add or remove tags quickly from multiple firms at once.)

Preferred Services

Add your clients’ standing orders to their firm profiles. Then you can use Prefill Services on an order or invoice to easily select all of the service items a client expects.

When listing which service items are included in a firm’s standing orders, you can also include relevant details like how many units of an item they usually order, how many business days the order is due in (MR9 will calculate the due date for a specific part excluding weekends and holidays), the delivery method, their preference on rush deliveries, and any additional instructions for the service item.

Collections

(After saving a new firm its Collections pane expands to allow you to enter more information.)

If a client is in arrears you can record your collection efforts here — including when you made an effort, what type of effort (such as Call Made — you can create your own set of collection actions in Lists), and results or other notes about the effort. If you want to be reminded on a certain date to follow up on the progress of your efforts, you can set a date and time — plus the staff member to be reminded. (This information is used in Collection Follow-up.)

If a client pays you an upfront deposit — i.e., a retainer — you can enter and track it in the Collections pane. You can view when retainers were entered in the system along with other details about the retainers — such as any notes made about a retainer and when retainers were applied to which invoices.

Repository

Keep files related to a firm in their MR9 listing. When viewing the firm’s listing you can see information about uploaded files including their description in the Repository pane without having to click into each file’s details. You can upload, download, or delete files here, and update file information — such as which groups can access the file (office staff only or office and contacts).

If you have MR Connect, you can give contacts who work at the firm access to specific files in their repository. You can also view the download history of each file in the repository — including when it was downloaded and by which contact at the firm.

Notes Log

The system enters some notes about firms automatically in their individual Notes Logs and you can also enter notes yourself about a firm in their Notes Log for internal purposes. Some examples of automatic Notes Log entries are notes recording when a sales rep has been assigned, when statements are sent to the client, and if the client information was updated using the Bulk Update tool.

When you add a note to the Notes Log you can include what type of note it is, how you communicated with the firm, details about what occurred, and if needed designate who should follow up and set a date and time for a reminder to be sent to them via MR9’s message system.

Export firm data for other uses

In these additional panes and the Collections pane, you can export the information as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV(comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

View financial/job trends

In a firm’s Account Overview, highlights of their financial and order activity history and trends are displayed visually. A table displays the firm’s total receivables since they became your client and active orders and parts. One line graph displays revenue generated, a second line graph displays orders scheduled/canceled, and a third line graph displays parts scheduled/canceled.

The line graphs are interactive. Hovering over a point in a line on a graph displays that month’s total $ amount or number. The line graphs default to the firm’s trends over the last six months. You can also view the firm’s trends over a year or 2 years.

Manage firm’s contacts

From the firm’s profile you can view the contacts who work for the firm (including inactive contacts if desired), update any contact’s details, add new contacts, and add or delete notification email addresses for individual contacts at the firm.

TL;DR: Maintain a deep database of client companies in MR9 including contact, billing, and marketing information, collections history, files related to the firm, notes about the firm, and more. View interactive graphs of their financial and job activity trends.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately — such as branch offices, other companies you own, affiliates, and profit-sharing operations.

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with — such as attorneys, paralegals, secretaries, legal assistants, claim adjusters, and court clerks.

Notes Logs: Un-editable internal-use only notes entered either by a user or automatically by MR9 appear in chronological logs in the database record where they occurred — such as an order, part, invoice, or entity. More >

Parent Firm: Headquarters of a multi-branch corporation.

MR Connect: Online repository, order, and access to your office for clients and others. More >

Service items: Regular charges that you bill to your clients.