Tag Archives: Production

Lesson #132

Setup – System Preferences function

Production System preferences

Set up your accounts and printing specifications, then you can print shipping labels and envelopes for correspondence from MR9. You can also record repository activity after setting download preferences.

Envelopes

You can print addresses from your MR database directly onto a variety of envelopes in MR9. Specify defaults for the envelope size and setup you use the most to minimize printing time.

You can specify which standard envelope size — such as #10 — to use. Or enter custom dimensions if the available sizes do not match your most-used envelopes. Designate where addresses print on envelopes measuring in inches from the top and left sides. And choose a typeface and size for how addresses will appear visually.

Your default settings for printing envelopes will appear in the Envelopes and Labels panel when you print envelopes. You can change any of the specifications when printing.

FedEx Accounts for Shipping Labels

If you use FedEx to ship items to clients, set up MR9 so you can print FedEx labels from within MR9. Then you can track FedEx shipments without having to leave the system.

You can set up multiple FedEx accounts in MR9. There are 2 ways to use FedEx accounts in MR9:

1. Include all company FedEx accounts in MR9

If you have multiple FedEx accounts, set up MR9 to include all of your company’s FedEx accounts.

2. Accounts = label templates

MR9 FedEx accounts can also used for different label templates. So even if you have only one account with FedEx you can set up different accounts — i.e., label templates — in MR9 that use the same FedEx account credentials, but have different options set for the account preferences. For example set up accounts/label templates for the different priority options (overnight, 2-day, etc.) or accounts to match specific client requirements.

System Preferences lists all of the FedEx accounts already set up including your default account. Set up as many FedEx accounts as you need. You can update or delete any of these accounts, designate a different account as the default, and export this list as an Excel or CSV file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

Get developer credentials first

Before you can use MR9 to print FedEx labels and track shipping you have to update your external Federal Express account to a developer account so you can obtain the extra information such as your Client ID and Secret that will allow you to print labels from MR9. The Help menu in System Preferences for FedEx labels includes step-by-step instructions for obtaining this information and adding it to your MR9.

Once you have your developer information added to MR9, you can set your other default shipping specs for the account you are creating. All of these options can be overridden when creating a new shipment.

Label template options

Options you can set defaults for include:

• Service type (e.g., Priority Overnight)
• Pickup/drop-off location
• Whether or not you require a recipient signature acknowledging delivery and if so what kind of signature.
• If you want the recipient to be alerted via email so they can track their shipment online.
• If you want to receive email alerts about the shipment.
• Saturday delivery
• Saturday pickup
• Packaging options (e.g., FedEx envelope)
• Package dimensions (length, width, height) measured in inches
• Package weight in pounds
• Declared value for insurance purposes
• If you want to give the recipient the ability to return the package to you with the delivery fee charged to your account, and which delivery method to use for the return.
• If you want to use the standard FedEx pricing or the simpler FedEx One Rate pricing.
• If you want to include the related MR9 invoice number, job number, and/or witness name on the label.
• Any other information that you want to appear on the outside of the package
• If you have a special printer that requires a particular type of file, you can specify the file type.

Repository

Choose whether the default when uploading files to the repository is published or not. You can change the selection when uploading files and if publishing you also have to specify who will have access to the files.

If you want to track file downloads in MR9 by clients or internal staff, turn on repository logging options for one or more of these types of entities. Best practice is to track both activity streams as required by general security rules for business applications.

If you turn on one or more of these options, the Repository Download Log will track the selected activities and report all relevant activity for a specified time period.

When you turn on tracking for download activity by contacts, your contacts can also see their download activity in MR Connect’s Repository. A Reviewed column will be included in the Repository results grid, and any file they download will record the date and time in that column so your clients can see at a glance if they have downloaded a file or not.

UPS Accounts for Shipping Labels

If you use UPS to ship items to clients, set up MR9 so you can print UPS labels from within MR9. Then you can track shipments without having to leave the system.

You can set up multiple UPS accounts in MR9. There are 2 ways to use UPS accounts in MR9:

1. Include all company UPS accounts in MR9

If you have multiple UPS accounts, set up MR9 to include all of your company’s UPS accounts.

2. Accounts = label templates

MR9 UPS accounts can also used for different label templates. So even if you have only one account with UPS you can set up different accounts — i.e., label templates — in MR9 that use the same UPS account credentials, but have different options set for the account preferences. For example set up accounts/label templates for the different priority options (overnight, 2-day, etc.) or accounts to match specific client requirements.

System Preferences lists all of the UPS accounts already set up including your default account. Set up as many UPS accounts as you need. You can update or delete any of these accounts, designate a different account as the default, and export this list as an Excel or CSV file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

Get developer credentials first

Before you can use MR9 to print UPS labels and track shipping you have to update your external UPS account to a developer account so you can obtain the extra information such as your User ID and Password that will allow you to print labels from MR9. The Help menu in System Preferences for UPS labels includes step-by-step instructions for obtaining this information and adding it to your MR9.

Once you have your developer information added to MR9, you can set your other default shipping specs for the account you are creating. All of these options can be overridden when creating a new shipment.

Label template options

Options you can set defaults for include:

• Packaging type (e.g., UPS letter or express box)
• Package dimensions (length, width, height) measured in inches
• Package weight in pounds
• Declared value for insurance purposes
• Service type (e.g., UPS next day air)
• If you want the recipient to be alerted via email so they can track their shipment online.
• If you want the recipient to confirm to you via UPS that they received the shipment.
• If you do not require the recipient to sign for the shipment.
• Saturday delivery
• If you want to include the related MR9 invoice number, order number, and/or patient name on the label.
• Any other information that you want to appear on the outside of the package
• If you have a special printer that requires a particular type of file, you can specify the file type.

TL;DR: Store credentials and options for FedEx & UPS shipping. Define specs for envelope printing. Set tracking options for repository usage.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

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

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

Repository: MR has 9 repositories where you store files for safekeeping and quick retrieval.

Lesson #27

Production – Repository function

In MR9 you can store documents linked to an order, part, record, invoice, firm, contact, or location in their related repository.

In the Repository function you can:

• Search for files in a single repository or across all repositories.
• Search for files by name, file type(s), part order/invoice/upload date(s), who uploaded the file, order/part/ invoice number, and/or related firm/contact/location.
• Classify files for proper user access and availability.
• Download files for viewing, archiving, or emailing.
• View who has downloaded a file and when.
• Delete files you no longer need to store.
• Customize how the Repository results grid looks.
• Save your custom grid as your default. Your customizations do not affect other users and you can restore the original MR9 grid layout anytime.
• Export the list of repository files as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

Classify files

In the Repository function you can classify individual files for proper user access and availability. Set what types of users can access a file (office only or office and client), in which functions the file will be accessible, what kind of file it is, and if access via MR Connect is permitted. If multiple files will have the same file type and/or MR Connect access, you can set them all at once.

Customize how you view your Repository

The grid in which you view Repository listings is customizable to your individual preference. You can:

• Re-arrange the order of the columns so you can have the information most important to you in the most prominent place.
• Designate up to 10 columns as “sticky,” meaning they do not move when you scroll across a long grid so they are always visible.
• Stretch or shrink the width of columns to better fit the information presented.
• Hide any columns you don’t want to see in the results.
•  Choose which column(s) to sort results by. If you select more than one column, choose in what column order to sort the list and in ascending or descending order in each selected column.

When you have arranged your Repository the way you want it to look, you can save your layout so MR9 will display it this way each time you access it. You can always change or refine your layout, or return it to the default MR9 layout.

TL;DR: Manage files in the central repository.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

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

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

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

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.

Part: A part of an order is a separate record that is being sought that is included in the entire body of records for a case or patient. You can also think of it as the work order for that separate record.

Lesson #24

Production – Shipping function

When clients call to find out where their order is, you don’t have to leave MR9 to check the shipping status. Use the Shipping function to send products via FedEx or UPS, then quickly follow up an order’s current location anytime from within MR9.

You can also use this function to keep track of when and via what other methods you sent records out, and update the status of any shipped part or any other information about the shipping and its related part, order, and contacts.

Use Shipping to:

• Ship out produced service items.
• Print FedEx & UPS shipping labels that automatically include shipping addresses from your firm listings and your shipping preferences, and are tied to your FedEx/UPS account. If contact information is incorrect you can update it here and MR9 will update the contact’s listing.
• Track UPS & FedEx shipments from inside MR9.
• Note if you used another sending method such as via courier or email.
• Record notes about a shipment.
• Search for shipments using order, order part, or invoice number, shipping date(s), delivery method(s), and/or business unit(s) to quickly locate a shipment to track. You can sort your search results by one or more columns in ascending or descending order. (When you exit the function MR9 will revert back to the default order.)
• Create a new shipment with the same order part information, search subject (Records Of), location, and invoice information as a previous shipment.
• Export the list of shipments to an Excel or CSV file to save, print, share, or use in other applications. (Similarly you can export the witness/service item list from any shipment.)
• Change a part’s status to Shipped. MR9 will automatically alert your billing department that the part is ready to be billed if they do not invoice a part until it has shipped.

Shipping is a stand alone function but you can also access it directly within Turn In when entering service items to be billed.

FedEx/UPS tracking in MR9

When you generate a FedEx or UPS shipping label in MR9 it automatically:

• Enters the receiver’s address, phone number, and email. If the entity has a separate shipping address in its listing, RB9 will use that here. It will also validate the address before generating the label unless you deselect that option. And if the address is a P.O. Box, it will warn you that delivery might not be possible so you can change it before printing the label.
• Sets the Ship From address, phone number, and email to the assigned business unit of your company. (You can select a different business unit.)
• Enters your shipping preferences. (You can set up multiple profiles with different preferences and the same or different business unit.)
• Enters the tracking number in the shipment’s record.
• Enters today as the ship date.
• Adds the estimated shipping cost to the shipment’s record in MR9. Estimated Shipping Cost appears in the Shipping function’s results grid and in individual shipping label windows.

When you click the tracking number in MR9 it opens the related delivery service website in your browser and shows the shipment’s current status.

TL;DR: Use the Shipping function to send products via FedEx or UPS, and track an order’s current location without leaving MR9.

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.

Records Of: Patient name — or witness if this is a subpoena.

Lesson #23

Production – Envelopes and Labels function

Print addresses on labels and envelopes with information from your MR9 database automatically included. Start from an order, contact, firm, or location to generate mailing addresses, then select which ones to print. With orders you can choose a list of the locations related to the order, the order’s Sold To firms, or all of the order parties.

If entities have multiple addresses in their MR9 listing— such as office, shipping,  and home addresses — you can choose which type of address to print. You can also create labels and envelopes manually for one-off printing.

Print DYMO labels for correspondence and packages. Use MR9 default label layouts or create your own custom layouts. (Label printing out of MR9 requires a DYMO printer.)

If you want to address envelopes, use this function to generate a PDF file to print addresses directly on envelopes. Before printing, you can specify defaults in System Preferences for the envelope size and setup you use the most to minimize printing time.

TL;DR: Generate labels and envelopes with information from your MR9 database automatically included.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

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

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

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

Sold To Firm: Firm that ordered the services on the invoice. Usually the Ordering Firm on a job.

Lesson #20

Production – Turn In function

MR9 Turn In is a 2-part process. First, production staff compiles invoices for all parties ordering services on an order. Then billing staff fills in the financials and finalizes the invoices.

In Turn-in, you:

• Enter information about records (parts), attending parties, firms to bill, and services ordered. You can have multiple parts on the same invoice.
• Upload files, such as records, to the repository.
• Grant clients access to records, related files (like records), and invoices online through MR Connect. You can control which contact can access which file. Send contacts email alerts that files are ready for download. MR9 records the emails sent in the Email Log in Tools, so you can refer back to them later.
• Access the Shipping function to generate FedEx & UPS labels, then track shipments.
• Add explanations about specific services that will appear on the related invoice.
• Generate invoices with custom headers and messages you select from a list or create on the fly.
• After your production staff produces all service items requested, finalize invoices by applying billing rates, pay rates, and rush charges. Then calculate and post invoices.

While turn-in is a complex process MR9 makes it easy with powerful search tools, guided turn-in, and other time-saving features.

Powerful search tools

There is no default search in Turn In. You choose your search criteria including:

• Order number
• Order part number
• Part order date or date range
• One or more part statuses
• One or all tracking items
• One or more tracking steps
• One or more of your business units

Search results are color coded by part status and display their information that matches the search categories. To help you identify the correct part to turn in the results also show:

• Part due date
• If a part is a rush order
• Patient name
• Location of the records
• Type of records
• Ordering client

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

Guided turn-in

After selecting a part in the results grid the turn-in process starts with the essentials, then reveals additional steps as you progress. This means:

• Less errors. You won’t overlook important steps in turn-in due to information overload.
• Quicker turn-in. Less second-guessing the process since you are lead through it automatically.
• Easier training. Process is easy to understand and master.

Time-saving features

In addition to guiding you through the turn-in process MR9 Turn In includes other features to make it more convenient and faster.

The first step — adding records — includes these time-saving features:

• You don’t have to be in Turn In to start turn-in. If you handle both order intake  and turn-in you can turn in a part from its part window in Orders functions.
• You don’t have to know the order number to start turn-in. You can search Turn In by part order date(s), part status, tracking item/step, and/or the associated business unit(s).
• Parts are color coded by status. When searching for parts, results are color coded so you can quickly see which parts in the list have already been turned in, billed, shipped, canceled, etc. You can export the list if desired as an Excel or CSV file to save, share, print, or use in other applications.
• Order & part information accessible in screen. If you want to view or edit the related order or part information it is all accessible from the Turn In window. You do not have to go into separate functions to look up or update related info. Similarly Remarks are included in the Records grid so you do not have to go into a record to see notes about it.
• Enter attorneys and services with one click. Instead of adding attorneys or services one at a time to invoices, add an entire group at once with MR9’s Prefill concept. Multiple ordering parties can be added from the order. When prefilling parties you can have the services they ordered previously included too. Additionally services can be added from clients’ standing orders, their requests as parties to the order, or a set menus of frequently billed together items (Billing Sets). When prefilling you can also choose to consolidate invoices for the parties so that each firm’s orders on a part will be billed on a single invoice.
• Uniform list of services customizable to your unique business offerings. Clients’ online requests and in-house production and billing are all consistent because users choose items from lists instead of typing in information.
• Customizable records list. If you have multiple records for a part you can enter the information in any order that’s convenient. Then you can easily shuffle the order of the list to change how it will appear on the invoice. You can export the list if desired as an Excel or CSV file to save, share, print, or use in other applications.
• Other invoice options: You can create multiple invoice messages in addition to a default message to select from for different occasions such as a holiday greeting. You can edit the chosen message on individual invoices and write something from scratch too. You can also have additional information appear on invoices to third-party payers — such as insurance companies — that will appear along with the claim number, name of insured, and date of loss. The contents of both the invoice message and additional billing information can be as long as you want and you can style the texts’ appearance.

The next step — calculating invoices — speeds up your work process even more:

• Set rates directly. Within an invoice you can select billing rates in a fly-out panel — instead of opening additional windows on top of the invoice that obscure the invoice’s details. And if you already defined billing rates for your clients in their accounts MR9 will select those for you.
• Re-organize services list: Just like with the records list if you have multiple service items for a part you can enter them in any order, then shuffle their order to appear differently on the invoice. You can also provide explanations on invoices about specific service items if you think something requires more detail.
• Locate invoices in a part easily. It is not uncommon to have multiple invoices for the same part (original and copy clients). Since each invoice listed also lists the services being billed, the background color for the invoice line is yellow while records and service line items have white backgrounds so it is easier to scroll to each invoice. (You can “collapse” an invoice to hide the services so the list is shorter.) Also the invoice line text color indicates invoice status: black for invoices in progress, green for posted invoices, and red for voided invoices to quickly differentiate them from each other. You can export the invoice list if desired as an Excel or CSV file to save, share, print, or use in other applications.
• Send invoices immediately. When posting invoices from Turn In, MR9 will ask if you want to send the invoices to the clients now. If you do, MR9 will open the Send Invoices function with the posted invoices already selected so you only have to choose whether to email from within MR9 or print them out for regular mail. If emailing you can also attach other related files from your Repository.

TL;DR:  A 2-part process where your production staff compiles invoices for all parties ordering services on a part. Then after producing service items ordered, billing staff fills in the financials and finalizes the invoices.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Billing Sets: Like a fast food combo meal, MR9 Billing Sets are preset groups of service items. Selecting billable services by set, instead of individually, speeds up the billing process. More >

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

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. This is different from a work order which is called a part in MR9 as it is part of an order. You can have multiple parts/work orders for a single order/case.

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

Prefill: Save time when invoicing by having MR9 enter parties to an order and entering services billed from set menus of frequently billed together items.

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

Lesson #19

Producing records & more

In the Production module, you turn in order parts, archive records and other files, prepare files and invoices, and send out and track your products.

Production is where you:

• Turn in parts: Enter information about records, attending parties, firms to bill, and services ordered.
• Create invoices and apply billing rates and rush charges, then calculate and post invoices.
• Fulfill client requests.
• Ship out produced service items. Track UPS & FedEx shipments.
• Upload records and related files to the repository.
• Alert clients to files uploaded to their repository on MR Connect.
• Restrict individual parties from accessing specific files in their online repository in MR Connect.
• Generate production sheets to tell staff what service items are needed and how many units to produce.
• Produce labels and envelopes with information from your MR9 database automatically merged in.
• Archive and manage files in the central repository.

Production functions by name

• Turn In
• Production Sheets
• Envelopes and Labels
• Shipping
• Repository

TL;DR: Production is where you turn in orders, fulfill client requests, prepare invoices, and ship products.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

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