They say
“Smokeball already reports on billings.”
We say
It does, and it has no record of the advert or referral that produced the client, because that predates the matter.
For Smokeball
Some matters bill well and consume a fortnight nobody charged for.
Export billings from Smokeball, upload the leads behind them, and rank channels on work that was worth doing.
No API key Nothing to install in SmokeballNothing to install No card requiredNo card
CloseRev reads a Smokeball export of billings or collections — the client's phone or email, the amount and the date — and matches it against the calls, forms and referrals that produced the enquiry. Smokeball's distinguishing feature is automatic time capture, which means a firm using it knows what a matter actually consumed as well as what it billed — and that combination makes a channel's real profitability measurable rather than assumed. Revenue with no traceable lead is reported as Direct / Unknown.
Last checked against Smokeball's own documentation on September 24, 2026.
The gap
You know exactly how long every matter took. You have no idea which advert produced the ones that took too long.
Smokeball sees
What was sold, to whom, and for how much.
no shared row
Your ad account sees
The click, the keyword, the call, and what each one cost.
The file
What the export needs in it.
Three things carry the match: who, how much, and when. Anything else is optional and only changes how the report can be sliced.
- Needed
Client phone or email
On the client record from intake. Whichever the intake form captured is the key.
- Needed
Amount billed or collected
Collections where you have them; billings otherwise. Whichever you choose, use it on every row.
- Needed
Billing date
When the work was billed. Keep the matter open date too, so the cycle is visible.
- Optional
Recorded time
The captured hours on the matter. This is the column that turns a revenue ranking into a profitability one.
Step by step
Getting the file out of Smokeball.
Written for somebody with Smokeball open in the next tab. Report names vary by edition, so each step says what to look for.
-
Export billings by client
One row per billing with a client contact detail, the amount and the date.
-
Export the recorded time if you can
It is what makes this page different from every other legal page in the catalogue: revenue per hour by source rather than revenue by source.
-
Export your lead sources
Tracked numbers, the website form, directory listings, referral sources and any content that produces enquiries.
-
Take a year
Matters run for months, and a shorter file measures the retainer rather than the matter.
-
Upload
The join runs on the phone and the email, normalised, and declined enquiries stay in the file as the cost of the source that sent them.
What comes back
The page Smokeball cannot show you.
Revenue by channel, the count of sales behind each figure, and an honest bucket for the ones nobody could trace. Sample figures, from the worked example on the Law Firms page — not from a Smokeball account.
Traced to a channel$396,00066% of $600,000
Sales matched27 of 41high confidence only
Average sale$14,600per paid sale
| Channel | Share | Sales | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | 18 | $312,000 | |
| Meta Ads | 6 | $54,000 | |
| Email marketing | 3 | $30,000 | |
| Direct / Unknown | 14 | $204,000 |
Unmatched sales stay in Direct / Unknown. They are never spread across the paid channels to make the total look better.
The argument
What changes when the matter and the ad share a row.
Automatic time capture makes profitability per channel measurable
Most firms can tell you what a matter billed. A firm capturing time automatically can also tell you what it consumed, without relying on anybody remembering to write it down.
Put a lead source beside that and the question changes from which channel produces revenue to which channel produces work worth doing.
The two rankings differ, sometimes sharply: a source producing high-value matters that each consume triple the hours can be the least profitable in the firm.
Nothing else in this catalogue can support that comparison reliably, because in most systems the time data is too incomplete to trust.
Where the recorded time is exported, the report gives revenue per recorded hour by source, which is as close to a profitability ranking as a marketing report gets.
Fixed-fee work rewards the channel that sends simple matters
A great deal of small-firm work is fixed fee — conveyancing, wills, straightforward applications — where the price is set and the effort is not.
On a revenue-only view every fixed-fee matter from every source looks identical, which conceals the entire question.
With recorded time, the sources separate immediately into the ones sending clean matters and the ones sending complicated clients at the same price.
That is usually the single most useful output for a firm doing volume fixed-fee work, and it is invisible in any platform report.
It also tells you where a price increase is justified, which is a commercial decision the marketing report can actually inform.
Enquiries the firm declined still cost the firm
Intake time is real: somebody takes the call, opens a file, assesses whether the firm can act, and frequently concludes it cannot.
A source producing a stream of enquiries outside the firm's practice areas has a genuine cost that never appears in a cost-per-client figure.
Keeping declined enquiries in the lead file makes that cost visible against the revenue the source did produce.
For a small firm where the person doing intake is also fee-earning, that cost is measured in billable hours rather than in admin time.
This is the reason a cheap lead source can be the most expensive thing a small firm buys.
Referrals are the largest channel and the least examined
Existing clients, other firms and local professionals produce most of the work in most small practices, and none of it arrives with an invoice attached.
That absence makes every paid channel look like a larger share of the firm than it is, and it hides the question of what actually causes referrals.
Recording the referral source at intake puts them into the same comparison on the same collected money.
The follow-on finding is usually the valuable one: which paid channels produce clients who go on to refer others, which makes those channels worth more than their own billings suggest.
Fair questions
“Smokeball already does that.” Not quite.
They say
“Our fees are fixed, so revenue per source is enough.”
We say
It is not, and fixed fees are exactly the case where it is not — the price is constant and the effort is not.
They say
“Most work is referral.”
We say
Then the report will show that with a number, and the useful question becomes which paid channels produce clients who refer.
No. It reads an exported file, so your matters, documents and time entries stay where they are.
Billings or collections with a client contact detail, the amount and the date.
Revenue per recorded hour by source, which is a profitability ranking rather than a revenue one.
Because the price is the same from every source and the effort is not, so a revenue-only view conceals the whole question.
Yes. Intake costs a fee-earner's time, and a source producing unusable enquiries is expensive in the currency a small firm cannot spare.
A year, because matters run for months and a shorter file measures the retainer.
Collections where you have them. Whichever you choose, apply it to every row.
Yes, recorded at intake, and in small firms they usually dominate.
Yes, where the export carries one, and it is usually necessary for a general practice.
Any revenue with no traceable enquiry. Its size is stated rather than distributed.
A contact detail, an amount and a date, plus recorded hours and a practice area if you include them. No matter details, no documents, no time narratives. Encrypted in transit and at rest and deleted with the import.
Collected fees per source, revenue per recorded hour where time is included, and everything unmatched kept visible.
By trade
Trades that run Smokeball.
What the report looks like once the export is in, written for each one.
Other systems
Also worth reading.
Running more than one system, or comparing? The method is the same and the columns are not.
Closed-sales file Actionstep Multi-practice law firms Closed-sales file What to export Closed-sales file MyCase Small and mid-sized law firms Closed-sales file What to export Closed-sales file Rocket Matter Law firms billing by the hour Closed-sales file What to export
All 97 systems 
Smokeball and the other product names and logos on this page belong to their owners and are shown to identify the software a file comes from. CloseRev is not affiliated with or endorsed by them, and connects to none of them: it reads a file you export.
Start today
Two exports, and you will know.
Nothing to install in Smokeball, no API key, and no need to have been tracking anything until now. Last year works as well as this month.