Hi Morgan Moran , as far as I know, everyone has the same fields available to them when building Mail Merges.

I know of no list of what all the fields mean that I can refer you to, however, most of them should be recognizable: as you say "address...., etc"

The ones that appear to be throwing you off are the Aged Balance numbers. Those would all be visible on a particular client on their A/R & Funds, Balance tab. See below for a sample. (If the image is too small, you can click on it to enlarge).

So, there are a lot of numbers on that page, and all of them are available for use in the merge. Your Aged Balances are what the client owes you. You can break it down in to how old, whether it is fees vs costs vs interest, or whether they have some unapplied payments offsetting the balance due. Period 1, 2, etc. refers to the aging periods, usually 30, 60, 90 and 120 days old, but those periods are editable in the product, so the merge field is generic about it and just calls it Period 1.

Hope that helps. If there are any particular fields that are giving you trouble, I will try to provide insight.

Nancy Duhon, Esq.
Duhon Technology Solutions, LLC
Master Certified Consultant for Sage Timeslips
Providing individual Consultations and Third Party Remote Desktop Support - including older/unsupported versions.
Co-Author of "The E-Billing Process Using Sage Timeslips©" available here: www.certifiedresourcesnetwork.com/
LawPay Partnered Consultant
MyCase Consultant
404-325-9779
[email protected]

Thank you for your response!  What you replied helped me figure out the information I want to pull into my mail merge.  I want to pull the current aged balance (see circled value in screen shot).  This, unfortunately, is not a merge field for me.  I'll attach an image of the merge fields I have access to.  

Is there any way for me to make this value a merge field?  Thank you!

Morgan Moran , I think the sample/provided template called Collection Letter might be helpful here. It shows many of the pertinent A/R fields you are looking at in one place. You might want to test merging that template against your data and see where your values show up to determine which fields you want to put in your own template.

Here's what it uses:

Note that the Current Balance alone that you circled without the Unapplied (if any) might not give you the true picture.

So, two things about Unapplied. 1) You want to have as little of it as possible. So if you really did get a payment that should have applied to a previous invoice, you want to apply that payment to the invoice to both zero out the unapplied, AND reduce the Aged Balance. You are trying to match the payment to the invoice it is paying as much as possible. In this scenario, the Current Balance generally IS the balance since there is NO unapplied affecting it.

2) Sometimes you really do have some Unapplied. The Client for whatever reason is paying BEFORE the invoicing is happening.

For example, the client pays you $1,000.00 - it is not a retainer or trust payment, so you enter it as an operating/AR payment. There has been no invoicing yet, so Timeslips reflects a -$1,000.00 Unapplied credit A/R balance. The Aged_Bal_Current_w/Unapplied would also be -$1,000 and NOT zero. The Client does NOT have a zero balance, they have a credit balance. Then, you invoice the client for $300.00. $300 of the Unapplied gets applied automatically, so the Current Balance is zero, and now you have a -$700 Unapplied credit. Now, let's assume that you clear the applies to that invoice for whatever reason, and your data table says Current Balance of $300 (the outstanding invoice) and an unapplied of the original $1,000.00. The Clients "true" balance is NOT $300, it is still the net effect of the $300 and the -$1,000, which is -$700.

My point is that using ONLY the Current Balance field could miscommunicate to the Client what their balance is, so the w/Unapplied is a better value and should work for you. 

Let us know if it doesn't.

Nancy Duhon, Esq.
Duhon Technology Solutions, LLC
Master Certified Consultant for Sage Timeslips
Providing individual Consultations and Third Party Remote Desktop Support - including older/unsupported versions.
Co-Author of "The E-Billing Process Using Sage Timeslips©" available here: www.certifiedresourcesnetwork.com/
LawPay Partnered Consultant
MyCase Consultant
404-325-9779
[email protected]

I really appreciate your detailed answer.  I'm only a few months in at my company (and Timeslips).  I know that the department that came before me wasn't the most tech literate and likely haven't been using the program to the most effective extent.  For how my company has been utilizing Timeslips, the value I circled is the one that I need to pull.  Some of our clients pay by retainer and not total clocked hours, and I think this is causing some of our Unapplied values to be unrepresentative of how much is owed.  Maybe this is something we'll be able to review down the line, but that currently is out of my hands!  

I've made a few test merges so I could compare the data pulled to what the merge fields select. Often, the Aged_Bal_Currentw/Unapplied contains the correct values, but in the case of our retainer accounts it does not. 

Morgan Moran , ah yes the word retainer is a bit of a loaded word. By that I mean there is no universal definition. It means different things to different people/firms, which is why you will not see that word anywhere in Timeslips by default.

So we would need to know how YOUR firm is using it to be able to advise.

Nancy Duhon, Esq.
Duhon Technology Solutions, LLC
Master Certified Consultant for Sage Timeslips
Providing individual Consultations and Third Party Remote Desktop Support - including older/unsupported versions.
Co-Author of "The E-Billing Process Using Sage Timeslips©" available here: www.certifiedresourcesnetwork.com/
LawPay Partnered Consultant
MyCase Consultant
404-325-9779
[email protected]

Oh man, that does complicate things. 

Is there any way for me to make my own merge fields?  Maybe I could define a variable in "Custom Fields..." and pull that with my mail merge?  

If that isn't possible I might have to go back to the drawing board!

Morgan Moran you make a good point. Let's back up a bit. Is a merge even the best approach....?

What are you trying to accomplish? What is the goal? With as little Timeslips jargon as possible. :-)

Sometimes we get so far down the garden path that we have ruled out other viable options without noticing.

Nancy Duhon, Esq.
Duhon Technology Solutions, LLC
Master Certified Consultant for Sage Timeslips
Providing individual Consultations and Third Party Remote Desktop Support - including older/unsupported versions.
Co-Author of "The E-Billing Process Using Sage Timeslips©" available here: www.certifiedresourcesnetwork.com/
LawPay Partnered Consultant
MyCase Consultant
404-325-9779
[email protected]

So true. 

Our firm makes cover letters for the bills they send out (see example below).  They've been typing out dozens of them a month by hand for years.  Not only does it take a lot of time to do, it also make space for a lot of human error. 

I've been able to recreate the cover letters using Timeslips mail merge function.  Doing this takes seconds and save a lot of effort. The right most column is the one giving me the most trouble because I can't find a premade merge field that pulls the exact data we need.

Let me know if you can think of a better way to acomplish this!

Eureka!!!

 Morgan Moran , Timeslips has a whole function within the bill layout for Cover Pages. Very similar to the Mail Merge, but you get a whole lot more fields. I suspect that is more what you are looking for.

Now Cover Pages are even more highly customizable, so I am just going to state at the beginning that I cannot afford to walk you through that on a free bulletin board.

So, read up in the Help File within the program re: Cover Pages, and give it a try.

Also, maybe look at Client.Project summaries in the layout as well. That seems to be what the info in the middle looks like to me.

By all means post specific questions here, but if you would like some one on one help, reach out directly to me at the contact info below.

Nancy Duhon, Esq.
Duhon Technology Solutions, LLC
Master Certified Consultant for Sage Timeslips
Providing individual Consultations and Third Party Remote Desktop Support - including older/unsupported versions.
Co-Author of "The E-Billing Process Using Sage Timeslips©" available here: www.certifiedresourcesnetwork.com/
LawPay Partnered Consultant
MyCase Consultant
404-325-9779
[email protected]