If you have been using Amicus for a while, you have probably heard the British voice saying 'Sorry to interrupt - you have an appointment soon'. Meet Peggy Lewis (the personal assistant to Ron Collins, the president of Gavel & Gown) - the infamous voice!

Many people love hearing Peggy, but some Amicus users prefer not to be interrupted with any type of reminder. Keep in mind that each Team Member can change their own preferences in Amicus Attorney (as long as the Administrator hasn't disabled the Preferences menu in their Security Profile). You can select File - Preferences, go to the Calendar - Alarms tab and uncheck the 'Remind Me about appointments' checkbox. Of course, if you want to be reminded about appointments, you can change the reminder settings to play a different sound (Sorry Peggy!), or change the default reminder time for new appointments.

This preference affects Amicus Attorney only, and turning off the reminder causes the Amicus alarm not to be displayed. However, the 'Remind Me' field for new appointments will still be set to 'Remind me' in '10 minutes' (or to whatever number of minutes you have set your default time) - you just don't hear the reminder. You could change individual events to 'no reminder', and then you would not be reminded for that specific event in either Amicus, Palm or Outlook.

If you are using the Palm synchronization, you can determine whether or not you wish to hear the reminders - these settings will not affect the Amicus reminders (other than d below). In the Treo 650, you can change the Calendar sounds in Preferences - Sound & Alerts. You can select a) one of many different sounds to alert you to your appointments, b) how often you are alerted, c) the repeat intervals, and d) the default number of minutes for new events that are entered in the Palm. Older Palms may have fewer settings, but you can still turn off the alarm if you wish.

If you are using the Outlook synchronization (only available in the Client/Server Edition), you can determine whether or not you want reminders and/or sound in Outlook. If you prefer not to receive any reminders in Outlook, you can turn them off permanently. In Outlook 2003, select Tools - Options - Other. In the General section, click on Advanced Options, click on Reminder Options, and then uncheck the 'Display the reminder' checkbox. The procedure is similar in most earlier versions of Outlook as well.

One other thing - if your Amicus reminders are popping up, and you get an error message saying that you can't select 'I'll be there', or select a time interval to 'Remind me again' because the event is locked, here's what you can do. Close your Amicus office, and have your Amicus Administrator unlock your records. If the reminder is still locked, then the Administrator may have to unlock all records - all Amicus users will need to exit Amicus first.

FYI - I went to Gavel & Gown's website, did a search in their Knowledge Base for 'reminders', and came up with the information about the Outlook reminders. Users are welcome to check their Knowledge Base, which addresses many common Amicus issues. I have provided a link at the end of this article which will take you directly to their Knowledge Base. Of course, if you have issues that you cannot find in the Knowledge Base, please call your local Amicus Certified Consultant or Gavel & Gown tech support.

I was working with a client recently who was very confused about setting up repeat events. He would set up a ToDo as repeating weekly so that it would remind him every week until he completed the ToDo.

But he didn't understand about marking the ToDo done, so the 2nd week he would see 2 of the ToDo's listed - then he would delete one of them.

Then I was talking to another consultant about this, and she was also confused. I realized that there are probably a lot of Amicus users out there who are confused too!

So here are some scenarious on setting up reminders - when it is best to use a ToDo, when it is best to use an Appointment, and when you should use repeating events, and when you probably shouldn't.

• Reminder to make a phone call at a specific time - create an Appointment, and make sure you have the alarm set.
• Reminder to make a phone call, not at a specific time - use a ToDo. If you select a contact with a phone number, the Do button will automatically be created.
• Reminder to send an e-mail message - use a ToDo. If you select a contact with an e-mail address, make sure to change the Assistance Setup to 'Send E-mail'
• Reminder to pay a bill, or to do your billing every month - use a repeating ToDo. Just make sure that when you 'Do' the Do, either mark it Done, or if you do not need to keep it in history, you can delete it.

NOTE: If you delete the ToDo, be sure to read any prompts that appear - whether or not to delete the ToDo from other Team Members ToDo lists; and whether you wish to delete all or just the current ToDo - if it is repeating. As long as you only delete the current repeat interval, the ToDo will still appear at the next interval.

Gavel & Gown recently sent out an e-mail - to Certified Consultants and QB Link users - regarding a potential problem with the link between Amicus & QuickBooks 2006. If you did not get the e-mail, you can click on the link below to read about the current issues.

I have a client who is using the Amicus - QuickBooks 2006 link, and once or twice, the error message they talk about did appear, but the next time she did an exchange, it fixed itself. Other than that, and a few other quirks that we resolved, she is using the link successfully.

So if you are already using the link, I would not recommend changing the configuration in the Administrator unless you contact your local Amicus Certified Consultant (or Gavel & Gown tech support) first.

However, if you are considering upgrading to QuickBooks 2006, I would definitely consider waiting until this issue is resolved.

NOTE: If you are considering setting up the Amicus - QuickBooks link (with any QB version), I highly recommend that you work with an Amicus Certified Consultant who is very knowledgeable about the link. You are also welcome to download my link tips document from my website - go to my Tips page, and click on Amicus Attorney - QB Link Tips.

I was doing some online training for a new client a few weeks ago, and was showing her some of the great features of the Notes module; e.g., how to assign a Note to a File, how to convert a Note to a Phone Call, Phone Message, etc.

Then she showed me something that I really didn't remember - a quick way to create a Note while you are in the Notes module. Type your Note in the Unassociated Notes window (see the picture at the beginning of this article), and instead of clicking on Save, click on Details. The Note Details window opens, and you can decide then and there just what you want to do with your Note.

Of course, there is a quick keyboard shortcut to create a Note. Without having to go to the Notes module, press Ctrl-Shift-K (or select File - New - Note from any Amicus menu). You just type your note, and right then and there, decide what to do with it.

One of the ways that I had been showing users how to create a note was to open the Notes module, type a note, and then click on Save. Then double-click back into the Note, and decide what to do with it. Of course, that requires more steps - however, that can still be useful for the times when you want to get something out of your head quickly and don't have the time to figure out what to do with it. You can create the note - and then when you have more time, edit the note and decide what to do with it.

I try to keep an open-mind - you never know when someone will show you something that you didn't know - or forgot!

In the Holiday 2005 issue of this newsletter, I wrote an article about using the Quick Books Customer Center to see a quick list of unbilled job-related expenses, as well as other quick job related lists. That quick list shows the Customer:Job name, the total costs, and the total unbilled time (in hours).

There is also a report that you can run (and memorize) that will give you a detailed list of every individual time entry that was posted from Amicus, including the Date, Name (Team Member), and the Duration.

Here's how to create the report, and then memorize it so that you can run it quickly whenever you wish.

• In QuickBooks, select Reports - Jobs, Time & Mileage - Time By Job Detail
• Click on the Modify Report button (from the Report Toolbar)
• In the Display tab, press the letter a to change the dates to 'All'
• Select the Filters tab, select Billing Status, and select Unbilled
• Click OK to display the report
• Click on the Memorize button (from the Report Toolbar)
• Name the report - I used 'Time by Job Detail - Unbilled' for my report name
• You can either click on OK to save the report outside of any groups, or click on the 'Save in Memorized Report Group' checkbox, select a group, and click on OK
• NOTE: If you have your speakers on, be prepared for a very loud CLICK!