Migrate from Smokeball to Pipedrive

Smokeball Contact (client or opposing counsel) maps to Pipedrive Person. Name, email, phone, address, and job title carry over as direct fields. The contact's primary matter associations are preserved in custom fields on the Person record since Pipedrive has no native contact-to-matter link.

Smokeball Staff (attorneys, paralegals, administrative users) map to Pipedrive Users. Matching happens by email address. Staff who have no Pipedrive account are flagged before migration; the firm either creates the Pipedrive user or assigns their records to a designated fallback owner.

Smokeball Matter is the central case-management entity with fields for matter type, case number, client, opposing counsel, other side, responsible attorney, and stage. Pipedrive Deal tracks deal name, value, stage, and owner. FlitStack maps Matter to Deal, creating custom fields for matter_type, case_number, practice_area, and responsible_attorney to preserve the legal context.

Smokeball matter stages (Intake, Open, In Progress, Pending, Closed) map to Pipedrive deal stage values within the configured pipeline. Each Smokeball stage maps value-by-value to the closest Pipedrive stage; firms with custom stage names receive a stage-mapping plan before migration runs.

Smokeball Activities (calls, meetings, tasks, memos) map to Pipedrive Activities with the same type. Original create dates, due dates, and completion timestamps are preserved. Billable hours recorded in Smokeball Activities migrate as custom numeric fields on the Pipedrive Activity since Pipedrive has no native billable-time tracking.

Smokeball documents and document containers (letterhead templates, automated precedent libraries) do not have a Pipedrive equivalent. FlitStack downloads each document, re-uploads it as a Pipedrive File, and links it to the related Person or Deal via a custom URL field. Container metadata (document type, container name) is preserved in a separate custom text field for audit reference.

Smokeball tags applied to contacts and matters migrate as a comma-separated text string in a Pipedrive custom field. If the firm uses tags as a primary categorization mechanism, FlitStack can alternatively map them to Pipedrive's built-in label system on Person or Organization records.

Smokeball trust account balances and hard/soft cost ledgers have no native equivalent in Pipedrive's CRM model. FlitStack preserves the most recent balance as a read-only custom text field on the Person record for historical reference. Active trust accounting must remain in Smokeball or be moved to a dedicated accounting tool post-migration.

Smokeball custom fields use per-account 40-character hashed keys (e.g., dcf558aac1ae4e8c4f849ba5e668430d8df9be12). FlitStack reads the actual field keys for each account dynamically and creates matching custom fields on the relevant Pipedrive object (Person, Organization, or Deal), then maps values by key. Hardcoding any specific field key will produce incorrect mappings.

Smokeball Workflows auto-generate tasks based on matter type and stage. Pipedrive Automations trigger on field changes or activity completion but have no concept of matter-stage task templates. FlitStack exports the Smokeball workflow definitions as a JSON reference document; the firm rebuilds these in Pipedrive Automation using that document as a guide.

Smokeball invoices, billing records, and disbursement entries (hard costs, soft costs) have no native Pipedrive equivalent. FlitStack preserves invoice numbers and total amounts as custom text fields on the Person or Deal record for reconciliation reference. Active billing should continue in Smokeball or be migrated to a dedicated accounting platform.

Smokeball time entries (hours, rate, billable flag, narrative) map to Pipedrive Activity records with billable hours and rate stored as custom numeric fields. Pipedrive does not generate invoices from time entries; firms that need billable-time reporting should connect Pipedrive to a time-tracking add-on post-migration.