How Do I Schedule Letters to be Sent on a Future Date?
Using Features
Some programs have a need to schedule letters to be sent in the future.
For example:
1. You are putting on a self help divorce clinic but you haven’t set the exact date yet.
2. You want to send out a tickle letter to PBI Lawyers 3 months after they took the case to check on the status.
3. You have to tell or remind clients to show up for an appointment in the future.
This is easily done in Prime. There is a single optional ‘setup’ step. Then all you have to schedule/mark the case then generate the letter. You can schedule a single letter to be sent or generate a whole group of letters. This works for all versions of Prime.
Setup
The Prime calendar is used to schedule and send letters. Therefore the first step is to insure that you have a code you can use to ‘tag’ a case as needing a letter sent. You do this by either using an existing code or by creating a more specific ‘Reason Tickled’ code for sending out a letter.
Most versions of Prime already have a code for a letter to a client or a PBI Lawyer. On the calendar, you choose reason for tickle and select:
ZLC for a letter to the client, or
ZLP for a letter to the PBI Lawyer
However, you may wish to be more specific in your coding of calendar events. For example, you might have a letter to remind PBI lawyers to tell you the status of their case and one to remind them to turn in their yearly time records. To add these choices is extremely easy.
Go to the top line menu, choose Admin, choose Setup Functions, and then choose Setup Tables. You can then choose Calendar – Tickle Reasons / subRTickle. This opens up the list of reasons to tickle a calendar event. You could add to the bottom of the list ZLT for the code and ‘Lawyer’s Time Records’ as the description. The use of the Z and L are not mandatory and you could use LLT for Lawyer Letter Time, for example. This is a one time step, unless you want to add additional codes in the future. (In older versions of Prime, go to the Upkeep Tab. Pull down the Setup Tables combo box and find the choice that sets up the reasons tickled (subRTickle) on the Calendar. A Table opens up with the list of reasons tickled.)
Scheduling and Generating Letters
As I mentioned above, there are now two steps left. One is to mark the case. The second is to generate the letter.
a. Mark the Case
While on the case you want to send a letter to, press the Calendar button on the top. This opens up a calendar event and puts in the case number, etc.
Choose the date. This could be the date you want to send the letter out on, a range of dates when the letters get marked or any other date you want to use to designate letters.
Choose the reason for the letter (reason tickled) from the pull down. This could be the standard ones mentioned above or custom codes you entered.
You might want to put a brief note in, such as clinic notification.
Close the calendar.
b. Generate the Letter
Go to Admin, Letters/Forms and Schedule Letter. This pulls up a form call ‘Input Tickle for Form Letter’. (For older versions of Prime go to the Forms Tab and enter X for the password. Click the button labeled Scheduled: Tickle Letters.)
- Choose the letter you want to send from the pull down that appears.
- Choose the tag you used to schedule the letter, for example, ZLC for a letter to the client.
- Choose the dates between which the cases were marked to receive letters.
- Pick the Letterhead.
Then generate the letter(s). Letters will be generated to all the cases that have a calendar event tagged with your selected code that have a date within the range you chose.