Can I buy Smokeball AutoTime without the practice management system?

No. As of April 2026, Smokeball only sells AutoTime as a feature inside its Bill, Grow, Prosper, or Embrace tiers. The cheapest tier that includes AutoTime is Smokeball Bill at $49/user/month billed annually, and it comes bundled with matter management, invoicing, and document automation you may not need.

What's the closest standalone equivalent to Smokeball AutoTime?

ClaimHour is the closest philosophical match — passive capture of phone calls, email activity, and document edit time, with a daily review digest and export to QuickBooks, LawPay, FreshBooks, and CSV. The difference is that ClaimHour ships only that feature, at $29–$99/month, without requiring you to migrate matters, billing, or intake.

Is Smokeball Windows-only?

Yes. Smokeball's desktop capture application runs on Windows. As of April 2026 there is no native Mac version — Mac users rely on the web app and lose the passive-capture advantage. ClaimHour ships a native macOS menubar app as its primary platform.

Will Smokeball refund if I only use AutoTime and leave?

Smokeball's annual plans are non-refundable once paid, per their standard subscription terms. Month-to-month plans can be cancelled at renewal. Export your captured time entries and matter data before cancellation — they offer CSV export from Reports, but the raw AutoTime decisions are not exported.

Alternative guide · Updated April 2026

Smokeball alternative: just the AutoTime, none of the PMS

Smokeball's AutoTime feature is the closest thing the legal-tech market has to passive billable-moment capture done right. It's also welded to a $49–$139/month practice management system you probably don't need. Here is how to keep the capture and skip the bundle.

TL;DR

If you demoed Smokeball Bill for the AutoTime feature and couldn't justify the surrounding PMS, ClaimHour is the narrower tool. $29/mo Starter, $59/mo Pro. Native Mac menubar + iOS. Metadata-only (no audio, no email bodies, no document contents). Exports to QuickBooks IIF, LawPay, FreshBooks, and CSV. No matter migration, no trust accounting, no workflow lock-in — just the billable-moment capture piece of the Smokeball stack.

What Smokeball AutoTime does well

Smokeball's headline feature is honest engineering. The desktop agent runs in the Windows system tray, watches which client matter you are currently inside, and records keystrokes, document activity, and application focus at the matter level. At day's end it surfaces a reviewable timeline of billable-looking events. For a Windows-based firm that already lives inside Smokeball Bill or Prosper, AutoTime is probably the best passive capture on the market.

The engineering tradeoff is lock-in. AutoTime only works if your matters, clients, billing rates, and documents live inside Smokeball. The "which matter are you on" detection depends on file-path patterns and document metadata that Smokeball controls. Migrate off Smokeball and the capture stops working, because the matter context goes with it.

Who Smokeball is genuinely right for

Windows-first firms with 2+ lawyers sharing a matter database.
Practices that want document automation, e-filing, trust accounting, and capture in a single vendor.
Firms willing to pay $49–$139/user/month for the bundle and amortize it against 5+ integrations.
Practices that already run a Windows file-server and can get the AutoTime agent onto every machine.

If three of those are true, Smokeball is earning its price. If none are, you are paying PMS prices to get a single feature.

Where Smokeball stops making sense for solos

You're on a Mac

Smokeball's capture agent is Windows-only. Mac solos get the web app, which means no passive capture of Word-outside-the-browser, Pages, Keynote, or native calls. For a Mac-first solo, the headline feature is unavailable. ClaimHour ships a native macOS menubar app and iOS companion — the Mac is the primary platform, not a second-class port.

You don't want a PMS

About 30% of US solos bill out of Word + QuickBooks and refuse to move to a PMS. Smokeball's minimum entry point is the full Bill tier — there is no "just AutoTime" SKU. If you cancel the PMS you lose the capture. ClaimHour is a standalone $29–$59/mo tool that assumes your billing lives in QuickBooks, LawPay, or FreshBooks and never tries to own it.

You want metadata-only capture

Smokeball's AutoTime agent reads keystroke counts, document titles, and application window text. Document contents stay on the machine, but the breadth of what's recorded is wider than many solos are comfortable with — especially for criminal-defense or family-law work where privilege anxiety runs high. ClaimHour is deliberately narrower: call metadata (duration, counterparty, direction), email activity counts (not bodies), and document edit-time bursts (not content). No keystrokes, ever.

Smokeball vs ClaimHour: the side-by-side

Feature	Smokeball Bill	ClaimHour Pro
Monthly price	$49/user/mo (annual)	$59/mo
Platform	Windows desktop + web	macOS menubar + iOS
Passive capture scope	Matter-level, keystrokes + docs	Calls, email counts, doc edit time — metadata only
PMS required?	Yes — AutoTime is welded in	No — standalone
Exports	CSV, LEDES, QuickBooks via add-on	QuickBooks IIF, LawPay, FreshBooks, CSV — built in
Trust accounting	Yes — IOLTA-compliant	No — not in scope
Document automation	Yes — 20,000+ templates	No — not in scope
Annual cost (solo)	~$588	$708 (Pro); $348 (Starter)

The dollar math is closer than it looks — Smokeball Bill at $588/year isn't much cheaper than ClaimHour Pro at $708/year. The real delta is what else you're buying. Smokeball bundles 15 features you might not use; ClaimHour ships one feature and gets out of the way.

The migration path, if you're moving from Smokeball

If you're on Smokeball today and considering unbundling, run both in parallel for 30 days — it's the only honest way to measure. Smokeball's Reports module exports time entries as CSV; ClaimHour exports to CSV and QuickBooks IIF. Compare a week of captured entries between the two, then decide.

Install ClaimHour on your Mac (or keep it on iOS only if your primary is Windows + iPhone).
Run both capture engines for two full billing weeks. Don't cancel Smokeball yet.
Compare the day-end digests. Smokeball typically captures more, because it sees Windows keystrokes; ClaimHour is narrower and favors precision over recall.
Export ClaimHour entries to QuickBooks. Confirm the flow works end-to-end on at least one real invoice cycle.
If ClaimHour covers your real billable patterns, schedule Smokeball cancellation for the renewal date.

How ClaimHour fits

ClaimHour was built for the solo who says "AutoTime is great, I just don't want the other 14 Smokeball modules." We ship only the passive capture piece, target Mac and iOS first, and assume your billing, trust accounting, and matter management live in tools you already love. Join the waitlist and we'll email when early access opens — no credit card, no sales call.

Get early access