Plans 💳 : Unlimited
User Permissions 👥: Admins, Managers*, Employees*
For legacy plans, please refer to the article here.
Locked Time helps prevent accidental changes or unauthorized edits, making your time records more trustworthy and dependable. This feature offers you a peace of mind knowing that important time entries won't be accidentally modified.
Whether it's for payroll, project billing, or performance analysis, having the ability to lock days ensures that your historical time data remains intact and unchanged.
Overall, Locked Time is a great tool for organizations that need to keep their time tracking on point. With control over which days, weeks, or months to lock or unlock - this feature lets you manage your time tracking with confidence and precision.
Let's dive into how an admin can configure the Locked Time feature for their workspace
In order to use this feature, a workspace Admin will need to decide who exactly should be able to lock or unlock those time entries in the dashboard.
Head over to the Settings < Workspace area within Timely and scroll down until you see the "Locked Time" section:
You can allow your Employees, Managers, and Team Leads to lock or unlock time periods as you'd like. Admin level users will always have the ability to lock or unlock across the board.
You can elect to lock single days, entire weeks, or a whole month - in just a few clicks!
Day View
Within the Day view of the Hours Dashboard you can click the "..." button to reveal additional options, then click "Lock day" or "Unlock day".
From this view you'll also see a "Lock day" or "Unlock day" button to the top right hand corner.
Week view
Need to lock an entire week worths of entries? No problem! From the Week view of the Hours Dashboard you can click the "Lock Week" button to freeze all entries in the calendar week.
You can also pick and choose individual days, you'll just need to click the "..." option again to reveal the "Lock day" button.
Month View
For those that work in larger increments you can also lock an entire month! From the Month view of the Hours Dashboard you can click the "Lock month" button in the top right to lock down all entries for that calendar month.
You also have that same ability to lock individual days by hovering over the day in question, clicking the "..." option, and then clicking the "Lock day" button.
Using the Company View to lock entries for multiple users at a time
Working to prevent any further edits on your own timeline is a great way to prevent any mishaps or mis-clicks, but we know some folks have more complex needs that require management of additional users and teams. Not to worry, you can leverage the powerful Company View in Timely to make these changes for multiple users.
When working in the company view you'll now see those same locking options as you would on your own individual timeline and can lock individual days or entire weeks.
What happens after a day is locked?
Once a day is locked, you won't be able to make any modifications to existing entries or create any new ones. Additionally, you can't move entries to or from a locked day. This ensures your time tracking records stay accurate and prevents accidental changes or mistakes.
A locked day is visualized with a padlock under the date and has a gray background instead of the usual white one.
In the image below you'll see the time entry on the left is unlocked and can be edited while the time entry on the right is locked down to prevent further changes.
FAQs
What is the difference between "locking" a time frame and "locking" a time entry
Within Timely you are able to assign certain time states to your time entries, such as "Billed", "Locked", and more. This status is configured by your workspace admin and only affects the specific time entries it is assigned to.
The feature covered in this article simply allows you to prevent further changes to ALL the time entries within that time frame - day, week, or month. It does not assign a particular time entry status to those individual time entries.
I'm the workspace owner, can I use this feature to prevent changes made by other admins?
No, admin level users have the highest level of permissions within Timely and would have the ability to unlock those days and make edits. You would need to consider changing that user's access level in order to utilize this feature with them.