Unlocking time and expenses

Time and expense entries are locked when hours or expenses are invoiced and/or approved, when items are archived or when a lock is manually scheduled. This prevents those entries from being edited.

If you’re an Administrator or Manager and need information on how to view another person’s timesheet, you can find it in our article on How to view or edit another person's timesheet.

Determining why time or expenses are locked

If a time or expense is gray and a lock icon appears to the right of the entry, it’s locked. Administrators will see one of the following messages when they hover over the lock icon. Managers and Members will see a message that says Only an Administrator can unlock this entry no matter why the time or expense is locked.

If you need to make changes to locked time or expenses, ask an Administrator to unlock these entries.

Entry invoiced

If your plan supports invoicing, you'll see the entry invoiced message for time or expenses that are invoiced but not approved.

Pulling time and/or expense entries onto an invoice locks the invoiced entries and the invoiced project(s) from the date of the first entry pulled onto the invoice through the date of the last entry pulled onto the invoice (not necessarily the full timeframe you invoiced for). However, time and expenses are locked separately.

Here is more information and some examples of timesheet locking behavior based on different invoicing scenarios:

If only time entries are included on an invoice, your team will still be able to add expenses for the invoiced timeframe and vice versa.
If both time and expenses are included on an invoice, the project will lock for time and expenses separately, dependent upon the dates of the time and expense entries pulled onto the invoice.
If a project is invoiced for the month of April and includes only time entries for April 1 and April 20, the project will be locked for time entries from April 1 through April 20. It will not be locked for expense tracking.
If a project is invoiced for the month of April and there is only one time entry for April 15 and one expense entry for April 17, the project will be locked for time entries only on April 15 and expense entries only on April 17.

Entry approved

If your plan supports timesheet approval, you'll see the entry approved message for time or expenses that are approved but not invoiced.

Entry invoiced and approved

If your plan supports both timesheet approval and invoicing, you'll see the entry invoiced and approved message for time or expenses that have been both invoiced and approved. Note that for the entry to be unlocked, you must withdraw approval and mark the entry as uninvoiced in order to edit it.

Entry archived

For time or expenses that are locked because the project, task, or person is archived. These hours or expenses aren’t necessarily invoiced or approved. However, if you have a time entry that’s locked but hasn’t been approved or invoiced, it’s very likely that some element of the entry has been archived.

Entries locked by the company-wide timesheet lock

If someone sees 'This day has been locked by an administrator' when trying to edit a time or expense entry, the company-wide timesheet lock is in effect. The lock is a single date — everything dated on or before that date is read-only — and an administrator has moved that date forward, either manually from the Approvals page or automatically via auto-lock.

There's no dedicated 'unlock' button. Unlocking means moving the lock date earlier. How you do that depends on whether you want the change to be temporary or permanent.

Temporary unlock (auto-lock stays on)

This is the recommended path when you just need to fix one or two past entries. Auto-lock remains enabled and will restore protection on its next scheduled run.

Go to the Approvals page.
In the lock status banner, click Edit one-time manual lock.
In the dialog, set Lock until to a date before the entries you need to edit. For example, if entries through January 15 are locked and you need to fix something on January 13, pick January 12.
Click Save. Dates from the day after your new lock date onward are now editable.
Make your edits.
Do nothing else. The next auto-lock run will advance the lock date forward again and re-protect those dates automatically.

When auto-lock is on and entries are locked, the Approvals banner spells this out:

The next auto-lock will run on [fire date] and will lock every entry dated on or before [cutoff date].

The next auto-lock on [fire date] will lock it back up automatically. Need to edit something already locked? Set a one-time manual lock to a previous date to override the auto-lock. [Learn more →]

Auto-lock never moves the lock date backward, so your earlier manual lock stays in effect until auto-lock's next scheduled run catches up.

Permanent unlock

If you want entries to stay editable indefinitely, the order of steps matters:

Go to Settings › Preferences and turn Automatically lock time and expenses off.
Return to the Approvals page, click Edit one-time manual lock, and click Remove at the bottom of the dialog to clear the lock date entirely.

If you remove the manual lock first while auto-lock is still enabled, the next auto-lock run will simply set a new lock date and re-lock history. Turning auto-lock off first prevents that.

Who can do this

Only administrators with company-level write permissions can change the lock date or remove the manual lock. Everyone else can see the lock status on the Approvals page but won't see the Edit one-time manual lock button. See Permissions for more.

What about running timers?

Running timers are stopped automatically when a lock takes effect, to prevent time from being added to a date that's now locked. Moving the lock date earlier doesn't restart those timers — they'll need to be started again if needed.