Time locking

Time locking, an extension of the Timesheet feature, enables your team members to submit their timesheets with completed activities each week. The supervisor can then confirm and lock the submitted weeks. This prevents users from adding or modifying the locked period, which in turn helps avoid invoicing and reporting errors.

1. Plan availability & requirements

Time locking is an extension of the Timesheet feature; however, the availability of timesheet and time-locking features differs in each Scoro plan:

• Timesheet is available in the following Scoro plans:
  • Current plans: Performance, Enterprise
  • Legacy plans: Pro, Ultimate
• Time locking is available in the following Scoro plans:
  • Current plans: Enterprise
  • Legacy plans: Pro, Ultimate

Learn more about Scoro subscription plans on our Plans & Pricing page.

2. Enabling time locking

To enable time locking on your site:

1. Go to Settings > Work and projects > Timesheet and open the Time locking tab.
2. Enable the Use time locking toggle.

3. Setting up timesheet reminders

Once time locking is enabled on your site, you can set up automatic timesheet reminders to remind your team members via email to submit their timesheets on time. This eliminates the manual work of tracking down unsubmitted timesheets, saving you valuable time and ensuring that your time data is always up to date.

Learn more about timesheet reminders.

4. Managing time locking permissions

Site administrators can select which users have the right to lock time with the help of permission sets.

To enable the time locking permission:

1. Go to Settings > Administration > Permission sets.
2. Click on Calendar and tasks access rights for the permission set you want to modify.
3. Select the Full access + time locking option for each user group for which users with this permission set should be able to lock time.
   
   For example, the Project Managers have ‘Full access + time locking’ for Specialists; however, for the rest of the users, they only have full access, without time locking.
4. Save the changes.

5. Locking a timesheet

You can lock the weekly timesheets individually or in bulk, which is very convenient when you first activate the time locking feature and wish to lock all previous weeks.

5.1. Locking timesheets in bulk

To lock the timesheets in bulk (available only to the admins):

1. Go to Settings > Work and projects > Timesheet and open the Time locking bulk actions tab.
2. Tick the checkboxes for users whose timesheets you want to lock. You can also tick the top checkbox to select all users.
3. Click the Lock weeks up to… button, select the date up to which you want to lock the timesheets for the selected users, and confirm your choice.

5.2. Locking an individual timesheet

To lock an individual timesheet:

1. Open the Tasks module.
2. In the Timesheets tab, filter the view to see the timesheet you want to lock.
3. Use the lock icon in the timesheet list view to lock a user’s weekly timesheet.
   
   Alternatively, you can click on the user name to open the timesheet detailed view to inspect their timesheet in more detail and, when ready, click the Lock week button to lock the week.
   

6. Modifying activities in a locked period

Time entries and events on locked periods become read-only and cannot be modified by regular users. This also applies to events that fall within a period that’s locked for any participant, making those events read-only for all participants. Making those activities read-only helps to maintain better data integrity across the platform.

Only site admins can modify read-only time entries and events.

7. Unlocking a timesheet

Users with the Full access + time locking permission can also unlock a previously locked timesheet. This can be helpful if you need to update a locked timesheet.

To unlock a timesheet:

1. Open the Tasks module.
2. In the Timesheets tab, filter the view to see the weekly timesheet you want to unlock and click on the user whose week you want to unlock.
3. Click on the user’s name to open the timesheet detailed view and see all their tasks and time entries.
4. Click the Unlock button to unlock the week, and proceed with making the necessary changes.

While you can unlock someone else's weekly timesheet, you can't unsubmit an already submitted timesheet because that can be done only by the user whose timesheet it is. However, you can make changes to a submitted timesheet if needed.