Time Entry Locking

Time entry locking prevents edits to entries after they've been invoiced or reviewed. This ensures your QuickBooks data stays consistent with what was actually billed.

Lock Types

Hourli.ai supports two locking mechanisms that work together:

Hard Lock Date

A specific date before which all entries are locked. No one, regardless of role, can create, edit, or delete entries on or before this date.

Use case: After closing the books for January, set the lock date to January 31st to prevent any changes to that month's entries.

Rolling Lock Delay

A number of days in the past beyond which entries are automatically locked. For example, setting this to 7 means entries older than 7 days are locked.

Use case: Give your team a week to fix mistakes, then automatically lock everything older than that.

How Locking Works

When both settings are configured, the more restrictive rule applies. For example:

• Hard lock date: January 31
• Rolling lock delay: 7 days
• Today's date: February 10

Entries on or before February 3 are locked (7 days ago), and entries on or before January 31 would also be locked (hard date). Since February 3 is more recent, that's the effective lock date.

What Gets Locked

When an entry is locked:

• ✅ It's still visible and can be exported
• ❌ Cannot be edited
• ❌ Cannot be deleted
• ❌ New entries cannot be created for locked dates
• 🔒 A lock icon appears on locked entries in the UI

Configuring Lock Settings

1. Go to Manage → Company Settings
2. Set the Lock Date and/or Lock Delay Days
3. Click Save

WARNING

Only Owners and Admins can configure lock settings.

QuickBooks Imports & Locking

When importing time entries from QuickBooks, entries for locked dates are allowed during import since these are typically historical records being backfilled. After import, they follow the same locking rules as any other entry.