Time Tracking Lock & Soft Close

Time Tracking Lock protects the integrity of recorded hours: once an accounting period plus its grace window closes, every time entry dated inside that period becomes locked — it can no longer be created, edited, or deleted, by anyone, through any surface (the app, the API, or integrations). Use it when payroll, invoicing, or client reporting depends on logged time not changing after the books close.

Lock is off by default for every organization, and available to every organization — it has no plugin or add-on requirement.

Soft Close is Lock's gentler sibling, configured on the same page: it flags entries logged after a period's grace window as Late but never blocks them. See Soft Close below.

The same page also carries one organization-wide switch that is neither a cutoff nor a flag: Allow Parent Item Time Entries, which decides whether time can be logged against parent items at all. See Allow Parent Item Time Entries below.

Where to find it

Settings → Organization → Time Tracking. The page is visible to roles holding the Configure Time Tracking permission (MANAGE_LOCK_SETTINGS) — included in the default Admin and Owner roles. Lock and Soft Close sit side by side on the page and share the work-week start day and working-days-per-week settings; everything else is configured per policy.

Allow Parent Item Time Entries

The page's General section holds a single switch, Allow Parent Item Time Entries, which is on by default for every organization. It decides whether time can be logged against items whose work type has child types — an Epic, a Feature, or any other type that sits above others in your hierarchy.

• On (the default) — time can be logged on any item at any level, as described in Time Spent.
• Off — new time can only be logged against items whose work type has no child types (Stories, Tasks, Bugs, and so on). On a parent item, the New Entry button in the item's Time Tracking tab and in the Time Entries modal is disabled, with an explanation; workstreams are refused too. Anything that tries anyway — including the API and MCP tools — gets a clear "leaf work items only" refusal.

Turning the switch off asks for confirmation and takes effect immediately. It is not retroactive: entries already logged against a parent item stay viewable, editable, and deletable; only moving an existing entry onto a different parent item is refused. "Parent" is a property of the item's work type, not of the item's current children — an Epic with no child items yet still counts as a parent, and a Story stays a leaf however deep it sits.

The switch uses the same Configure Time Tracking permission as Lock and Soft Close. It is also available through the API: PATCH /v1/organizations/{organizationId}/parent-time-entries-settings with { "allowParentTimeEntries": false }, and the organization record reports the current value as allowParentTimeEntries.

Configuring Lock

Every control on the page saves as you change it — there is no separate Save button.

1. Pick a period type — how your organization's accounting periods tile:
   • Weekly — periods run from your work-week start day, seven days each.
   • Bi-weekly — fixed, non-overlapping 14-day blocks. The first block is anchored automatically the moment you activate Bi-weekly; the anchor then stays fixed so period boundaries never drift.
   • Monthly — calendar months, in your organization's timezone.
2. Enable Time Tracking Lock. The enable button activates once a period type is saved. Enforcement starts immediately: the current configuration determines the lock status of every period, past ones included.
3. Set the grace window — how many days (1–7) after a period ends entries stay editable, counted as calendar days or business days. With business days, the optional working days per week setting (1–6, default 5) defines which days count — clearing the field returns it to the default.

Work week start day

Weekly and Bi-weekly periods start on this day (default Monday). It is a one-time setting: changing it re-labels every historical period boundary, so it locks after the first save. The organization Owner can override it through an explicit unlock flow — doing so recomputes past Weekly and Bi-weekly periods (including the Bi-weekly anchor) against the new value.

The preview

Once configured, the page shows the current period and the exact day entries lock, computed by the same engine that enforces the lock — what the preview shows is what will be enforced.

What locking looks like

• The time-entry date picker greys out locked dates; dates in their grace window are marked with a dot ("will lock soon").
• Locked entries appear read-only in the entries table — no edit or delete controls.
• Any write that reaches the server for a locked date is rejected with a message naming the day the period locked. There is no admin bypass.
• Running timers are exempt: a timer started before a period closed can still be stopped and edited — an entry has no lockable date until it has an end.
• Deleting a work item still cleans up its time entries, locked or not — the lock protects entries from editing, not items from lifecycle operations.

Soft Close: flag late entries instead of locking them

Soft Close is configured the same way as Lock — its own period type (Weekly, Bi-weekly, or Monthly), its own grace window (1–7 calendar or business days), and its own Bi-weekly anchor — but it never blocks a write. Once a period's Soft Close grace window elapses, entries can still be added, edited, deleted, and reassigned against that period — but any entry added, changed, or reassigned is flagged Late instead of rejected. Use it when you want a visible signal that hours were logged after the books should have been settled, without stopping people from correcting them.

Soft Close is off by default and independent of Lock: either can be on without the other, and each has its own Enable button, which activates once that policy's period type is saved.

How the Late flag behaves:

• Every change made during Soft Close is flagged Late. Missed entries, corrections, and reassignments are all flagged the same way; the entry's original date is never altered.
• Re-saving an entry without changing it does not count as Late.
• A Late entry stays fully editable — the flag is informational. In the time entries table it appears as a small clock marker beside the entry's date, with the tooltip "Entry added/updated late — you can still edit it".
• If Lock is also enabled, Lock always wins: once a period locks, Soft Close ends for it too.
• If DevStride cannot determine a period's Soft Close status at the moment of a save (for example the settings read fails), the save still goes through and the entry keeps whatever Late flag it already had — Soft Close is designed so that it can never block time logging.

Soft Close has its own preview — the current period and the exact day entries begin flagging Late — computed by the same engine that sets the flag. It also has its own per-period overrides, keyed by period start date, through PATCH /v1/organizations/{organizationId}/soft-close-period-overrides/{periodStartDate}; the preview reflects an override for the period it shows.

Changing the work-week start day (see above) recomputes both Lock's and Soft Close's Bi-weekly anchors together, so the two policies keep tiling from the same week boundary.

Per-period grace overrides

A single period can be given its own grace window — for example, extending just the December close — without changing the organization default. Overrides are currently available through the API (PATCH /v1/organizations/{organizationId}/lock-period-overrides/{periodStartDate}), keyed by the exact period start date; clearing an override returns that period to the default.

Changing settings later

Lock settings are enforcement-time only — nothing is stamped onto entries. Changing the period type, grace window, or disabling Lock recalculates every period's status immediately under the new configuration, and disabling Lock makes all previously locked entries editable again.

Soft Close is the opposite: the Late flag is stamped on the entry by the change that was late, and every later genuine edit re-evaluates it for the entry's date under the settings in force at that moment. Changing or disabling Soft Close therefore does not clear existing flags by itself — a Late entry stays Late until it is next edited, at which point it is flagged (or not) under the new configuration.