Allow Cheque clearing function even after lock date

The Lock Date tool is great for making sure that users are not able to alter transactions after the period has been locked, a great control tool. However, it takes time for transactions (payments and receipts and even inter-account transfers) to clear and users need to go back to transactions every time a transaction clears to update the status to clear. Some payees present their cheque for payment after three months… The problem is that, for control purposes, users may enter a lock date at the end of every day or week or 3 days… and the lock always has to be lifted anytime a user is to edit a transaction to clear, in the server or online versions, users may alter transactions for fraudulent reasons in that period where the lock is temporarily lifted.

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My suggestion is to allow users to be able to change the status of a bank payment to cleared or uncleared even if the transaction is locked by the lock date. Since clearing and unclearing transactions do not actually affect the financial position of a company it wouldn’t cause any problem, the worse that could happen if a user abuses this requested feature would be an unbalanced BRS statement which can be easily corrected.

I still have this issue. Typically comes up annually as I only really apply a year-end lock date, so as usual same problem clearing some transactions on my January Bank statement.

Personally I think this should be classified as a Bug rather than an idea.

:slight_smile:

Improved in the latest version (21.9.11)

Lock date is now smarter in a sense that it will allow updating any transaction as long as the transaction is not materially impacting general or subsidiary ledgers.

For example, updating description or custom field in transaction before lock date is allowed, so is changing Pending / Cleared status on payments / receipts. None of these changes will affect figures on financial reports so it’s fine to go through.

@lubos This is great. Can you add something on the edit screen to tell users the transaction/document they have opened to edit is locked?