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.
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.