Enforce timesheets with a hard lock

When reminders are not enough, Enterprise organizations can escalate from visibility to enforcement. The strongest mode blocks day-to-day changes in the workspace until the person files their overdue timesheet, which makes “I’ll do it later” structurally impossible.

The three modes

The Enforcement mode picker lives in Organization Settings → Configuration → Timesheets, inside the Compliance enforcement panel:

• Warn: compliance is visible and reminders fire. Nothing is blocked. This is the default, and the only behavior below Enterprise.
• Soft block: adds a persistent banner for non-compliant users on every page. Still nothing blocked.
• Hard block: the server rejects changes to tasks, projects, and sprints for a non-compliant user until their prior week is filed.

What hard block actually blocks

The lock applies to write actions on tasks, projects, and sprints: creating, editing, moving, or deleting them. The locked person sees a banner explaining which week is missing, with a link to their timesheet.

Just as important is what is never blocked:

• Reading anything. Viewing projects, boards, reports, and timesheets always works; the gate fires only on changes.
• Logging and submitting timesheets. The way out is always open.
• Owners and Admins, by default. The Roles exempt from hard-lock chips let you change this, but keep at least one role exempt so someone can always unblock others.
• Integrations and agents using access tokens. Automation is never held hostage to a person’s timesheet.
• Anyone covered by a compliance exception, an exempt role, or a per-user exempt override.

Configure the lock

1. In the Compliance enforcement panel, select Hard block.

2. Set the Grace period: the number of days after the submission deadline before the lock fires. The default is 3 days, which gives people the weekend plus a buffer. The lock always targets a fully elapsed prior week, never the week in progress.

3. Leave Auto-unlock on submission on (the default) so the lock clears the moment the missing week is submitted. Turn it off only if you want an admin to clear locks manually via exceptions.

4. Adjust Roles exempt from hard-lock if needed, then save.

Caution

Roll this out in stages: run Warn for a few weeks, then Soft block, and only then Hard block. Pair the announcement with the deadline and reminder settings from Monitor timesheet compliance so nobody’s first contact with the policy is a locked task.

FAQs

What does a locked person experience? Their next attempted change fails with a clear message naming the missing week, their logged versus expected hours, and a link to the timesheet. A dismissable banner also appears across the app.

Is every lock recorded? Yes. Each block, and each unlock, writes an audit log entry, which is part of the evidence trail used by compliance evidence exports.

Can the lock fire because of a temporary outage or data glitch? The gate is built to fail open: if the compliance check itself errors, the change goes through rather than blocking work on a false positive.