How do I lockdown exported timesheet data from editing?

Exported Data Lockdown

Pacific Timesheet allows you to lockdown exported timesheets from editing by any system user except for system administrators.

Steps to setup

1. As a system administrator, navigate to System > General > System Options
2. Scroll down to "Exported Data Lockdown."
3. The feature comment: "Specify the minimum permission level allowed to modify or delete data that has been marked as exported."
4. The feature has three possible settings: Managers (i.e., users who approve timesheets), Managers with export permissions (i.e., users who can export timesheets or expense sheet data), or System administrators (i.e., users with permissions to manage all aspects of the system without limitation).

Best practices

Background

For Pacific Timesheet systems, where approvals of time and expense data are finalized and then sent on to third party payroll and accounting systems, it's critical to maintain the integrity of that data. Without the exported data lockdown feature, it would be possible for approvers to unapprove, unsubmit and edit already-exported time and expense data.

Data integrity and controls

The exported data lockdown feature establishes controls prohibiting approvers and non-system administrator users from editing already-exported data. Best practice is to NOT edit already-exported data, but rather to create new correction entries and sending them on to payroll and accounting systems. In this way, Pacific Timesheet time and expense entry data will never fall out of sync with time and expense data in these third party systems.

Recommended settings  

There are two best practice recommended settings for the exported data lockdown feature.

• Managers with export permissions (i.e., users who can export timesheets or expense sheet data). this setting will be default include system administrator users who already have approval and export permissions enabled, or
• System administrators (i.e., users with permission to manage all aspects of the system without limitation).

Allowing non-system administrators to unapprove, unsubmit and edit already-exported data will require training these users to create correction entries for already-exported exported data that they wish to modify.