🎯 For advanced admins. Learn How to make a report using Payroll export.

Once a payroll period has ended, you may want to prevent your data from accidental changes such as shift edits, shift type changes, or shift approval timing. This standard practice is for several reasons, such as ensuring the integrity of payroll data, compliance with local laws, and establishing a clear audit trail. You can prevent changes by locking your payroll period in Planday.

Locking a payroll period can be done by going to Payroll > Lock date range for payroll

Choose the date range you want to prevent changes for and press Lock Period to confirm your action.

Please note:

It's essential to double-check the shift data before locking because you cannot unlock it later by yourself. If you need to unlock a period, you will need to contact our support team.

Preventing accidental locks and locking history

Locking a pay period prevents any Admin or manager from making changes to approved data within the locked period.

You will see a list of all locked periods on your Planday, including the range of the locked period, when the lock was created, and who created the lock.

Effect of locking a payroll period on the schedule

If you lock a payroll period, schedule managers can still see the days that have been locked on the schedule but they will be blocked from making any changes to those shifts. A lock icon will appear next to the date, letting them know that they cannot edit the shifts in this period.

See related articles:

Approving Punch Clock entries to ensure all shifts in the payroll period are accounted for.
How to access and export data to get a report on changes to data or employees leaving.

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