Lock your accounts

This article explains how to lock your accounts in FreeAgent and what happens when there is an account lock in place.

Locking your accounts in FreeAgent prevents you from editing any of the data that makes up your accounts, up to a particular date. This date is set when the lock is applied.

To lock your accounts manually, you'll need full (level 8) access to your FreeAgent account. If your accountant has level 8 access to your FreeAgent account, or they are a FreeAgent Partner, they may lock your accounts on your behalf.

Once a lock has been applied, you will have the option to remove the lock from your accounts.

Navigating to the Account Locking area

Select ‘Settings’ from the drop-down menu at the top-right of the screen and select ‘Account Locking’.

Enter a date in the 'Lock Accounts until' field.

You'll see a range of valid lock dates below the ‘Lock Accounts until’ box.

Once you have entered an appropriate date, select ‘Save Changes’. This will lock your accounts up to and including that date. The date will be displayed in your list of active account locks.

Changing a lock date

Update the date displayed in the ‘Add a manual account lock’ area and select ‘Save Changes’.

The new date will be displayed in your list of active account locks.

What happens when an account lock is in place

When there is an account lock in place, this prevents certain actions from being taken on your bank transactions, invoices and opening balances.

Bank transactions

When there is an account lock in place, you can upload transactions from a bank statement but it’s not possible to explain any transactions which are unexplained. You would need to remove the account lock in order to explain them.

Invoices

When there is an account lock in place, you can create an invoice, but it’s not possible to mark it as sent or email it to a customer. You would need to either remove the account lock or change the invoice date to an open period.

Opening balances

When there is an account lock in place, it’s not possible to edit your opening balances. The opening bank balance(s) will be greyed out and there won’t be any error message. You would need to remove the account lock to be able to update your opening balances.