Allow updating a past worklog's billable flag and billableLength attribute, even if week is closed, via API

In our process, we have this chain of operations:

User enters his time
Manager approves user's time (which closes the timesheet for this user for this week). User did work that time, so we want to approve his week and confirm his time.
At then end of the period (monthly usually), a project manager reviews every project then might decide to bill in part or not at all an entry. It could be because of going over-budget, junior time or simply a one-time discount.
This is done in a different system, way after user's weeks have been approved.
We would like to sync back the billable flag and the billable part if it's been edited back to 7pace, even if week has been approved already, it's just the "billing" part that we're adjusting. We don't need, nor want, to adjust time or change workitem at this point, we just want to reflect what was billed so it shows up in the budget.
Problem is, and it makes sense, using the API to PATCH the worklog with only billableLength (null or new value), does not allow us to do so, and I understand why.

{

    "statusCode": 409,

    "errors": [

        {

            "statusCode": 409,

            "errorCode": "ApprovalStateFailed",

            "errorDescription": "Selected date is locked for editing by approval",

            "fields": {

                "timestamp": "Value not allowed"

            }

        }

    ]

}

My suggestion or feature request would be to either allow "Admin" role to update using API or to create an endpoint specific for that need. That would allows us to integrates directly with billing department and 7pace budgets.

I'm open for any other suggestion, that being said, but that currently causes a mismatch between "Billable time" in the 7pace budget and the actual reality of what was billed.

Thanks for your time, as usual, do not hesitate to contact me for any question regarding this request.

Jean-Sebastien Parent

June 10, 2022 00:56
Edited

After a few tests, I suggest that you allow updating billableLength on those conditions after week is approved:

API User has billing editing right
Week is not locked; this last item would fit quite well with our process and would solve our problems

We would really appreciated if you could get a quick check on that, as it is problematic for us at this moment.

Roman Fianta

June 27, 2022 10:50
Edited

Hello Jean-Sebastien!

first of all, thank you for the detailed description. The feature request makes sense to us and the ability to edit 'billable' attribute via API is something we would like to implement. I do not have any ETA at the moment, but we will put it in our backlog. The effort is small for this one, so I hope I will be able to present some good news soon!

All the best,
R.

June 13, 2022 22:58

Alright, thanks Roman, I really appreciate it :)

June 27, 2022 10:58

Hello Jean-Sebastien,

we started working on the feature request, but during development we found out that the impact is bigger than we expected. Unfortunately, this means we need to decrease priority of this feature and see if it gathers more upvotes first. Sorry for the bad news.

All the best,
Roman

June 27, 2022 14:18

Oh, that's disappointing, but I understand. We will manage for a while, as we have to double the inputs on our side, but the sooner it gets done for us, the better. Thanks for keeping me updated and do not hesitate to contact me if you have any question.

Allow updating a past worklog's billable flag and billableLength attribute, even if week is closed, via API

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