Working Contract: Feature Request - Deletion of manual bookings

[AbisanSinnathurai]

We would like to enter manual booking times for people with more flexible working contracts. But we were met with the following message:

Manual bookings can neither be subsequently changed nor deleted!

This is a bit unfortunate because entries with false values can not be subsequently edited if they were made by mistake for example.

Personally, I can not understand the decision behind making these entries unchangeable in general. I would like to know the reasoning behind it.

So with all that, my question would be:
Would it be possible to make manual bookings editable and deletable?

[kevinpapst]

Would it be possible to make manual bookings editable and deletable?

You can always create new bookings to fix mistakes.
There are several technical and regulatory reasons for keeping them as is and not allowing them to be changed.

Lets see if more people will upvote your issue.

[AbisanSinnathurai]

Thank you for your fast reply.

There are several technical and regulatory reasons for keeping them as is and not allowing them to be changed.

I am sorry for persisting on this matter, but I would like to know which technical and regulatory reasons are keeping you from making them deletable. As far as my testing goes, editing/deleting these manual bookings in the database would be sufficient. But I may have overseen something while testing.

You can always create new bookings to fix mistakes.

This approach would lead to unnecessary and unsightly entries that could have been avoided.

As of now, I can not confidently use this feature. But I would appreciate it if you could look into this matter.

[HeinzWuert]

I would welcome this change, but implement it differently.
In order to prevent incomprehensible manipulation, all entries must continue to be saved without the deletion option.
But you should have the option of setting these two canceling entries to invisible after an incorrect booking and the following fixed booking. To set the option to invisible there must be a match of corresponding data: plus vs minus=zero
This makes the overview list more readable.

For transparency, the user should also have the option to switch from invisible to visible.
Printouts as PDFs should be treated the same.

[derStephan]

This approach would lead to unnecessary and unsightly entries that could have been avoided

But it makes everything transparent. In Germany, time tracking is required by law. Being able to add or delete manual overtime corrections is hardly a popular feature for German regulators. Best to keep it as it is now.

[pkoevesdi]

I want to join this feature request. I'd suggest to make this feature a special permission that can be given to certain admins to edit or delete these entries. As mentioned before, I can edit it in the database, so it's possible anyway. Make it clear, consise and transparent, that it is possible and for who.

Again I must insist: I's not the developers duty to fulfill any law, it's the company's duty and must be their descision, to allow this to certain people for certain use cases or not. Law-fulfilling defaults are good, but no artificial restrictions on what sometimes still is nessecary (because even the law sees exceptions).
Seen differently: If any law was really the developer's duty, then there would be a whole lot of other actions to be taken, to really fullfill that law, than just make no GUI element for the data.

I'd also be interested in the technical reasons. I cannot see any side effects after editing a manual entry in the database. Even more: After setting a manual holiday correction, I didn't find any difference in the whole database than a new entry in kimai2_holidays_manual (and a minor change in kimai2_sessions of course).

[kevinpapst]

If a developer of a "Fahrtenbuch" allows to edit entries or the developer of a "Registrierkasse" allows to edit entires, these developers can get into trouble.

I hear your request, but I am not going into discussions or arguments.