A resource left the business. How do we keep a track of his hours?

We've just done a reconciliation as part of an audit. We got dinged by the audit company because the hours in Resource Management don't match with the hours we billed to several clients.

This took some investigation but we eventually realised that the system was not counting any of the hours logged by a Project Manager who left in June. When he left, we removed his licence and reallocated it to his replacement.

How is this supposed to work? Are we really supposed to pay for a resource in perpetuity to maintain the hours they've added into a project? Since companies are legally required to keep their financial records for 7 years in the UK, this is essentially saying I need to keep paying for a licence for another 6.5 years for a person who left 6 months ago. This can't be right.

Am I missing something?

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mcarlson

You're correct that maintaining accurate historical data should not require holding a paid license for former employees. Here’s how this is typically managed and what options you may have to avoid ongoing costs for inactive users:

Historical Data Retention Without a License:
- In most resource management systems, removing a user’s license should not erase their historical data. Hours logged by that user, along with any other project data they contributed, should remain intact and accessible for reporting purposes.
- However, in some systems, data tied specifically to active user profiles (such as task allocations or hours) may become hidden or inaccessible once the license is removed, especially if the system relies on active licenses to maintain visibility of individual records.
Data Archiving or Deactivation Options:
- Many platforms offer a deactivation feature, where you can deactivate the user rather than delete them. Deactivated users typically no longer count toward your license count or incur ongoing costs, but their historical data remains accessible for reporting and auditing purposes.
- Some systems may also provide an archiving option to save their hours and contributions in a separate, static record.
Best Practices for Audits and Historical Reporting:
- If your system lacks a deactivation feature, an alternative is to export the user's logged hours before removing their license. Many resource management platforms offer export options that can create a CSV or similar file of hours and contributions. This can be stored separately and retained for audit purposes, ensuring you meet your 7-year financial record-keeping requirement.
- Additionally, some platforms offer reassignment tools where logged hours or project history can be reassigned to a placeholder account (e.g., a generic “Former Employee” profile). This preserves the data without needing to maintain a personal license for each departed team member.
Confirm with System Support:
- Since this is a common issue for businesses, reach out to your platform’s support team to clarify how their licensing impacts historical data visibility. They may have a recommended process, such as converting the user to a free or inactive role that maintains their historical data.

For many businesses, retaining data for former employees without additional costs is essential, and most platforms should have a way to support this need. By using deactivation, archiving, or exporting data, you can avoid paying for licenses indefinitely while ensuring historical hours are accessible.

Let me know if you need any more assistance.

Tony Platts

That seems very much like a generic AI response.

Smartsheet doesn't offer these options. I have a sickening feeling we've been underreporting our hours for months. It's just occurred to me that Smartsheet Support told me to create a user purely for importing hours from our previous timesheet system. We added all those legacy hours and then archived the user as per their instruction.

Isaac A.

Hey @Tony Platts!

I’ve checked with our Resource Management team, and they confirmed the following:

If a user is archived rather than deleted, all historical time entries and related data should remain in the system for reporting purposes, while also freeing up the license for reassignment. This means the hours logged by the archived user should still appear in your reports as expected. Archiving also stops any future assignments, ensuring they aren’t assigned work past the date they were archived.

Could you check if the historical data logged by this project manager is showing up in your reports? If not, let us know so we can look into it further. For more details, here’s a helpful resource on how to archive, modify, or delete people.

Cheers,
Isaac”.

Tony Platts

Hi Isaac,

I have done some extensive testing here and can confirm this is not the case. Archiving a user removes their hours from the project.

Tony

Genevieve P.

Hi @Tony Platts

The expected behaviour is listed in this Help Article: Archive, modify, or delete people

Archived users who don't have a first and last day of work defined will continue to appear in analytics and reports. If you want to exclude an archived user from reports then unarchive them, add a first and last day of work in the past, and then archive them again.

This was my test:

Added a month long assignment for a resource in December
Tracked time for a couple of weeks for this resource (approved one week and left the other one pending approval)
Ran a Time & Fees report for this person, seeing those time entries
Set a "last day of work" for today and then archived the person
Ran the report again:
1. Historical time entries (approved and pending) both remained in the report results (expected)
2. Assignments were clipped at today since I set the last day of work and archived the user (expected)
The resource I archived no longer showed up in the following places, which is also expected:
1. The People Schedule
2. The People Portfolio

If this does not explain what you're seeing, please open a Support ticket through the portal with screen recordings and user emails so they can troubleshoot this with you in a private channel.

Thanks!
Genevieve

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