Deleting entries and templates

Both are real deletions with consequences beyond the thing being deleted, and both are worth understanding before you reach for them.

Deleting an entry

An entry's figures do not live only on the entry. Submitting it published them against the items, and those published figures are what every dashboard, chart, tile, mirror field and period summary actually reads.

Deleting the entry therefore withdraws its figures too. This happens automatically and in the right order.

Why the order matters

The published figures are withdrawn before the entry is removed. Doing it the other way round strands them: a figure whose entry no longer exists still claims the slot it was published into, and nothing can ever publish there again — not a re-save, not a fresh submission.

Displaced entries are republished

If another entry on the same form and the same date had been refused its slot because this one held it, that entry is re-driven once the slot is free — so the period fills in rather than going blank.

Who may delete

Deleting a submission needs Level 6 clearance, and then either being the member who filed it or holding Admin clearance. Level 6 alone, on somebody else's submission, is not enough. The account holder may always delete.

Among the people who may delete at all, the table says when:

Situation	Author (Level 6) or Admin	Account holder
Submitted, within the form's edit window	Yes	Yes
Submitted, older than the form's edit window	No	Yes
Approved	No	Yes

The edit window is 7 days unless the form sets its own — see The edit window.

A closed submission, or one with documents raised against it, cannot be deleted by anyone — the account holder included — whatever the window says. Reopen it, or withdraw the documents raised against it, first. See Closed and raised-against submissions are locked.

The lock covers correcting and deleting a submission. Retiring a field with its data discarded, and deleting the whole form, still apply to closed and raised-against submissions.

Clearance roles — Admin, Level 6 — do not qualify for the exemption. It is the account holder specifically.

The reason is narrow: without it, an entry approved in error would be permanent, with its wrong figures on every dashboard and nothing that could withdraw them. The confirmation names exactly what is being overridden.

Every deletion is recorded

A trail is kept of every entry deletion — not only the ones that overrode a rule. It records who deleted it, when, in what capacity, and keeps the entry's approvals and values verbatim.

Two things about it:

• The trail is written before anything is deleted, and a failed write refuses the deletion. Otherwise "the log was down" would be a way to erase an approved record quietly.
• The trail is evidence, not a restore path. Nothing undeletes.

Read it at Submissions → Deleted. Reaching it needs Level 6, and you must be either the account holder or hold Admin clearance — an admin who is not the account holder must be able to audit the account holder.

The deleted-entry view labels columns with raw field keys

The template that gave those fields their friendly names may itself have been deleted, so the view shows each field's key, which is always there.

Deleting a template

Deleting a form template removes the form and everything filed on it.

The impact preview

Before anything happens you are shown what will be affected. Four things reference a template:

• its entries
• the published figures those entries produced
• a dynamic form's live document, where the form is dynamic
• the department that lists it

Archive or discard

You are offered the same two outcomes as retiring a field — keep the published figures, or archive them so they stop reporting.

Archiving a template is one-way

A retired field comes back when you re-add it, and its figures are replayed. A deleted template has nothing left to restore into. The confirmation says so.

The entries go either way. An entry is unreadable without its template's sections, so keeping them would preserve a broken reference rather than a record.

Who may delete a template

Stricter than editing one: the account holder, the form's author, or an Admin. Holding Level 6 gets you past the route and no further.

Heads of department can edit their department's forms but cannot delete them.

One thing to warn colleagues about

A Form Submission widget on somebody's dashboard stores the form it points at on their own device. Deleting a template therefore strands other people's dashboard widgets, and no clean-up on the server can reach them.

The widget handles this itself — it shows a named "has been deleted" state and clears the stale figures rather than continuing to display them — but the person whose dashboard it is will see it change without having done anything. Worth a word beforehand.

Deleting a single published figure

A published figure can be deleted on its own, without touching the entry that produced it. This is subject to the same approval lock and the same edit window as editing the entry would be, and it withdraws the figure the same way.