How does archiving work in Operating?
Written By Lauri Eurén
Last updated 1 day ago
Archiving lets you tidy away things you're no longer actively working with — without deleting them or losing any history. It applies across Operating, from projects and people down to settings like rate cards and tags. This article explains what archiving does, everything you can archive, the difference between archived and employment-ended people, where archived items still appear, and why they sometimes show up in reports.
What archiving does
Archiving removes an item from your active, default views and from the pickers you use to set up new work, so your day-to-day screens stay focused on current activity. Nothing is deleted: allocations, time entries, expenses, and financials all stay intact, and you can unarchive at any time.
Archiving is the safe alternative to deleting. If you're unsure whether you'll need something again, archive it rather than delete it.
What you can archive
Archiving isn't limited to a few object types. You can archive:
Work — Projects (one at a time or in bulk), Positions, Tasks, and Task lists.
People and access — People, and Users (a person's login access).
Clients
Organization and categorization — Groups, and Tags and tag categories (for both projects and clients).
Financial setup — Rate cards, Cost cards, Vendors, Expense categories, and Currencies.
Process and other settings — Approval flows, plus configuration items such as roles, seniority levels, skills, and sites.
Archived vs. employment-ended
For people there are two kinds of "inactive," labeled differently:
Archived — you manually archived the person.
Employment ended — the person's employment end date has passed.
Both appear in a muted, italic style with a label after the name — "(archived)" or "(employment ended)" — so you can tell at a glance. Employment-ended happens automatically from the person's employment dates; archived is a deliberate action.
Where archived items still appear
Archived items don't disappear — they stay visible wherever they carry relevant data:
In reports, an archived project or person still appears for any period where it has planned work or tracked actuals. An archived project that had time entries last quarter still shows in that quarter's figures.
In selectors and filters, an item that's already selected or referenced keeps showing (so existing data renders correctly), even though it's no longer offered as a new option. Filter popovers also let you reveal archived items when you need them.
On existing records, names keep rendering — an archived person shown as a project's owner still appears there.
For configuration items (rate cards, tags, roles, skills, and the like), archiving removes them as a choice for new work but leaves existing uses untouched — a project already on an archived rate card keeps using it until you change it.
Why an archived item shows up in a report
This is by design: reports include archived and inactive items when they have data in the date range you're viewing. If you'd rather not see them, narrow the date range or use the filter to exclude archived items.
Tentative vs. confirmed work when archiving projects
When you archive a project, its confirmed work stays in reports as it happened. Its tentative work is treated as work that never happened — so archiving a tentative (not-won) project removes its planned numbers, while archiving a delivered project keeps its actuals.
Archiving vs. deleting items that come from an integration
If an integration (a CRM, HR system, or time-tracking tool) syncs in something that shouldn't be active in Operating, archive it — don't delete it. Archiving keeps the record, stops it showing in your active views, and sticks across syncs: the integration won't keep bringing it back or re-activating it.
If you later want that item to reappear, delete it instead of unarchiving. On the next sync the integration will push it again and recreate it fresh. (Deleting is what lets a still-synced item come back; unarchiving only helps for items you archived by hand.) Note that you can’t undo a delete.