Document Locking & Collaboration
When more than one person works in the same LiteWork organisation, document locking makes sure two people can’t edit the same invoice or quote at once and quietly overwrite each other. It works automatically in the background — most of the time you’ll never notice it — but it’s worth knowing what the banners and prompts mean when they appear.
How it works
When you open a document to edit, LiteWork gives you an exclusive lock on it. While you hold the lock, anyone else who opens that document sees it read-only until you’re done. You don’t do anything to lock or unlock — it happens as you open, edit, and move on.
📝 Note: Working on your own? You’ll essentially never see this. Locking only comes into play when a different person opens a document you already have open, and only for people who can edit — view-only members don’t take a lock. What each person is allowed to change is set by their role, not by locking.
When someone else is already editing
If you open a document a colleague is working on, LiteWork shows a “Document Being Edited” message telling you who has it and roughly how long until their lock expires. You have two ways forward:
- View Read-Only — open the document to read it now. An amber banner reads “This document is being edited by [name] — viewing in read-only mode”, and a Check Availability button lets you re-check; once they’re done, LiteWork reloads the latest version for you.
- Wait for Lock — sit tight, and LiteWork checks every few seconds. As soon as the document frees up it loads automatically with the latest changes, ready for you to edit.
There’s no “force edit” — this is deliberate. Taking over mid-edit is exactly how two people’s changes clobber each other, so LiteWork has you view or wait instead.
Staying in your edit session
Your lock lasts about 10 minutes and renews itself automatically while you’re working (roughly every few minutes, and whenever you type or click). If you leave a document open and idle, you’ll get a heads-up a couple of minutes before it expires — a nudge to save if you want to keep the session alive.
If your connection drops or your laptop sleeps for too long, the lock can expire under you. When that happens the document switches to read-only and shows an “Edit session expired” banner with a Reload to Edit button. Clicking it saves any unsaved changes first, then reloads the document and takes the lock again — so you don’t lose work.
💡 Tip: Saving doesn’t end your session — you keep the lock and keep editing. The lock is released when you open a different document or close the tab, and it expires on its own within about 10 minutes if a browser is closed without releasing it. So a colleague’s crashed session never blocks a document for long.