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title: "Preventing a Party from Logging In"
canonical: "https://docs.rubiconwater.com/space/UMNC/1983610944/Preventing%20a%20Party%20from%20Logging%20In"
format: markdown
---
You can prevent a user from logging in by either locking or by disabling their account. You can prevent anyone except system administrators from logging in by locking the authentication group.

- **Disable the user account** if there is a problem with that account. For example, you might disable an account if the customer is in arrears with payments.

> ℹ️ **Note**
> ℹ️ 
> ℹ️ A customer account is automatically disabled if they experience too many login failures. In this case you should also generate a new password for the customer.

- **Lock the customer account **if you need to temporarily disable the account for administration purposes. For example, you might lock a customer account if you are planning to perform some system maintenance that will affect only a few users.
- **Lock the authentication group** if you want to prevent all users (except for System Administrators) from logging in. Lockout settings for a whole authentication group are set in the Auth Groups module. See <u>[Locking the System](https://rubiconwater.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/UMNC/pages/1985118258)</u> for details.

# Lock or disable a user account

> ℹ️ **Permissions**
> ℹ️ 
> ℹ️ You must have the *Edit user accounts* privilege over the user's role in order to lock or disable their account. See <u>[Working with Sub-Role Privileges](https://rubiconwater.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/UMNC/pages/1983905830)</u> for more information.

**Step 1**

In the Parties module, select the party whose account you want to change.

**Step 2**

On the **Parties > Accounts** tab, click **Edit**, to change the account settings for that party.

- To lock the account, select the **System Lockout** check box.

> ℹ️ **Note**
> ℹ️ 
> ℹ️ Don't use the **Temporary Lockout** check box to disable a user account. This setting will expire after a few minutes. It is set and cleared automatically by the system when a user has too many failed login attempts.

- To disable the account, deselect the **Enabled** checkbox.

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