> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://myinternshiporganizer.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# What you can change, and when

> Why some actions stop working once an internship is approved, and others don't work until it is.

An internship's status doesn't just describe it — it decides what you're allowed
to change. If an action worked yesterday and refuses today, or a button does
nothing on one internship and works on another, this is almost always why.

Minto groups the statuses into four phases.

| Phase        | Statuses                     | What it means                                                        |
| ------------ | ---------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Setup**    | Requested, To be rescheduled | Nothing is agreed yet, so the structure is still open.               |
| **Active**   | Approved, Prepared, Running  | Agreed and being delivered. The shape is fixed; the details are not. |
| **Closed**   | Finished, Expired            | A historical record. Frozen.                                         |
| **Rejected** | Rejected                     | Not going ahead. Frozen.                                             |

## What each phase allows

The important part is that Setup and Active allow **different** things, not
more and less.

| Action                                      | Setup |                 Active                 | Closed / Rejected |
| ------------------------------------------- | :---: | :------------------------------------: | :---------------: |
| Turn modules on or off                      |   ✓   |                    —                   |         —         |
| Change the planned number of interns        |   ✓   |                    —                   |         —         |
| Connect or remove a host firm               |   ✓   |                    —                   |         —         |
| Remove an intern, change an assignment      |   ✓   |                    —                   |         —         |
| Change the internship's fields of expertise |   ✓   |                    —                   |         —         |
| Add an intern                               |   ✓   | up to the planned count, once approved |         —         |
| Set the sending organization                |   —   |                    ✓                   |         —         |
| Add buddies and companions                  |   —   |                    ✓                   |         —         |
| Manage meal and transport tickets           |   —   |                    ✓                   |         —         |
| Language courses and safety passes          |   —   |                    ✓                   |         —         |
| Arrival and departure dates                 |   ✓   |                    ✓                   |         ✓         |
| Notes, watchers, renaming, status, deleting |   ✓   |                    ✓                   |         ✓         |

<Warning>
  Two consequences catch people out:

  * **You can't add a buddy or companion until the internship is approved.** While
    it's still Requested, those actions fail.
  * **You can't connect a firm, assign interns, or change the planned count once
    it is approved.** Approving fixes the shape of the internship.

  So approve when the placement is genuinely agreed — not early to unblock
  something, and not late.

  Nothing in the app is greyed out to tell you this. An action that isn't allowed
  in the current phase looks available right up until you save, and then explains
  itself — "This action is not allowed once the internship is approved."
</Warning>

## Expired internships are mostly frozen

An internship still **Requested** whose dates have passed becomes **Expired**,
and Expired counts as Closed. Its roster, firms and modules are frozen.

Arrival and departure dates are the exception — those stay editable in every
phase, so you can correct the travel dates without changing anything else. To
reopen the rest, set the status back to **To Be Rescheduled**, which returns the
internship to Setup.

## Where the boundaries come from

Phases are worked out from the stored status plus the dates, the same way the
[calculated statuses](/docs/reference/internship-statuses) are:

* An approved or prepared internship with **both** dates set, whose end date has
  passed, is **Closed**. With only one date it stays Active.
* A requested internship whose start or end date has passed is **Closed**
  (shown as Expired).
* Everything else approved or prepared is **Active**.
* Requested and To-be-rescheduled are **Setup**.

Preliminary dates count for this, so an internship with only a rough window
still freezes once that window has passed.