File Cleanup Time?

If left unchecked, your QuickBooks company file can grow out of control. At some point, you will actually notice that it takes longer to run reports and enter transactions. You will lose efficiency.

As each transaction is entered into QuickBooks, the data file increases in size. Eventually, the file becomes very large and affects system performance.

The Condense feature in QuickBooks allows you to "shrink" the file, as well as clean up the entries in your lists. When you perform a Condense, QuickBooks deletes all the transactions no longer needed to keep the records current and replaces them with new transactions that summarize the deleted transactions. After condensing your data, you can still create reports that summarize financial activity for the period of time condensed.

To clean up data, choose Utilities, Clean Up Company Data from the File menu. You can choose to remove transactions and lists before a specific date, or if you really want to start over, you can remove all transactions. If desired, you can choose to remove transactions outside a specified date range (also known as a Period Copy). When removing transactions prior to a specific date, you can determine how transactions should be summarized.

Then, select how inventory should be condensed.

Next, determine which transactions to remove.

List Entries can also be selected for removal.

Finally, when you are sure you want to proceed, click Begin Condense. QuickBooks displays a message stating that it will make a backup file before it condenses the transactions.

Examples of transactions that will NOT be affected in the condense process include the following:

• Open Invoices
• Unpaid Bills
• Unreconciled Bank and Credit Card Transactions
• Open Purchase Orders
• Undeposited Customer Payments
• Unapplied Customer or Vendor Credits
• Transactions linked to other open transactions
• Transactions marked To Be Printed
• Estimates with a job status other than Closed
• Time data marked as Billable, provided the job status is not Closed
• Time data marked as payable to your employees that has not yet been transferred to a paycheck

To ensure that no data is lost, it is always a good idea to retain a backup from before you initiated the condense. The backup file ensures that you will still have a record of the details of any transactions that QuickBooks deletes from your company file. While the condense feature does create an "Archive Copy" of the data, it is wise to keep additional backups (just in case).

Since the Condense process has significant consequences, contact us if you have questions about the process.