ForumsAccounting and Budgeting

Large Quickbooks File

Doug, Lets start with the knowledge that Quickbooks is designed for the Small Business Owner.
Also if you talk to support, they will try and sell you NEW (like a car sales person).

One or two suggestions. One, Get more memory for your system.

Two, Check out the "utilities". On some of the systems, the utilities will let you delete inactive
customers and venders or make them inactive freeing up space.

Good luck, LUCKIEST

As a rule of thumb, it is a best practice to have no more than 3 years of data in a QuickBooks Pro or Premier file. A file size larger than 250 MB should really be upgraded to Enterprise Solutions. Putting more memory in your computer won't make Pro or Premier any faster, as the performance is lower in these editions compared to Enterprise. Also, doing a "Clean up company file" or "Archive and Condense" does not remove transactions (just converts them to Journals) and it doesn't reduce the file size significantly to improve performance.

Brett Barry
Go Get Geek!
www.gogetgeek.com

First make sure that you have a good back up of your company file.

Then you will need to decide how many years that you would like to have on hand with full detail, i.e. checks, bills, invoices, payments, etc... I usually recommend at least 3 years. The remaining years you can archive the files to where you still have all of the old information but is is all in monthly summary journal entries. To do this you will go to file...Utilities...Clean up Company data...and follow dirrections thru the wizard, this will create an archive of your company file. In your case it may take a few hours for this to complete, I usually recommend that this be done overnight so that it is ready for use when you come in the next day. Once this is complete you should see some difference in the speed and ability to use QuickBooks again. (Looks as though you may have done this already)

If this does not solve your problem then you will need to look at what version of QuickBooks you are on, I am guessing Pro or Premier and possibly upgrading to QuickBooks Enterprise as the support person advised. As far as the cost, yes there is the 5 licenses but you may can go to your accountant and see if they have a QuickBooks Proadvisor on staff that can order this for you. If this is the case then you can receive a up to a 15% discount on the cost of the product ( I am an accountant / ProAdvisor and I provide this to my clients along with many other accounting and software services). Also the cost of $750 per year is to upgrade to the newest version, which is cheaper than purchasing a new product but this is not required.

Outside of these two possibilities I think that there is not much that you can do with QuickBooks and you may need to look at going another route. With accounting software just be careful and research what you get to ensure that the new product can handle your load and also that it will handle the load until you are ready to change again. At the level you are at yes QuickBook is good but you need to look what version is the correct fit and will I outgrow the software before it's time. Most products that can carry the capacity that you are referring to is very costly, such as NetSuite Small Business that is a web based software but this will run you approximately $1000 to $1500 per user per year. This is a great software and can handle large amounts of data with no problem but again is costly.

If you have any other questions please let me know and I will be glad to answer them if I can.

I have a similar problem, perhaps someone can suggest a solution. I use QB Pro 2006, and My file at 70MB is not too large or unmanageable.

It's just old.

It dates back to 1997 (12 years). I had financial problems back in 2002 (who didn't?) and shrank and focused my company. Since that time I generate 1/10th the invoices. So 95% of my accounting system, my chart of Accounts and Items list, stand mostly as a reminder of old problems and past mistakes. I'd like to no longer look at them.

I've tried using the "Clean" utility with 12/31/2004 as a date, all options checked, but it doesn't remove any old invoices, checks, accounts or anything. In fact, I can't quite figure out what it DOES do.

Is there a way to Purge past transactions, and post totals as opening balances in 1/1/2005, such that my 1/1/2009 balance sheet won't change?

If I update QuickBooks will I get a version that allows me to Purge old years?

I don't see an archive option. I did the "File>Utilties>Clean Company Data" but it didn't clean anything as far as I can see.

...click on the sub menu item call
inactivate.

They've been inactive for 5 years. But the data is still there. If I hit Ctrl-Q and then All I can see all that old garbage, thousands of entries, just sitting there in my 2009 file.

What I need is a process that posts "beginning balance" entries as of 1/1/05, and then deletes everything prior.

Any chance of that, or might Intuit have added such a feature in newer versions? I found a service online that says they may be able to do it for "starting at $500". Also about 20 answers on Intuit forums that says at least through April 2008 the function doesn't exist...

.....What I need is a process that posts "beginning balance" entries as of 1/1/05, and then deletes everything prior.

Even when you clean the data or archive in older versions. It does not get rid of everything. Because there was a transaction associated with the item, customer, or vendor. You can't delete it. The only thing you can do is start a new QB file and transfer over the begining balances. Sorry. Hope this helps.

Good luck and I'd love to hear if it works out for you.