Condensing QuickBooks Files

To Condense or Not To Condense – Keeping Your QB File Healthy

When your QB file gets large it can cause many issues.  The most benign results are the software moving slowly and lag times. Unfortunately, there are also corruption issues that can cause lots of problems down the line. It is vital that you maintain the health of your QB file.  One way of doing this is to reduce the file size by condensing.

Intuit suggests you start a brand new QuickBooks desktop file every 5 years. That is option 1. Option 2, is to try to condense your file. This means all the oldest data is changed to a single entry and you only have details on the years you need.  Ideally, you keep no more than 5 years of details.

1. Press F2 to see how big your file is.
2. Is the file size close to or exceeding 300MB (300,000KB)?
3. Only Enterprise software ($2-3k cost) can handle files over 300MB.

If you call Intuit about issues with how the software is acting (randomly closing, freezing up, continual backup verification errors), they will happily sell you Enterprise or try to push you into QB Online.

Why not try condensing first? The utilities for this are embedded in the QB software. It is best to have a professional handle the condensing because there are lots of odd things users can run into.

Other Benefits of Condensing

All list names and accounts that have not been used in the years you are keeping will be removed from the file.

Tip to Keep the File from Growing Too Fast

Watch out for zero entries. These come about when users do not remove transaction lines that do not contain data (dollars). Examples include leaving vacation and sick payroll items in a paycheck when there was not paid leave and leaving an account on the Expense tab when the transaction information is on the Items tab.

You can see your zero entries by running a P&L and filtering for amounts that equal zero.

Contact GO! if you would like help condensing or creating a brand new file for the new year.