clean up

How Can I Improve the Performance of QuickBooks?

Chief Mechanic · September 12, 2010 ·

QuickBooks is a complex program that processes a lot of data. As data is added to a QuickBooks company file (.qbw), loading and processing times increase. Within the program, slower processing is usually seen when performing tasks that involve the entire company file, such as running utilities or preparing reports. Since QuickBooks is typically used every day over a period of years, it’s highly likely that at some point you’ll find a need to improve performance.

There’s no single solution that will improve performance in every circumstance, but there are a series of steps you can take that together will have a dramatic impact on QuickBooks performance. We’re ignoring the “common sense” recommendations of “buy a faster computer with more memory” or “upgrade to the latest version/update to the latest release.” Spending money on new or upgraded hardware and not running outdated software will improve performance.

We recommend that you:

Close your company file before exiting QuickBooks and reduce to a minimum the amount of windows that do open once you open your company file. This will dramatically reduce the time it takes to load QuickBooks, which is one way users measure performance, but it won’t have any impact on performance while working in the program itself.
Perform a manual, verified backup on a regular basis. QuickBooks maintains a transaction log file (.tlg) that is used in conjunction with its manual, verified backup routine. This .tlg file grows and can often become bigger than a company file (.qbw) itself. A manual, verified backup reduces the .tlg file size and improves performance. Scheduled QuickBooks backups don’t count, nor do other backup routines that you happen to use. When the .tlg file exceeds 25% of the size of the company file (.qbw) size, it’s time to do a manual, verified backup. Remember that the primary purpose of this step is to reduce the .tlg file size, not to back up data.
Reduce your DB file fragments if they’re too high. DB file fragments represent the degree to which pieces of your QuickBooks company file (.qbw) are scattered over your hard disk. The more fragments you have, the lower your performance will be. For most organizations, DB file fragments in the single digits are reasonable. Organizations running Terminal Services will see more DB file fragments, into the low double digits, and that’s reasonable. If your DB file fragments exceed those levels, convert your company file (.qbw) into a portable file, and then convert that portable file into a company file (.qbw). That conversion routine will reduce DB file fragments and improve performance.
Clear the queues for forms to be printed. Large numbers of forms with the To be printed flag set can degrade performance. The most common example of this problem is a large number of invoices that are in the print queue. Remove these invoices from the print queue and performance will improve.
Run the clean up utility to reduce your company file’s overall size. For QuickBooks Pro and Premier, Intuit recommends keeping data files under 100 Mb for reasonable performance. The clean up utility can remove stale list items and consolidate closed transactions, thereby shrinking file size and improving performance.
Avoid excessive use of sub-accounts, sub-items, and Jobs, which are effectively sub-customers. Relatively speaking, a sub-account requires more processing than a top-level account, so the more sub-level list entries you create, the slower your performance will be. The performance penalty is small, so don’t let this fact alone discourage your use of sub-level entries when necessary. Some organizations have used sub-level list entries excessively, when other QuickBooks features would have been better suited to the purpose.
Stop using Google Desktop. Google Desktop can only index a QuickBooks company file (.qbw) when that file is open. Google Desktop indexing routines consume processing and memory resources, leaving fewer of these resources available to QuickBooks. That will degrade performance. Uninstalling Google Deskop will improve performance.
Consider an upgrade to Enterprise Solutions. The database engine behind Enterprise Solutions is more robust and is capable of handling larger company files at reasonable performance levels. If your business has grown and your QuickBooks company file can’t be cleaned up to where it offers reasonable performance, Enterprise Solutions will provide improved performance.
Investigate network issues if QuickBooks is installed on a network. For example, mismatched network interface card (NIC) settings can significantly reduce network performance. If QuickBooks is the primary program that’s used over the network, this network configuration issue can appear to be a QuickBooks performance problem.

For some of these recommendations, the impact will be significant. For others, it may be imperceptible. What works or doesn’t work will be heavily dependent on your own configuration.

Intuit describes some of these recommendations in this knowledge base article.

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Using the Clean Up Company Data Utility

Chief Mechanic · April 10, 2010 ·

The notion of “spring cleaning” has been around for a long time. In the business accounting world generally and among QuickBooks users specifically, there are several forces that combine to make this a common time of the year for clean up. Financial and tax reporting requirements cause business owners and accountants to take a closer look at their accounting systems after closing the books on the just completed year. For QuickBooks users, Intuit’s service discontinuation policy also comes into play. For QuickBooks 2007 users, the lights on Intuit’s online services will go dark on May 31, 2010, forcing users that need these services to upgrade.

QuickBooks includes a powerful utility to help with the clean up process: the Clean Up Company Data utility. Running this utility is a great way to grab some important benefits:

improve QuickBooks performance by reducing the size of the company file
improve efficiency by reducing the number of list entries QuickBooks users have to scroll through
reduce the chance of assigning a transaction to the wrong list item

Company file size has a big impact on performance in QuickBooks. If you’re running QuickBooks Pro or Premier and your company file is much bigger than 100 Mb, it’s time you investigated the Clean Up Company Data utility. If your QuickBooks lists are filled with stale entries, you’re wasting time on every transaction reaching the right list entry and increasing the risk you choose the wrong one. The time waste and risk is small on each individual transaction, but multiply that over thousands of transactions per year. The costs and the risk of even a few erroneous transactions can become material.

To help get you started on running the Clean Up Company Data utility, we’ve posted 2 new articles in our KnowledgeBase.

The first article is an overview of what the Clean Up Company Data utility does, and the second covers the effects of running the Clean Up Company Data utility.

It’s never to late to get a jump on your spring cleaning.

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What Does the Clean Up Company Data Utility Do?

Chief Mechanic · April 9, 2010 ·

The Clean Up Company Data… utility performs 2 functions:

selectively summarizes closed transactions by creating new general journal entries by month and deletes the summarized transactions
selectively removes unused list items, including accounts, items, customers, vendors, other names, and To Do notes

The Clean Up utility can accomplish several important goals:

improve performance by reducing the size of the company file
improve efficiency by removing stale list items
reduce recording errors by reducing the chance of assigning a transaction to the wrong list item

It can be used to remove transactions as of a specific date or to remove all transactions.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10 Clean Up Option 1

QuickBooks will not remove a closed transaction if it has 1 of the following attributes:

it is an uncleared bank or credit card transaction
it is marked To be printed
it is an invoice or estimate and marked To be sent
it contains unbilled costs

By default in the clean up process, closed transactions that meet any 1 of these 4 criteria will not be summarized and deleted, but these defaults can be changed. We don’t recommend changing these defaults, with the possible exception of transactions excluded because of the To be printed or To be sent flags.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10 Clean Up Option 2

Unused list items can be removed from 1 or more of some important QuickBooks lists as part of the clean up:

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10 Clean Up Option 3

The Clean Up utility will complete 4 steps:

Make a backup
Verify the company file (.qbw)
Create an archive copy of the company file (.qbw)
Clean up data

Just before starting the clean up, QuickBooks will describe what it is about to do and ask you to proceed with the clean up:

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10 Clean Up Starting the Process

During the clean up process itself, you’ll see the following messages, indicating that processing is being performed:

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10 Clean Up Processing 1

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10 Clean Up Processing 2

Once the clean up process has successfully completed, you’ll see this information window:

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10 Clean Up Processing Complete

Running the Clean Up utility has a significant impact on your company file. See our related article on the effects of running the Clean Up utility.

For more information on the Clean Up utility, consult this Intuit knowledge base article.

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What Are the Effects of Running the Clean Up Utility?

Chief Mechanic · April 9, 2010 ·

When the Clean Up utility is run, the effects on a company file (.qbw) can be significant. The goals of the Clean Up utility are to shrink the company file size and to make using that file more efficient. These gains come with some trade-offs.

Important considerations when using the Clean Up utility are:

Transaction details from the cleaned up period will no longer exist in the company file (.qbw), so detail reports will not be available for the cleaned up period
Financial statements and summary reports for the cleaned up period will be accurate to a given month but not a shorter interval of time, because the clean up process summarizes transactions with a monthly journal entry
Inventory transactions up until the first inventory transaction that can’t be removed will be summarized in an inventory adjustment using the average cost of the items on that date; clean up of inventory items stops after the first inventory item that can’t be cleaned up
Cash basis reports for a cleaned up period will not be accurate because detail transactions are required to determine a transaction’s paid status
Sales tax reporting for the cleaned up period will be accurate because QuickBooks does not delete information required to produce reports on sales tax liabilities
Regardless of the end date specified for the clean up, QuickBooks retains payroll transactions for both the current and prior years based on the current setting of your computer’s clock
Only Estimates with a job status of Closed are deleted; Estimates with any other job status are preserved
Lists elements for 6 lists may be optionally removed if they’re not used in a transaction

The principal trade-off is that detail history for the period cleaned up will no longer be in your primary company file (.qbw). You’ll have to open an archive or a copy to review details from the cleaned up period or run reports that aren’t accurate for a cleaned up period, such as a cash basis report.

The Clean Up utility optionally can remove lists elements from 6 lists that are no longer used in a transaction. These lists are:

accounts
customers
vendors
other names
invoice items
To Do notes

Each of the 6 lists can be selected for clean up individually, as shown in the screenshot below.

QuickBooks 2010 Clean Up Select Unused List Items

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QuickBooks Clean Up Improves Performance

Chief Mechanic · September 20, 2008 ·

Just like a car, your QuickBooks company file needs regular maintenance to perform optimally. At a minimum, that maintenance should be performed annually. We refer to our specialized program to maintain a QuickBooks company file as our QB Tune Up, something QuickBooks users often generically refer to as a “clean up.” This is the among the most requested QuickBooks consulting services.

From within QuickBooks, you can press F2 to produce the Product Information screen, a sample of which appears nearby. This display shows some basic facts about your QuickBooks installation, including overall file size, database file fragments, the number of list entries, and the date that QuickBooks internal clean-up was last run. This information is important because QuickBooks has limits on the amount of list entries. Overall file size and the number of file fragments impact performance.

Unfortunately, while this basic information is useful, it doesn’t provide much insight into what needs to be cleaned up. Most QuickBooks users define the need for clean up more broadly: improve the accuracy of their accounting data and the performance of QuickBooks.

There are some identifiable operational indicators that it’s time for you to get our QB Tune Up:

reports and financial statements produce unexpected results
balances shown on detail reports don’t match balance sheet accounts
GL chart of accounts has become unwieldy
lists contain many outdated entries, increasing transaction entry time and the risk of operator error
sluggish system performance

It takes a specialist to develop a specific action plan to solve these data reliability and performance problems. We’ll provide a free, comprehensive analysis of your QuickBooks data file and an estimate of what needs to be done during our QB Tune Up. All of our QuickBooks service programs include free email support for a specified time period.

You don’t want to keep running your accounting system without a regular QB Tune Up.

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