Files over 300 MB can begin to slow you down. If it is not too slow, then it is not too big!
Continued use of QuickBooks causes accumulation of QuickBooks’ non-financial data in the data file such as report settings, temporary data, audit trail, garbage data, etc. This additional data increases the size of the data file which in turn causes QuickBooks to operate slower than normal. A service such as the SuperCondense service will safely remove all temporary data to shrink the file to the smallest possible size.
The definition of “too large” in QuickBooks is fuzzy. You can hit a ceiling based on the sheer size of the file (defined in megabytes, or MB) or by what’s in the file itself (e.g. number of items). You may have a small file in term of the amount of space it takes on your hard drive and still reach a limit based on how you use QuickBooks. The key limitations are the following:
- File size
Theoretically, there is no limit to the size of your file, but in practicality, assume that you are stretching QuickBooks Pro and Premier when you get to around 150MB. QuickBooks Enterprise starts straining at around 1GB. Above these limits, QuickBooks becomes painfully slow and the database tends to get corrupted easily. - Number of items
There is a limit to the number of list items that you can have in your file. This limit is different for each type of item and for each version of QuickBooks and it changes year to year, so it’s a hard target to keep track of. Here’s a good rule of thumb to use: if your total number of items is below 10,000 overall, you’re safe with QuickBooks Pro and Premier. The same number is 100,000 for Enterprise.
If the size of a QuickBooks data file grows too large, it can negatively affect the performance of the file. You will experience sluggishness, frequent crashes, delays in saving transactions, delays in running reports, etc.
What is QuickBooks SuperCondense?
The SuperCondense service will shrink the size of your data file to almost 50-80% of the original file size. A smaller QuickBooks data file will have the following benefits:
⦁ Performance Boost: QuickBooks will run significantly faster
⦁ Stability: Smaller files are less prone to corruption or crashing
⦁ Speed: Quicker to load the file, run reports
⦁ Stay comfortably under the 14,500 name limit for Pro/Premier
⦁ Convert to QuickBooks Online
⦁ Upgrade to newer versions of QuickBooks faster and easier
The Condense Data utility provides several options to allow you to customize how you condense your data. You can choose to replace transactions with a single summary journal entry, a journal entry for each month, or create no journal entries. When you summarize using a general journal entry the entry shows up as “GENJRNL” in your registers’ type field. Journal entries in QuickBooks align with traditional accounting practices by using a single ledger to record all transactions. You can also select a date range to condense your data, only condense data after a specific date, or only condense data before a specific date.
E-Tech offers the SuperCondense service which has been used by hundreds of satisfied customers in US, Canada, and UK. Since QuickBooks does not have a condense feature in the Canadian and UK versions of QuickBooks, this service will allow users of QuickBooks to continue to use their existing data files rather than create a new data file and lose history. Also, even though the US version of QuickBooks does have a condense feature, it does not work correctly with data files with Inventory or Advanced Inventory.