To Condense or Not to Condense ... That is the Question

September 14, 2017

12:05 AM

Intuit tells QuickBooks Desktop users that:

“... the Condense Data utility streamlines your company data file by condensing closed transactions into summary journal entries and removing unused list elements. The utility can create a journal entry for each month in the selected period. The summary journal entries affect your accounts in exactly the same way as did the detail transactions.”

As we'll see in a bit, that last sentence might not be entirely accurate......

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Comments (2)

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Period copy

Murph? What are your thoughts on period copy? "outside of date range"

when we do engagements like this where we will only keep 2016 and 2017 for example, we only do period copy 01/01/2016 to 12/31/2017, then we import the TB for 12/31/2015 of whichever cutoff period, plus open AR, open AP, open Payroll Liability, ppen Sales Tax Liability, and Inventory QTY on hand + value at 12/31/2015.

found it the only viable way to make proper condense of files.

hector garcia more than 8 years ago

In a Good, Bad and Ugly situation - I guess Bad rather than Ugly.

Maybe 'Bad' is too bad a word for it, but still I don't view it as 'good' either. Obviously not as bad as the 'ugly' results I described in my article.

Using the "Transactions outside of a date range" (period copy) option Accountant-version users have the 2nd-step option to "Don't create a summary" (summary journal entries) and in so doing you achieve much the same result as the "Transactions before a specific date" without any summary entries.

The real work comes in how you then deal with the open transactions and inventory to insure that the average cost is preserved as of the starting date. Sales tax and payroll liabilities that are outstanding can be dealt with via the specific adjustment methodologies.

Of course with respect to inventory, if there was negative inventory history then average cost was wrong anyway so perhaps you need to adjust that based upon reality. I mean I have yet to have anyone show me 'negative quantities' on a shelf where product should be.

The one Condense option I think works extremely well is the remove "All transactions". I've yet to have it ever 'screw up' a file during testing. Best part, everything else from lists to preferences remain just the way you liked them.

insightfulaccountant.com more than 8 years ago