Year End Copy

David

Quicken Help seems to suggest that it may better not to archive old entries, I have around 15 years data in my file. Can I just leave it or should I consider archiving more than, say, 10 years old. It seems that I must ensure all records are reconciled. and I assume that the new file will have opening balances up to the archive date. What else do I need to know?

Chris_QPW

In general the recommendation by experience users (not Quicken support) is not to do Year End Copy.  It serves little purpose, as it will not affect performance very much at all, and it means that you won't have access to all your data for reports and such.  Plus it is next to impossible to merge two data files once they are split.

The size of the data file has little to do with the performance because Quicken is a database, and also caches the register data when the register is opened for the first time in a session.  This means that Quicken only reads the data needed for the register(s) that you are working with, not the whole data file.

Note there is a difference between non investment accounts and investment accounts.  For non investment accounts as long as there isn't like more than 30,000 transactions there isn't a problem (and if there is you should just break up the account into two accounts).

With investment accounts is a different story.  It seems like they are calculating the lots and such every time the display changes, so as the number of transactions, securities, and lots go up performance can go way down.  But because of the complication of keeping buys and sells of a given security together Year End Copy doesn't touch investment transactions.  And as such Year End Copy can't be used to increase the performance.  Instead what the user should do is move old closed out security transactions to another account.  This increases the performance because like I said Quicken doesn't read an account's data until you access it.  So if you don't access all those old transactions in the second account in a session they don't affect the performance.

Chris_QPW

In general the recommendation by experience users (not Quicken support) is not to do Year End Copy.  It serves little purpose, as it will not affect performance very much at all, and it means that you won't have access to all your data for reports and such.  Plus it is next to impossible to merge two data files once they are split.

The size of the data file has little to do with the performance because Quicken is a database, and also caches the register data when the register is opened for the first time in a session.  This means that Quicken only reads the data needed for the register(s) that you are working with, not the whole data file.

Note there is a difference between non investment accounts and investment accounts.  For non investment accounts as long as there isn't like more than 30,000 transactions there isn't a problem (and if there is you should just break up the account into two accounts).

With investment accounts is a different story.  It seems like they are calculating the lots and such every time the display changes, so as the number of transactions, securities, and lots go up performance can go way down.  But because of the complication of keeping buys and sells of a given security together Year End Copy doesn't touch investment transactions.  And as such Year End Copy can't be used to increase the performance.  Instead what the user should do is move old closed out security transactions to another account.  This increases the performance because like I said Quicken doesn't read an account's data until you access it.  So if you don't access all those old transactions in the second account in a session they don't affect the performance.