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Account deletion ramifications

Pat Marshall

I have some old accounts that I would like to delete. For example, there is still an account on a car that I sold 10 years ago. I'd like to just delete that from Quicken, but I worry about any transaction that involves an account that is still current. For example, if I made a payment from a checking account that is still active, does the deletion of the car account cause a problem with the checking account because of the payment I made to the account years ago?

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Jim_Harman

You are right to be concerned about deleting accounts.

Have you considered hiding the old accounts instead of deleting them? That has worked for me. To see hiding options, click on the gear at the top right of the account and select Edit account details then Display options.

Pat Marshall

I also do that, but I am to the point of not needing to see them again. It is similar of purging out of date files on the old days. Would be more simple if someone had to manage my estate.

RalphC

You really shouldn't delete obsolete accounts due to the affect it would have on other accounts. Yes, deleting the account would throw off your checking account balance. I would Close the account, then hide the account.

NotACPA

@Pat Marshall Deleting that car account (or any other account) will ALSO delete the "other side" of any transfers to/from that account … thus screwing up the other account.

Just hide them

Pat Marshall

I think the advice is exactly right. My file is huge since I started om 2007, but I guess it doesn't matter if the file is bigger than it would be if I got rid of the old accounts that are no longer used.

NotACPA

@Pat Marshall Just how big is "huge"? You can hold down the CTRL key and click HELP, About Quicken to see the "Size of QDF file".

Mine is 126,692k and contains transactions as far back as 1987.

Now, the size of the QDF file actually has almost nothing to do with Q's performance, per se.

The number of transactions in Investing accounts DOES, however, impact performance in such accounts. If you're seeing an impact there, look into "Archiving" transactions for closed positions.

Q Help, Investing, Investing Task has more info about Archiving investment txn.

@Pat Marshall

I agree with all prior comments.

In the past however I have done exactly what you asked a few times, but depends on the complexity, the number of "transfer" transactions and the effort I was willing to put into it.

Step 1 - the checking account: Let's say I made payments from my checking account to [Car1] account, [Car1] being the category of the transaction. This is the transfer transaction which is "linked" to the other account I want to delete. So in my checking account, I changed the category of those linked transactions to another appropriate category. In other words I unlinked them. That way, my checking account remained 100% accurate. This approach is doable if you are dealing with reasonable # of transactions where it is not time consuming to carefully alter them, or you can do batch edit to replace the category if possible.

Step 2 - the account to be deleted: I then went to [Car1] account and ensured there were no further linked transactions (sorting by and reviewing the category field) and it is now a standalone account. I deleted all the transactions first, closed the account and finally deleted it.

To be fair, I never do such things before testing them on my test setup first where I copy my file to the test system (VM), disable the internet access to avoid conflict, open the file and experiment.

I may get grief from the SuperUsers for this approach but perhaps like you I sometimes like to get rid of things that are completely obsolete.

Jim_Harman

@BK That sounds like a good process for deleting accounts if that is what you want to do.

This Idea post recommends making the hidden accounts default to Hidden in more places, which would help to keep them out of the way.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7955248/hide-hidden-accounts-by-default-across-various-dialogs

Pat Marshall

My QDF size 278,238K and about 87,000 transactions.

UKR

In the File / Copy menu there is an option about "Create Year End Archive".
In the past, due to memory limitations of early Windows and DOS systems, you had to split your Quicken data file into two pieces, an Archive file with old transactions dated before and a Current data file with newer transactions dated after the Cutoff Date.
Every account register's Opening Balance transaction would be recalculated to show a correct balance as of the cutoff date +/- unarchived transactions. This is to ensure that your running balance from cutoff date forward matches your bank statement balance.

These days it's not really necessary to split a data file into pieces, e.g., everything older than 5 years goes off into the archive file.
Caveat 1: To do so successfully, the old transactions must all be reconciled. Transfer transactions must be reconciled in both sides (accounts) involved in the transfer.
Paycheck transactions with transfers to investment accounts may not be reconciled in the investment register and therefore will not be archived from the checking account. Makes for weird looking checking register balances leaving those transactions unarchived …
Caveat 2: Investment registers will have their banking-type transactions archived, but not any investment buy, sell, add, remove, etc. transactions. Leaves a lot of transactions unarchived and makes for weird looking register balances due to all the removed transactions
Caveat 3: Customer and Vendor Invoice accounts and some other account types cannot be reconciled. They are never split into Archive and Current pieces.
Caveat 4: The archive file will contain a copy of all Scheduled Reminders and they will remain active. Whenever you open the archive file, they will attempt to add new transactions and mess up your archive. After creating the archive file open it once and delete all Scheduled Reminders to prevent this from occurring.
Caveat 5: Once Humpty Dumpty (your data file) has been split into two pieces, there's no way that I know of to re-combine those two files back into one should you change your mind at a later date.

The Archive process really only processes banking register transactions.

Consider carefully if it's worth the effort. I mean, you can try to create an archive with a cutoff of 12/31 ten years ago.
You do want to select an archive cutoff date far enough back that you don't have to switch between data files if you ever have to look up some historical transactions.
If you're satisfied with the results you can then go into the current data file and inspect all these old account registers.
If every old transaction in the account was archived and there are now no transactions left over in the register (except a $0.00 Opening Balance transaction) you can delete this old register without impact on the data file and its remaining transactions.

Jim_Harman

When @NotACPA refers to Archiving above, he is not talking about creating a "Year-end archive", but rather using the "Archive transactions" function in investing accounts. Rather than creating a separate archive file, this moves transactions for closed positions, i.e. securities you no longer own, in an account into a separate Archive account in the same file. This will not make the file smaller, but it can speed up processing in investing accounts that currently have many thousands of transactions.

Pat Marshall

I am near convinced to just accept the closed accounts and not pursue deletion. I did deletion years ago and I paid a price not understanding the consequences.

AndrewQ

If you have an account (Auto) that has payments made to it via a checking account via linked transactions , deleting the Auto account should NOT affect your checking account balance upon deletion. The linked category in your checking account that originally specified the auto loan account name (for the payment to be debited there) will now be automatically set to "UNSPECIFIED ACCOUNT" when Quicken deletes the auto account for all those linked transactions in the checking account..

Of course, make a backup before you do this, and ensure you know what your checking account balance was before you delete the auto loan to verify you are ok. But deletion of that auto account should NOT create a balance issue elsewhere.

YMMV.

Jim_Harman

There may not be a balance issue after deleting an account, but if the transfer is changed to UNSPECIFIED ACCOUNT, the information about where the payment went or the money from the transfer came from will be lost. The method that @BK recommends above can preserve that information if it is important to you.

Pat Marshall

Good advice from everyone. This has been very helpful, and I am still thinking about how I want to pursue.

AndrewQ

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20458997#Comment_20458997

That's true, but that's not what his original issue was, and I realize that you said "if that information is important to you". By virtue of his wishing to delete the old account, I'm assuming either it isn't or he didn't think ahead that far.

If he wishes to have some semblance of what the payments were for in his existing checking account, he could always do a global FIND/REPLACE of the Category name "[UNSPECIFIED ACCOUNT]" (that indicates the no-longer valid transfer to the deleted account, note the brackets in the category name indicating a transfer) to a true newly created category name like "OLD CORVETTE CAR LOAN" (without brackets). That way he can still then see the entire set of payments and information made to the account that no longer exists since all would remain in his checking register and categorized appropriately.

Perhaps he'd also wish to enter a FLAG on a transaction (I use GREEN indicating it's info to me, but nothing I need to worry about in the future (I use RED for those)) on one or more of those payments (the last one perhaps?) to self-document what is going on. I often use this feature to record loan information (account numbers and such) that I want to maintain posterity in my Quicken records.

retird

@Pat Marshall

I would think if someone had to manage your finances they would see hidden closed account with zero balance. I have many zero balance closed accounts hidden.

Pat Marshall

That's true about finding hidden closed accounts, but I was just trying to keep it simple. I had an injury earlier this year and family had to deal with my affairs for several months which is what prompted me to get my act together.

retird

I spent much time organizing in Quicken all my financial matters including insurance policies, pre-arangements, and etc. Lots of legal document attachments too. Everything included in Quicken so it's a one-stop-shop for estate management. Once it is set up it is easy to manage.

Jim_Harman

One issue with using Quicken as a place to store the information an executor or someone who is managing your affairs would need is that that person would need at least some familiarity with Quicken. We may all be comfortable with Quicken, that may not be the case for many of the people who would be taking over our affairs.

Quicken has recently released a new product called LifeHub, which connects to Quicken Classic to keep account information current but is otherwise a separate product. For more information please see

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7955164/quicken-lifehub-faq

retird

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20459189#Comment_20459189

Good that you added that those who will need to manage everything should be familiar with your Quicken and also they should be familiar with the data file structure. It is advisable that those who may manage one's affairs be familiar and informed about everything anyway whether using Quicken or other means such as paper files stored somewhere.

I did snoop around a bit to see what this Quicken Life Hub is all about…. nothing found on Quicken's web site, found no youtube videos, and etc…. found a LifeHub community with nothing beneficial…. guide me to where I can research it please….

Jim_Harman

Did the FAQ link I posted for LifeHub not work for you?

Apparently it is in "Early Access" now and there is a link to try it in the FAQs.

retird

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20459214#Comment_20459214

Maybe Early Access means not ready for release…. found no significant description of this software package anywhere on Quicken website or anywhere else. If anybody in this community is using it maybe they can chime in….. thanks anyway….

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20459075#Comment_20459075

@BK That sounds like a good process for deleting accounts if that is what you want to do.

The method that @BK recommends above can preserve that information if it is important to you.

@Pat Marshall

Did you read my earlier comment? It works safely. And if I were to delete an account for whatever reason, I would use that same process again.