How to compress Sage 50 data files

How to compress Sage 50 data files

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I'm looking for advice please.

It's a long time since I've compressed Sage 50 data files, and I want to double check before doing it.

The Sage on the particular company hasn't been compressed for a very long time (well over 10 years), and the current transaction number is above 150,000. The program's running very slowly on all but the most recent computer!

We want to compress (if that's the right expression) the period older than 10 years, which will get rid of 50,000 transactions.

Looking at Sage Help it says Choose Maintenance > Click Compress Data > etc, but it doesn't seem to have an option to compress just up to a certain date or transaction number. It seems to be Compress Everything, or Compress specific categories of data (e.g Purchase Ledger or Audit Trail etc)

First question is can I actually do what I want (compress by date or transaction number)?

Second question is if so, how?

Third question is whether 'Compress' is the right term for what I'm trying to do, or is there a different option?

Thanks for any advice on this.

Replies (8)

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By johndon68
23rd Nov 2011 16:50

'Compress'

Compress just removes deleted transactions from the data files.

What you need to look at is Clear Audit Trail which removes fully paid and reconciled from the Audit Trail thereby reducing the number of transactions - you can do this up to a particular date.

John

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Replying to Lilac1:
Sarah Douglas - HouseTree Business Ltd
By sarah douglas
23rd Nov 2011 19:15

Can I direct you to the sage user group

Hi 

This is covered in detail in the sage user group if you use the search compress data and clean up sage .

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Replying to redboam:
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By newmoon
24th Nov 2011 08:57

Which User Group?

Sarah

Thanks.

Do you mean the Sage 50 Accounts Discussion Group on this site (I couldn't see a way of searching the posts there), or are you referring to somewhere else please?

 

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Replying to Lilac1:
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By newmoon
24th Nov 2011 08:54

Thank you John

Thanks John

I'll run clear audit trail

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Replying to Lilac1:
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By newmoon
24th Nov 2011 09:25

A further question on Clearing Audit Trail

Having tried Clearing Audit Trail the outcome was as follows:

We tried clearing all transactions up to 31st December 2001 (keeping the last 10 years), and the number of transactions before this period was 50,000.

However the process only cleared 16942 transactions, which was disappointing.

I think part of the reason (and I didn't check beforehand unfortunately) is that a Clear Audit Trail has been run previously, so there weren't actually 50,000 transactions to clear.

However there are still 1500 odd transactions not cleared from before 31st December 2001, the majority of these in the three months prior to that date. What is the reason for these being left - is it that they are needed to reconcile transactions in 2002?

Thanks for advice.

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By johndon68
24th Nov 2011 09:31

Clear Audit Trail will remove transactions that meet the following criteria:

1. They are before the date entered

2. They are fully paid

3. They have been reconciled, where appropriate, for VAT & Bank

4. Where both 'sides' of a transaction meet the criteria.  For example, you may have a sales invoice and the receipt that paid it where the invoice has been VAT Reconciled but the receipt has not been bank reconciled - in that case, neither transaction would be removed from the audit trail.

John

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Sarah Douglas - HouseTree Business Ltd
By sarah douglas
24th Nov 2011 18:45

 

 

Sage Line 50 Maintenance to speed up your Line 50sarah douglas PM | Tue, 30/03/2010 - 23:30 | Permalink

 General Maintenance of Sage Line 50 (Very Important ALLWAYS TAKE A BACKUP FIRST )

Invoices , Purchase Orders Stock orders all take up considerable space on any LIne 50 product.  When you do a year end this information is still there, as is your Audit trail.

Some people like two years worth depending on size this slows your system down, clearing these down does not effect your audit trail and will considerable speed up your Line 50.

Complete this a least once a year or more depending on the size of your data and your Sage Software should speed up considerably.

PDF any of your Invoices , Purchase Orders , Sales Order , Quotes that you require for your records. This can be done by picking a range and saving as one PDF for example maybe by year or month.Then using the Search Criteria delete a range or you can pick them individual  a bit slower.Quick tip, pick by date range and highlight one and use your swap button to highlight the the others  Quickly)Then go to File maintenance after deleting  and pick the Compress Data Option   If you have deleted considerable amounts of the above you will see a huge improvement in speed.

CLearing Down Audit Trail after year end 

From experience my clients like a two year audit trail but you can clear any thing before a date for example 31st March 2008.

go to tools Menu .  Period end . Clear Audit TrailWizard appears and Confirm (May not in some of older version but you can still follow)Enter date you want to remove transactions to .  The more you have reconciled , Credit cards , Petty Cash, Banks ,Vat the more it will clear , and then press process it completes the relevant Journal. 

Again this will speed up your Line 50.

 

 

Kind regards Sarah @ Douglas Accountancy & Bookkeeping Services, Glasgow 

 

More Clear Downs19kings PM | Wed, 31/03/2010 - 00:43 | Permalink

Another area that will really help with anything to with the bank is to clear down (Purge) all printed Remittances. If Remittances don't get printed then highlight all the Remittances print them to preview and then Purge the file.

 

 

More clear down suggestions from Sage (& networking tips)John Stokdyk PM | Wed, 07/04/2010 - 09:53 | Permalink

Sarah has pointed the way towards keeping the Sage database size to a minimum, but in response to recent queries about the slow performance of Sage 50 Accounts 2010, Jamie Saul, accounts technical lead for Sage UK, added a few points:

Once you have archived old sales orders, purchase orders and stock transactions, as well as running the Compress Data command, also use the Reindex command from the File Maintenance menu to improve performance (Jamie suggested using this before Compressing Data).

They also supplied some useful tips on Networking Sage 50 Accounts.

Johns Stokdyk links to Slow Performance of Sage 50 and Networking Sage 50 accounts are excellent sources of info

Thanks (1)
Sarah Douglas - HouseTree Business Ltd
By sarah douglas
24th Nov 2011 18:42

https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/group/sage-50-accounts-discussion-group/sage-line-50-tips-tricks#comment-417886

 

This line also has some very useful tips about sage.  It is really helpful 

Kind regards Sarah @ Douglas Accountancy & Bookkeeping Services, Glasgow 

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