How to improve the performance of your QuickBooks company file

How to improve the performance of your QuickBooks company file

Summary:

Like every database-driven software, maintenance is required on a regular basis to keep your database (or in the case of QuickBooks, your Company File) healthy. This article will walk you through a few tips that will help you keep your file in top shape. 

Responsibility for Company File Maintenance.

All customers are responsible for the company file data maintenance and the tips we include here help you keep your data healthy as the data owner, per your contracted terms and conditions.
Our responsibility is to make daily full server backups for you.

What do I have to do?

Keep your Company File at a manageable size

When not maintained on a regular basis, your QuickBooks Company File (.QBW) will grow large. Even though it will still function at a larger size, you would be running a few risks by allowing it to grow:
  1. Schedule this as a part of your Month-End procedures when you're closing your books.
  2. Data Integrity: The larger your Company File, the higher your risk of data corruption.
  3. Performance Problems: When your Company File grows large, you will start experiencing slowness in accessing the file itself, or even functions within the file, depending on what you are doing.
Per Intuit, the maximum recommended size of the company file size, is around 500Mb for Pro/Premier, and 1.5Gb for Enterprise. 

When your files start to reach these limits, and if you don't have the necessary resources internally to handle the condensing of your company file, please contact your QuickBooks consultant who can help you archive historical data, or help you create a new shell Company File.

Backups your Company File with Full Verification:

Your QuickBooks Company file grows as you enter transactions, and as part of that process, it also maintains a transaction log file (.TLG) which grows and is maintained in case there is data corruption, Intuit Recovery Services can use this file to help recover your data. This file can get really large, exponentially larger than your actual Company File (.QBW).

As a result, the likelihood of data corruption, and performance issues will increase.  While you may be taking a backup to your local workstation via FileBridge, or even to the server, it is important that this special type of backup is done, which is the option with "Complete Verification".  This backup can only be done in Single User Mode, while no other users are connected to the Company File.

Your server will have a path specifically for each of your Company Files in the following path: Q:\<Company Prefix> Backup\<Company File Name>
Depending on the size of your Company File, this type of backup might take a while to complete the verification and perform the backup, but once it completes, it will also truncate the size of the TLG file from possible multiple Gb to 320Kb or a bit larger than that.

It is very easy to perform this backup:


Important Notes for the above procedure :

  1. The destination of your backup can either be G:\ which is the group folder on your FileBridge, or you can set the destination of the backup to be Q:\Backup\COMPANYNAME. When placed on Q:\Backup, we only allow up to 2 backups for each company file. Delete the older one before creating a new backup. If more than 2 backups are kept we may delete them without notification if needed. If you like those backups not to be deleted please save them on G:\. Your server and data is still all being backed up nightly according to gotomyerp backup policies and procedures.
  2. If you have a third-party sync app that integrates with QuickBooks then you MUST do this at least once a month as Sync apps increase the size of tlg files tremendously.

Improve the performance of your report exports:

Have you ever exported a report, especially a larger report to an Excel worksheet, and it took a really long time to complete? and then thought that your server is so slow. The fact of the matter if that the way QuickBooks exports reports to Excel by Default, it generates the report and "Freezes Panes" in the resulting Excel file.

Turning off the "Freeze Panes" option before exporting to Excel should increase the speed at which your reports export by 15 to 20 times!  For exact steps on how to do this, please see this KB article.

Miscellaneous Tips

  1. Turn off Auto Update
    Help > Update Quickbooks Desktop > Options (tab) > Automatic Update : No
  2. Close the company file gracefully before closing the Quickbooks application
    1. File > Close Company/Logoff
    2. File > Exit
  3. Collapse the Invoice History pane for invoices.