Best way to have a clean quickbooks file from the start of this year?

Maintaining accurate bookkeeping records is vital for financial analysis and business performance evaluation. I have some suggestions to offer that can help with your inquiries about streamlining your data and having your file start from 2023, David.

There are two methods available for cleaning your company file in QuickBooks Desktop.

The first approach involves utilizing the Condense Data utility tool, which helps streamline your company data file.

This process removes old, unnecessary transactions, and summarizes the remaining data. This will also free up some space and improve the efficiency of your QuickBooks Desktop application.

Here's how:

1. Go to the File menu,  select Utilities, and then click Condense Data.
2. Select the first option as shown below. 
3. Click Next.
4. Then choose if you want to remove transactions before a specific date or outside of a date range.
5. Click Next and follow the succeeding prompts to condense your data file. 

Let me also share this article to share more information about this tool: Use the Condense Data Utility.

The second method is to start a brand new file from the existing one. QuickBooks has a setup option to copy just your core account and list information from the old file into a new one.

With this, you can begin with up-to-date balances and eliminate the burden of old transactions. Here's a detailed guide on how to proceed: Start a New Company File With Data From Your Existing File.

The key benefit is only bringing over essential lists, and leaving dated transactions behind. This can be cleaner than trying to purge individual transactions.

Alternatively, you can manually remove old or duplicate transactions that may have caused your file to become bloated. For more information and step-by-step instructions, please refer to this article: Remove Duplicate Transactions in QuickBooks Desktop.

However, we recommend reaching out to your accountant if you choose to delete transactions. Invoices and bills are posting transactions and removing them will have a significant impact on your financial reporting. 

Please don't hesitate to let me know if you if you have follow-up questions when cleaning up your file and sorting out balances, David. I'm here to offer my help again anytime you need it. 

@davidmatyas 

Why don't you try the condense feature?

If you encounter any error messages, consider to purchase a 3rd party condense service.