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apate
Level 1

Company File

What is the recommended file size for Quickbooks? I understand there is no limit for quickbooks file size, but at what point should one consider to offload data from the company file or start a new one?

-Thanks

Solved
Best answer December 03, 2020

Best Answers
BettyJaneB
QuickBooks Team

Company File

I've come to share some insights regarding your file size concern, @apate.

 

Yes, you are correct. There are no actual limits on the size of your company data file, but performance may be hindered if your network is not capable of handling large data files. QuickBooks' performance decreases as the size of the company file increases.

 

The ideal use of QuickBooks Desktop is to keep at least two years of detailed transactions in a company data file so that you can compare reports and have prior-year project information. Thus, there's no recommended file size since businesses track different information.

 

If you're experiencing any performance issues and you wanted to reduce your file size, you may condense the data. Here's a link that provides complete details on how to perform this process: Resolve QuickBooks Desktop performance issues: Manage your data file.

 

Moreover, to give you more tips on what are the system requirements that works best with QuickBooks Desktop, I suggest checking out this reference: Find out what your computer needs to run the best QuickBooks Desktop experience.

 

I'll be right here to lend a helping hand if you need anything else. Have a lovely day!

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3 Comments 3
BettyJaneB
QuickBooks Team

Company File

I've come to share some insights regarding your file size concern, @apate.

 

Yes, you are correct. There are no actual limits on the size of your company data file, but performance may be hindered if your network is not capable of handling large data files. QuickBooks' performance decreases as the size of the company file increases.

 

The ideal use of QuickBooks Desktop is to keep at least two years of detailed transactions in a company data file so that you can compare reports and have prior-year project information. Thus, there's no recommended file size since businesses track different information.

 

If you're experiencing any performance issues and you wanted to reduce your file size, you may condense the data. Here's a link that provides complete details on how to perform this process: Resolve QuickBooks Desktop performance issues: Manage your data file.

 

Moreover, to give you more tips on what are the system requirements that works best with QuickBooks Desktop, I suggest checking out this reference: Find out what your computer needs to run the best QuickBooks Desktop experience.

 

I'll be right here to lend a helping hand if you need anything else. Have a lovely day!

Fiat Lux - ASIA
Level 15

Company File

@apate 

Our experience is that Pro and Premier data files start to take a long time to run reports at the 150-200 MB size. In addition, Pro and Premier become more susceptible to data corruption and other funky issues if they get to be too large. The Enterprise version was designed to handle a much larger data file. There are some businesses running smoothly today with data files over 1 GB. If you find that you are outgrowing Pro or Premier, the transition into Enterprise is very seamless and easy to do. Otherwise, you may consider to condense the file.


There is no hard and fast rule on this topic. Nor is there any way to know exactly how many invoices, estimates, etc. will get your data file to become “too big”. However, these rules of thumb relating to the 150–200 MB max file size for Pro and Premier have served our clients very well.

bqdatabase
Level 3

Company File

There is a limit and we found out the hard way. When running Quickbooks "Enterprise", and your company file exceeds 1.5GB, data corruption is INEVITABLE! Yes, so much for being 'Enterprise'. Quickbooks runs on a SQL Anywhere database and only a 32bit version. Nothing has changed over all the years.

 

Forget about using their build in Condense utility to shrink your file, it's not going to work unless you have a super clean database, and then it will still need to run for days depending on how you condense your data.

 

When you run a small to medium-sized business, QuickBooks enterprise is a risky accounting system as the risks for data corruption is great with only one recourse "Intuit Data Services" which takes multiple business days.

 

Yes, you need to treat your quickbooks database like a baby, run verify (every day? - every week?) to ensure there is no corruption you are bringing forth day after day and having to reenter SHOULD you figure it out.

Watch the rebuild results CAREFULLY! - EXPAND THE ERRORS AND PRINT IT OUT TO PDF!

 

When QuickBooks says it COULDN'T fix entries, CALL QUICKBOOKS DATA SERVICES. The next time you run the rebuild it will NOT show you these errors again and they are now part of your database.

 

Tips - Run Quickbooks in the cloud to prevent your system going down due to power outages and who knows what.

Have the server setup with rdp login for each user (users login to the same server where the database is located) It will prevent data corruption to a degree as there are no additional factors that could cause serious damage like lost connections when posting etc.

 

 

 

 

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