With the increased capacity and power of today's computers, two years of data can easily be kept in the data file while adding the third year's transactions. For instance, data from 1999 and 2000 can be kept in the same file while transactions for 2001 are being added. Keeping several years of data in the same file allows you to make comparison reports, graphs, etc. It is also makes it easier to go back to find an earlier income or expense transaction.
Make sure that your current file is backed up before beginning any year-end file management.
Three options can be used to manage Quicken data files at year's end.
Click File, Click File Operations, Click Year-End Copy to open the
YEAR-END COPY window for two of these options.
1) Archive
Copies the earliest year's transactions in the current data file to another file. The current file will still contain all transactions including the transactions archived to the new data file. This year-end procedure will allow the user to create a new data file with transactions for a specific year or time period while accumulating several years of transactions in the current data file.
Example of Archive
If the current data file, EXFARM, contains transactions for 1998, 1999, 2000 and part of 2001 you can archive the 1998 data in a new data file, EXFARM98. By adding the year to the file name, you will be able to tell which year's data is in which data file. In this example,
Archive could also be used to create a file EXFARM98-99 that contains data for 1998 and 1999. However,
Archive could not be used to create a file, EXFARM99, that contains 1999 data only. To create EXFARM99 see
Copy later in this section. The current file, EXFARM, will still contain the transactions for 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001. You can continue to use EXFARM for the remainder of your 2001 transactions.
2) Start New Year
This copies all the transactions from the current file to a new data file (call the new file JUNK to distinguish it from your other data files) and then deletes transactions prior to a specified date from the current file. This procedure can be used to delete old transactions from the current data file when the file contains too many years of records.
Start New Year should be used to delete transactions from the current data file after those transactions from earlier years have been saved in other data file(s) using
Archive.
Example of Start New Year
EXFARM now has transactions for 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001. You have already archived the 1998 data in EXFARM98 using the
Archive option. You want to use Start New Year to delete the 1998 data from EXFARM so you will have only 1999 and 2000 transactions as you start recording transactions for 2001. When the START NEW YEAR
window opens, it will ask for the name of the file to copy transactions to. This file could be named JUNK and is where all the transactions in EXFARM will be copied to.
This window also asks about deleting transactions from EXFARM older than a specified date. If you are deleting 1998 transactions so only 1999, 2000 and 2001 data remain, you will want to delete transactions older than 1/01/99.
Click OK and EXFARM now has 1999, 2000 and 2001 data while JUNK has 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001 transactions. Once you are sure that the current EXFARM file has the data you want, you can delete JUNK.
The third option to manage Quicken data files at years end is
Copy. Click File, Click File Operations, Click Copy to open the
COPY FILE window.
3) Copy creates a new file with transactions between specified beginning and ending dates. Uncleared transactions should also be copied to the new file.
Example of Copy
If the current data file, EXFARM, contains transactions for 1998, 1999, 2000 and part of 2001 you can use
Copy to copy the 1998 data into a new data file, EXFARM98. Archive could also be used to create EXFARM98.
Copy can also be used to create EXFARM99 by specifying the beginning date as 1/1/99 and the ending date as 12/31/99 while
Archive could not be used to create EXFARM99. Again by adding the year to the file name, you will be able to tell which year's data is in which data file. The current file, EXFARM, will still contain the transactions for 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001. You can continue to use EXFARM for your 2001 transactions.