Quickbooks File Size Too Large?

As a Quickbooks file size increases, it starts taking longer and longer to post transactions into the data file. Users start complaining they have to wait to save or lookup transactions. Sound familiar? How do you resolve such issues? Optimizing the Quickbooks file size will save you money in increased employee efficiency and maintain a healthy Quickbooks data file. This article will explain why a Quickbooks file bloats in size and what you can do to keep the file size down to a minimum so Quickbooks can operate efficiently.

What is the Optimal Quickbooks File Size?

There is no such thing as an optimal file size but the consensus is if the file size exceeds 1.5GB, Quickbooks performance starts to degrade to a point of making Quickbooks unstable or even unusable. Below are guidelines for file sizes:
Pro: 1GB
Premier: 1.5GB
Enterprise: 2GB

How to reduce a Quickbooks File Size?

1. One way to reduce the size of your Quickbooks data file is to create a Portable file and then restore the portable file. Quickbooks will optimize the file when it restores the portable file thereby reducing the file size by a small amount.
2. A better way is to condense the data file by choosing a cutoff date to remove prior transactions. The Quickbooks condense has a built-in file shrink utility to reduce the file size after the condense completes.
3. The third option is to SuperCondense a data file to shrink it to 50-80% of the original file size.