Archive Data wizard overview

You can archive your company data at any time to preserve it for future access. You do not have to archive your records prior to advancing to the next fiscal year.

Important! The archive process archives only one year of data at a time. If you need to archive more than one year of data, you must run the archive process for each year.

You can also use the Archive Data wizard to remove old jobs and invoices.

The archive process:

• Moves your oldest fiscal year data into a separate archive company.

• Removes all accounting activity for the oldest fiscal year in your company.

• Adjusts the beginning balances for asset, liability and equity accounts and sub-accounts, as well as jobs, vendors, service clients and equipment to match the archive year’s corresponding ending balances. Income and expense balances for the archive year roll into the Retained Earnings account beginning balance.

Before you begin

• Allow sufficient time to proceed through the entire archive process for each company you keep on Sage 100 Contractor. The time it takes to archive each company will vary.
• Ensure that your accounting and payroll systems are as up to date as possible.
• Ensure that you have two backup copies of your company data.

The archiving process

The archiving process consists of the following steps.

Preparation

During the Preparation step, the Archive Data wizard:

• Rebuilds indexes after removing deleted records
• Searches for unprinted checks
• Audits the general ledger
• Audits inventory, if you use the Inventory module
• Creates a temporary backup

If issues are found or errors are encountered, the process stops and the text on this button changes to [Resume Preparation]. Click [Resume Preparation] to continue running subsequent tasks to see if there are additional items that require your attention.

Note: General ledger audit errors must be fixed before you can proceed with archiving. Exit the wizard and contact Customer Support to correct the errors before you proceed.

Maintenance Options

You can select one or more of the following tasks to perform on the database after archiving your data.

• Remove jobs with Closed or Refused status, and all related records. (Only jobs that do not have job costs or ledger activity in the current books are removed .)
• Remove payable invoices with Paid or Void status and no Job #.
• Remove service invoices with Paid, Completed, or Void status (option not displayed if you do not have service invoices).
• Remove purchase orders with Closed status and no Job #.

Archive Data

During this step, the wizard performs the following tasks:

• Creates the company archive. During this process the wizard:

  • Copies company data to the designated company archive folder. (The copied data includes Images, Attachments, Aatrix Forms, Direct Deposit and Reports subfolders.)

  • Removes accounting data that was posted to a fiscal year later than the year you are archiving, and recalculates ending balances, invoice balances (where payment was recorded in a future year), and inventory quantities, as necessary.

    Note: If jobs, vendors, employees, and equipment records created in subsequent years exist at the time you archive, these records are copied to the archive company, although the associated accounting data is removed.

• Verifies the archive
• Removes fiscal year information from the archived year for the current company
• Performs maintenance tasks, if any were selected
• Verifies the current company

Finished

• Create backup of the company archive: When backing up your data, be sure to make a full backup and not an incremental or differential backup. An incremental or differential backup only records alterations to the data since the last backup.

• Make changes to existing general ledger accounts: You can make prior year adjustments by posting transactions to period 0—Prior Year.

  • Transactions posted to period 0—Prior Year update the beginning balance in your current company.

  • Prior year adjustments posted to income and expense accounts update the Retained Earnings account in the current year in period zero(0).

  After archiving, if you post an entry to period 0 in the current books, you must also open the archive and make the entry for the previous year.

• Change security in the archive company: If required, change security in the archive company by changing the rights of all user groups in 7-3-1 Security Groups to No for Save, Delete, Void, Change Period, and Print Checks. This prevents users from accidentally saving or printing records in the archive.

• Print filtered reports for the archive company: When printing the 6-1-7 Over/Under Billing, 6-1-8 Bonding, and 6-1-12 Committed Cost reports for the archive company, print by fiscal period to exclude information for jobs, vendors, employees, and equipment records created in subsequent years.