Archive Data wizard overview

You can archive your data at any time. Performing this process moves your oldest fiscal year data into a separate archive company. Performing this process also removes all accounting activity for the oldest fiscal year in your company and 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. This wizard also provides you an opportunity to remove old jobs and invoices.

Before you begin

Please allow time to proceed through the process in its entirety for each company you keep on Sage 100 Contractor. The length of time it takes to complete each company will vary. The company data you are archiving is preserved for future access. Before starting, ensure that your accounting and payroll systems are as up to date as possible.

You can perform this process at any time. You do not have to archive your records prior to advancing to the next fiscal year. However, keep in mind that the archive process archives only 1 year of data at one time. If you accumulate more than 1 year of data before you archive, you must run the archive process for each year.

Preparation:

The following tasks are performed during the Preparation step:

• Rebuild Indexes
• Search for unprinted checks
• General ledger audit
• Inventory audit (optional, but strongly recommended if you use the Inventory module)
• Create 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.

General Maintenance:

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.
• 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:

The following tasks are performed during this step in the wizard.

• Create company archive
• Verify the archive
• Remove the fiscal year information
• Verify 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).

• 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.