So you’ve ran your year end, archived your data and you’re raring to go in the new accounting year. Before you continue entering new transactions, it’s worth taking a little time to tidy up and weed out some of the records you no longer need.

I recommend using these five simple steps to make sure your data is in trim and ready for the coming year.

1. Clear your audit trail

Clearing your audit trail removes old transactions and reduces the size of your dataset. I find that reducing the number of transactions speeds up searching and reporting. You choose the date you clear up to so you won’t lose transactions that you want to keep.

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2. Clear your stock

If you keep stock records in Sage Accounts, and you only look at current stock levels and valuation, this routine has the same benefits as Clear Audit Trail but applies to stock transactions.

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3. Remove unwanted records

Now is a great time to delete the records you no longer need. Do you have customers or suppliers you no longer deal with, or products you no longer sell? If you've removed their transactions with the clearing options then you can now delete the records and free up more space.

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4. Remove unwanted invoices and orders

You’ve removed old transactions and records, but don’t forget the invoice and order templates you print out, they take up space too. Reducing the size of your invoice and order list, makes it quicker to search and reduces the size of your backups at the same time. If you don’t want to delete invoices, it’s fine, you can still apply a filter to hide old invoices instead. Watch this video and find out how.

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5. Compress your data files

You’ve removed your old transactions and records but as far as the data is concerned the gaps are still there. If you think of a shelf of books, you’ve removed a few books from the shelf but to create a useful space you need to push the remaining books together. Using the Compress option you squeeze the data, removing the gaps and therefore reducing future backup size.

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Applying these steps will leave your data in great shape. Good luck for the business year ahead!

Your hints and tips

We'd love to hear all about your experiences around running a year end in Sage Accounts. Do you have any tips for setting off on the right foot at the start of a financial year? Why not log in and share them in the comments section below?