How cleaning up data affects your reports

Account balances

After you clean up your data, you can still create reports that summarize financial activity for the period of time you cleaned up.  For example, if you clean up last fiscal year's data, you can still create profit and loss reports that compare last year's results to this year's.   This is because QuickBooks adds summary transactions to your company file to preserve monthly account balances.

Transaction detail

After you clean up your data, you won't be able to create reports that show daily detail for the period of time you cleaned up.  This is because QuickBooks has deleted the individual transactions that would have provided the detail.  In addition, you won't be able to create reports that show balances for individual customers or vendors over that period of time.   As a result, the totals for sales revenue on sales tax liability reports will be incorrect.  As a precaution, QuickBooks creates a backup file in case you need access to the deleted transactions later.

Cash basis reports

After you clean up your data, you won't get an accurate cash basis report for data that includes a cleaned up time period.  This is becuase QuickBooks has deleted the individual transactions that would have provided the information about whether transactions were paid.   As a result, the totals will be incorrect.

This Decision Tool focuses on Periodic Tasks.