MAC..MD-Delete old businesses' Accounts & P&L Categories?
2025-0325...Using Moneydance 2024.4 (5253) .on a..MacBook-Pro...OS=Sequoia 15.3.2.....I have one Moneydance data file containing...several Businesses (no longer used), each with separate asset & liability accounts & P&L categories along with my other personal accounts & P&L categories.
Since I have retired. I no longer need these Businesses' accounts & P&L categories (all zero for several years),
I would like to delete these Businesses' accounts & categories from my Moneydance data file, but am afraid if I do that, it will ruin the remaining reconciled account balances i.e. Checking, Credit Cards', etc., ?
I know I can mark them as inactive, but I need disk space.
I think, if I eliminated the businesses' P&L category transactions for 10+ years, I can reduce the Moneydance data file by one-half, thereby saving disk space for the subsequent Moneydance data file and each archived data file. Currently the Moneydance data file size is 347.4 MB and I think it can be shrinked to less than 100MB in size, by deleting the businesses' accounts & P&L categories for 10+ years?
I do not want to start over from scratch.
I would like to save the last 10+ years of reconciled account balances & all their accounts' & P&L transactions, after the businesses were closed--they having a zero accounts' balances & zero transactions in their P&L categories.
Any help or suggestions to accomplish this would be much appreciated. - Thanks in advance,
RM2426
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1 Posted by Stuart Beesley ... on 26 Mar, 2025 07:45 AM
Different approach.
Use toolbox extension, update mode, shrink dataset (use 1 days).
No data will be lost, but you will probably get far more disk space back.
Then just mark them all as inactive, remove from summary screen, and exclude from net worth...
See how that goes?
2 Posted by dtd on 26 Mar, 2025 04:30 PM
re:
I would like to delete these Businesses' accounts & categories from my Moneydance data file, but am afraid if I do that, it will ruin the remaining reconciled account balances i.e. Checking, Credit Cards', etc., ?
That will almost absolutely destroy the integrity of your account balances.
@Stuart's different approach is definitely the way to go, especially since your goal is to shrink the database, not to mess it up royally.
3 Posted by rm2426 on 26 Mar, 2025 05:28 PM
2025-0326
Stuart Beesley, Mr Toolbox,
Thanks for your reply on shrinking my MD data file size. Unfortunately, I was not able to find/folllow your suggested steps in Toolbox
So you know, I am not a programer or computer tech person & do not know the technical aspect of Moneydance or the extensions.
I have been using the MD Program for many years for record keeping purposes. I do not know how to use Extensions or your Toolbox, or how extensions are used within the Moneydance Program?
I am confused using Toolbox. Some of the selections/steps you mentioned, do not appear in the screen menus of Toolbox , nor in any help file.
After updating the toolbox extension & marking Update Mode, I do not find "shrink data set” or "use 1 days” anywhere?
I must be doing something wrong or missing something? Sorry I do not understand your suggestions or able to find them in Toolbox.
Hope you can clarify the detailed steps to accomplish this, while viewing Toolbox's screen menu view’s options, when in the MD Program?
I do know how to make inactive-categories & accounts, and how to exclude them from the summary screen and from net worth, but it would be a time consuming process for several closed businesses.
Observation……
Seems the Moneydance Program should be able to close out a year’s P&L category transactions, to a "Prior Years’ Earnings-Equity" Account, each year, like Quicken and Quickbooks, and preserve the Year-end Account Balances (with transactions), at least annually? Then a user could delete Accounts and Categories no longer needed, after year-end close (all with zero ending balances)? Plus this would have more data integrity than many, many years of transactions in Moneydance (like me)?
Maybe an option to transfer Moneydance data of several years, preserving account balances, categories and transactions, and create a new Moneydance data file, starting with one of the intervening years?
Thanks again for any more help,
RM2426
4 Posted by dtd on 26 Mar, 2025 08:58 PM
"but it would be a time consuming process for several closed businesses."
A lot less time consuming than totally ruining your database and then trying to recover.
Open the toolbox extension. You should backup your database (before you shrink it). You found the update mode click box, it appears. So, click the Update mode box again.
Click MENU:Advanced Options. You should see the first item under UPDATE FUNCTIONS is Shrink Dataset Size in red. Click that check circle. Click the PROCEED button at the bottom right.
You will see a message basically explaining what this process will change - in a nutshell, it will remove unnecessary information from your database. There is one message that might concern you:
PRIOR TO RUNNING THIS, IDEALLY RESTART MD, & ENSURE THAT QUOTE LOADER/Q&ER EXTNS, IMPORTS & BANK DOWNLOADS ARE **NOT** RUNNING
Basically, it's saying start MD fresh, and make sure processes that can run in parallel are not running. This is probably already true, but Stuart insures the toolbox covers just about every contingency. Your choice, you can either continue, or get out of toolbox, start MD over again, and hopefully you are computer savvy enough to ensure you are NOT downloading information from the internet.
Hit the ACKNOWLEDGE button at the bottom center.
You will see an entry box saying Days to Keep. Stuart already recommended putting 1 in that box. Click the OK button at the bottom right.
You should get an information box (again, Stuart tries to inform you of everything.)
Read as much as you desire, then click the ACKNOWLEDGE box at the bottom center. You will then be asked if you want to shrink the dataset. Click YES unless you decide you don't want to do this.
You will again be asked if you want to backup. You need AT LEAST one just to insure nothing blows up... (I don't think anything has blown up here ever, but Backups are important)
And one last time, just to be sure you want this...type IAGREE (no spaces) and click to proceed.
A small delay, then a SUCCESS box. Near the bottom in yellow is a Dataset was (size) and Dataset is (size). Click OK in the success box when you wish to continue.
Stuart recommends another backup below the dataset size report. Backups are never a waste of time.
Click the CLOSE button at the top right.
Exit the toolbox extension.
Hope this clarifies the detailed steps to accomplish this.
5 Posted by dtd on 26 Mar, 2025 09:02 PM
Note: I reread my instructions to you, I made the classic "opposite" mistake, it should say insure you are NOT downloading rather than ensure you are downloading. Edited and corrected, but many receive the original in email.
6 Posted by dtd on 26 Mar, 2025 09:08 PM
As to your observation, rather than writing another long detailed comment, I'm sure someone will post explaining why archiving your information is not performed by moneydance.
7 Posted by dwg on 26 Mar, 2025 09:30 PM
The archiving feature was removed in one of the Moneydance 2015 releases. It was found to be particularly problematic especially where Investment accounts were involved where you cannot arbitrarily archive before a certain date since those investments can still be active. You cannot just exclude investment accounts either since they often involve transfers between accounts and with Moneydance being built on double entry accounting principles if you remove one side of the transaction you must remove the other side.
The Developer said some years ago that it was very unlikely if archiving would ever be reintroduced in Moneydance.
To look at archiving in more detail there are two common ways of archiving:
1. Date based Archiving – This is where all transaction before a certain date are archived or removed
2. Account status based archiving – This is where you typically archive accounts that are no longer active i.e. typically these are accounts that have been closed.
Date Based Archiving
The problem with date based archiving is that Investments in particular are not compatible with this type of archiving. The reason is that if you remove transactions based on a date but those investments are still held and active you have lost data, and critically these could be buy or sell transactions and this would corrupt the investments data that is held.
Date based archiving will also generally filter through to other accounts from Investment accounts as there are generally transfers to/from investment accounts for things like purchases, sales and income events.
So if you do not hold investments date based archiving can possibly work, but you do have to adjust items like initial balances to compensate, but if you do hold investments then it is very likely that any date based archiving operation would corrupt your data.
Account status based archiving
Archiving closed account is another method used.
Investment accounts could potentially only be archived once the investment has closed, but the problem there is you could be archiving data that is effectively current in another account e.g. a transfer for the final end balance.
Trying in some way to mix date and account status archiving would just make for a very complex solution and it is arguable how effective it would be.
Moneydance is based on Accounting principles and this means that every transaction is really a transfer between accounts/categories. This is why archiving is problematic because you cannot disconnect one side of a transaction from the other side and if you were to allow such a thing to happen this breaks the most basic accounting rule and in turn breaks how Moneydance works.
Many people think that archiving old data will improve performance, experience has shown that this is not the case with modern computer systems. Trying to reduce the storage used i.e. reduce file sizes, is also an often stated aim. Because of data integrity we know this is not a good idea, however it is suggested to use the Toolbox extension which can remove redundant data and can also perform tasks like pruning old share price data and thus reduce file sizes without the loss of user level data.
In general it is recommended to use the filters provided in Moneydance to limit the amount of data viewed and to use reports with date ranges if you want to see specific data. Views or in Moneydance terms Filters are the way that Databases restrict the amount of data showing without removing data since once removed it is no longer usable in any way.
For no longer used accounts you can also mark them as inactive and remove remove them from displays and various drop downs, so the data is still there but you are not seeing it.
Support Staff 8 Posted by Maddy on 27 Mar, 2025 01:56 PM
@RM2426
In order to decrease your data set size, navigate to Extensions->Manage Extensions and install the Toolbox (version 1068).
Launch the Toolbox and select Updated mode (at the top).
Click on MENU: Advance Options and choose: Shrink Dataset size.
Set it to 1 day.
You should then carefully follow the on-screen instruction, allowing the disclaimer and restarting Moneydance once the process is complete.
Your data will remain intact but you will gain some disk space as requested.
Please keep us posted on your progress, Thank you!
--
Maddy, Infinite Kind Support