Extracting Transactions in QuickBooks®

A couple of years ago, QuickBooks® gave Accounting Professionals a tool just for us – it’s only in the QuickBooks® Accountant and QuickBooks® Enterprise Accountant versions.  It’s called Period Copy and it allows us to extract transactions between a set of dates for a specified period of time and condense transactions outside of the range.

This preserves transactions in the condensed file only for a particular period with entries prior to that period summarized and entries after that period removed.

This is useful for clients with file size and list limit issues as well as for third-party requests of information – not only for audit requests, but also in the event of a business sale, a divorce or legal dispute when you do not need to provide the entire QuickBooks® file.

First thing – BACKUP your data file. You are creating a new file to be issued to a third-party and you do not want to overwrite your working file.

Then under the FILE menu, UTILITIES, CONDENSE DATA –

Accept the prompt that it is ok to lose Budget data.

When it prompts you for what transactions you want to remove, select “Transactions outside of a date range” to prepare a period copy of the company file. Set your before and after dates to include the period you want to keep.

Then when it prompts you how transactions should be summarized, choose “Create one summary journal entry“.

Remove the recommended transactions.

Begin Condense.

Once complete, you will have a QuickBooks® data file with only the relevant transactions for a specific period of time and you won’t be disclosing more information than need be.