QuickBooks has been a wonderful program that’s allowed many companies to take care of their accounting needs without having to jump into more robust programs. However, it has also meant that some people are not really using some key features of the program correctly.

How can you tell? One way that can be a really excellent benchmark is how large is your QuickBooks file. To check out the size of your QuickBooks file, pretend like you were going to open up the file selecting it from a folder, but instead of clicking on the file to open, right click on it or look at the properties of the file by scrolling to the right and you’ll see the size.

If your file is 50 megabytes or under, you’re probably okay. Depending upon the size of your company and number of the transaction, something larger might be okay as well. But what’s not okay is something in the 300 to 400 megabyte range. I’ve seen a couple instances of that with some past clients:

1. One client has grown their QuickBooks file to nearly 400 megabytes. The program was starting to operate very flaky. So, they took a copy of the file and renamed it and started to post transactions to the second file. But, it didn’t take long for them to crash that file either. So, they tried it once again and same results. Meanwhile, there is confusion happening in their account department and transactions were sometimes getting posted to file one, sometimes to file two or sometimes to files three. That’s when we got called in to help them sort out the situation.

2. Another client had close to a 400 megabyte file. It could take them several minutes to run reports, especially if you had more than one user in their QuickBooks file. They would typically have up to about five users on the system at any time. The performance of the QuickBooks file was just unsatisfactory.

So, if your QuickBooks performance is getting a bit sluggish, first take a look at your file size. That can give you an indication if there is some bloat that could be cleared up and get it back to operating more efficiently for you. Check with a certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor (I am certified) or other financial consultant, who can help you check this out.