Deleting closed accounts

[Bill]

Hi George,

Long time since we were in contact, must say Bank Genie is fulfilling my needs exceptionally well.

I have a question regarding accounts that are no longer required and have been closed.

Can they be removed from system or will transactions with them in the past prevent removal.

If removed will past reconciled statements of other live accounts that have had transactions connected with the removed/closed accounts be affected


Regards

Bill

[ideasguy]

Good to hear from you Bill. Nice to see BG is doing a good job!

Its been so long since I developed the code for deleting accounts I decided to do more testing, so I could give a satisfactory reply to your posting.

Heres what I did, and you can try this yourself, of course.
For peace of mind, do a Backup before starting and restore after testing if you wish.

Add a Bank A
Add a Bank B
Add a Bank C
Create Transfer transactions from A to B and A to C
Create Transfer transactions from B to A and B to C
Create Transfer transactions from C to B and C to A
Reconcile statements in B

Then delete Account B
The program asks you to confirm delete.
When you opt to continue, the program prompts you again, warning you that there are Transactions and Statements, and these will also be deleted.

Thus, in answer to your question, the program deletes all records in all the database tables associated with that account.

After deleting B, the big test then is to look at (actually edit) the transfer transactions in A and C, and make sure there you can access the transactions in A and C which hold to and from Transfers from B
Heres what happens:
When you edit a transaction in A which was a Transfer to B, the pop-up cannot be set to indicate which bank the transfer was made to (its deleted).
Apart from that, the details are intact. The Expense code continues to show "Transfer"

Hence, for transferred records, I'd recommend you put the name of the transfer to Account in the "Paid To" field, or in the memo field associated with each transaction.

When you edit a transaction in A which was a Transfer FROM B, the detail is "as was" before the account delete operation.

I did a further check by looking at the tables in the Development environment, and all was deleted as expected.

Note:
When you delete records, the data is actually still in the database, but with a delete flag (hidden from the user). The records continue to take up disc space until you use the PACK program.

Let me know how you get on, Bill (again, do a backup before deleting your redundant account)

[Bill]

 

Thank you George,

Your explanation sounds good I will give it a try and let you know the outcome.

Regards
Bill.

[barryl]

As a new (trial) user of bank Genie but an experienced user of other financial packages I would recommend dealing with the transfers in the account to be deleted BEFORE deleting the transactions.

using the ability to select which items are displayed just display the transfers and systematically alter each one in the "other" account until there are no more.

[Bill]

Hi George and Barry,

I followed the procedure that George suggested and I have found no problems.

After deletion of the redundant account I was still able to access transactions in other accounts that had "Transfers" with the deleted account and edit as necessary.

So it all looks fine.

Thanks again George for your support.

Regards

Bill.

[ideasguy]

Pleased to note the deletion of the redundant account went well Bill, and of course, that the counterpart Transfer transactions had no problems.

Re Barrys recommendation:

using the ability to select which items are displayed just display the transfers and systematically alter each one in the "other" account until there are no more.

Yes, if the history of the transfer link is important you can use the Transaction Analyser - BS008, before deleting a redundant account.
In BS008, Click Selection Screen tab
Select any Banks which have transfers from/to the Account to be deleted
In Expense Codes list, select Inter Account Transfers
Click Go
All transfers will be listed