Is it too early to talk about spring cleaning? Even if the winter has been mild (by Midwest standards), there’s still a bit of time before we open up the windows and go crazy on cleaning up our homes. But what about the situation at our companies? Maybe we shouldn’t wait for March or April to do some necessary cleaning.
With last year closed out, you’ve added another year of historical information to the database. Knowing this, how many years of historical information do you have? How many do you need?
With many companies using Dynamics GP over the course of years or even decades, the amount of data generated in past years starts to add up, and if it’s still all on a live company, it’s all data that has to be processed to do basic tasks. It’s highly unlikely you need to have immediate access to your 2015, 2011, or 2009 data. Why let it clog up your processing capabilities?
Archiving, the process of moving historical data from the live company to an archive company, is an important process for companies using Dynamics GP.
With a new year upon us, you may be considering the move to upgrade Dynamics GP or may be simply looking to make your job easier. Either way, this is where archiving fits in.
Planning to Upgrade? Plan to Archive
For many Dynamics GP users, the decision to upgrade to a new version of GP happens right after year-end close. Naturally, this is the right time—you closed last year’s Inventory Control, Receivables Management, Payables Management, Fixed Assets, Analytical Accounting, and General Ledger modules, making it a good time to upgrade Dynamics GP to the latest edition.
But if you have years of old data, the process is not going to run as smoothly as you want it to. With the process of upgrading touching on everything in the live database, upgrading will take additional time, require additional resources from the partner helping you make the upgrade, and ultimately costing you more money.
Archiving makes this easy. With archiving, your initial upgrade will only impact the live company. Then, you can easily upgrade the historical data on your own schedule.
This is especially important in the Modern Lifecycle Policy environment. With updates and upgrades happening more frequently in the newest Dynamics GP environment, creating a consistent archive schedule is a good habit to get into if you’re making the move.
Remember, extended support is ending this year for Dynamics GP 2010 and updates for Dynamics GP 2015 end on April 14, 2020, so you probably want to upgrade anyway. See what’s new in Dynamics GP, read some of our favorite new features, and Learn more about the Modern Lifecycle Policy here.
Want to Get More from GP? Get Company Data Archive
Maybe you’re not looking to upgrade just yet. Maybe you just want to reduce clutter, increase performance, and streamline reporting. All seem like good goals, right? Well, this is where Company Data Archive (CDA) fits in. Built to reduce the size of your live company database and improve system performance while posting, running reports, performing file maintenance, and day-to-day use of Dynamics GP, CDA saves you time by cleaning up your disk space and processing power while repairing fragmentation and optimizing disk space.
CDA and CDA+ from Crestwood: Streamline Your GP Use
If you’ve neglected your data management and archiving for years without archiving or purging old data, you’re not making the most of your Dynamics GP product. If you want to increase performance, minimize the risk of corruption, and keep Dynamics GP running smoothly, it pays to learn more about Company Data Archive.
With CDA, companies can archive years of historical data across a variety of modules, moving everything you need to keep (but don’t need on hand at all times) into the archive company. Then, simply run a cross-company query to access anything from your archive company.
Better yet, if you are archiving your Dynamics GP data, you probably want to include your Analytical Accounting data as well. Our Analytical Accounting extension to Professional Advantage’s Company Data Archive (CDA) tool will archive your AA data along with your Dynamics GP data. Without our tool, your AA data will be left behind and will not be accessible in the archive. Learn more about CDA and CDA Plus from Crestwood here.
