Hello,

my Kmymoney is becoming slow because I have so much data that I would like to purge older data in all my account which are older than 10 years old as an example.
Is it existing a tutorial or a integrated function within Kmymoney to expedite it ?

Thank you for your help and suggestions.

Hugues

Hello Huges,

There is no current functionality within KMyMoney to archive or purge old data. It has been requested several times, See https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=378076 and https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=378076)
My personal file (created in 2009) has 863 accounts, over 24000 transactions, and almost 53000 splits (see File/File-Information) and take about 20 sec to start up.
If you really think purging data will improve the performance, you could (after making a backup) pick an old account, reopen it, and delete all the transactions, then delete the account. You have to remember that this will also affect any other account where funds were transferred in or out of this account, and this can change balances and reconciliation accuracy, which is why it is not recommended.

Jack

ostroffjh wrote:Hello Huges,

There is no current functionality within KMyMoney to archive or purge old data. It has been requested several times, See https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=378076 and https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=378076)
My personal file (created in 2009) has 863 accounts, over 24000 transactions, and almost 53000 splits (see File/File-Information) and take about 20 sec to start up.
If you really think purging data will improve the performance, you could (after making a backup) pick an old account, reopen it, and delete all the transactions, then delete the account. You have to remember that this will also affect any other account where funds were transferred in or out of this account, and this can change balances and reconciliation accuracy, which is why it is not recommended.

Jack

Same here and that s exactly why I want to purge and also why I m so worried as this can generate a lot of issues in my reconciliations and accounts.

Thank you Jack.

huguescrepin wrote:Same here and that s exactly why I want to purge and also why I m so worried as this can generate a lot of issues in my reconciliations and accounts.

Thank you Jack.

That is easy to answer: deleting a transaction in one account will affect the corresponding accounts/categories that this transaction references. Existing reconciliation information should not be affected. Here's how I would tackle this endeavor:

1. Make a good backup of your data so that you can always revert in case something of the following does not work
2. Pick a new start date (the first day that you want to keep on file)
3. Create a report that shows you the starting balances of all your accounts (not categories) on that date and print it (or keep a PDF)
4. Create a report that shows you the balances of all your accounts (not categories) for today and print it (or keep a PDF)
5. Create a net worth report showing today's net worth information
6. Delete all transactions with a post date before that selected new start date
7. Adjust the opening balance of all accounts to the values found in the report created in step 3.
8. Check today's balance of all accounts against the values found in the report created in step 4.
9. Check that reconciling all accounts on the date of the last reconciliation (not today) does not show any difference.
10. Check that the net worth report showing today's net worth information presents the same numbers as the report created in step 5.
11. If any check made in 8., 9. or 10. fails, find the problem, fix it and go back to step 8.
12. Report any problems/issues you encountered in the above here, please (just so that we can fix it)

Hope that explains the process. I have no idea what happens to investment accounts when you do the above, though. If it does not work, keep working with the backup you made in step 1.

Hi, I've used kmymoney since 2007 and my file was about 700kB, maybe not so large but my computer is a Toshiba Satellite so admittedly not the best. Kmy took a long time to load up and sometimes to update when reconciling.

Thanks ipwizard, your post gave me an idea for doing a step by step approach.

Your advice on keeping backups is so important.

-Do this on a suitable date for you. For me, the best date to use was the new tax year.
-create a new account for any account that you are still using - some of the older accounts will not be relevant - after changing the name of the corresponding existing account to "OLD {}".
- the opening balance of each new account is of course the closing balance of the old account.

Now just carry on using kmy as usual, using only the new accounts.

There is a bit of a fiddle the first time you reconcile each account. You have to do this in 2 halves - as if you have 2 statements. First, on the OLD{} account, do the part of the statement prior to the changeover date, using the closing/ opening balance for the changeover. Second, on the account you have just created, the rest of the statement using the closing balance for that statement as usual.

Each subsequent reconciliation will be as normal.

When you are confident all is working well, and you are ready to purge the file, call up each "OLD" account and delete all the transactions, then delete that account. I did it after filing the tax return for that year. You will also probably delete accounts that have sat there for a while, eg old storecard accounts. To consider a point that ipwizard raised, you probably won't want to touch any investment accounts.

At this time you might also choose to delete any categories that you might have added and are now never used. Kmy only lets you do this if the category has no transactions.

I now have a <100kB file and it's much faster.