Deleting old, completed orders

[acompton]

After 2-and-bit years trading, I've just tried clearing out some of the old, completed orders. This causes the stock control to restore the product counts - not the required result.

[Darren B]

Hmmm

I was thinking of doing this the other day, good point ermmm i guess the only way is to export the file with stock levels then reimport it after deletion.

I know it has been mentioned that an archiving old orders needs to be a feature, not sure how the effect of stock issue can be resolved though, it needs to effect current stock when its an order, but not when you want to archive it, i guess a use only once type scenario, easier said than done, hmm a freeze current stock levels to allow order deletion would be a better way, bit like a stock take procedures

D

[TraceyG]

Hi,

I can't recreate this in v9 so it looks like it was an issue with earlier versions of the software that has now been fixed.

[acompton]

And the answer is....

Disable automatic stock monitoring before deleting them.

[PeterThake]

Deleting old orders - any performance benefits?

Hi Alan, I want to do the same thing. Can I ask, did it improve the performance of Actinic? With some 2000+ old completed orders, I am hoping deleting some in the way you describe will speed things along a bit. Actinic seems to be grinding to a halt in terms of viewing and changing the site.

[acompton]

Hi Alan, I want to do the same thing. Can I ask, did it improve the performance of Actinic? With some 2000+ old completed orders, I am hoping deleting some in the way you describe will speed things along a bit. Actinic seems to be grinding to a halt in terms of viewing and changing the site.

The best thing to do for performance is compact the database. Deleting old orders does improve the speed of viewing the Completed Orders tab.

[PeterThake]

Thanks for the reply Alan. I compact the databases daily, but it still runs very slow when editing the site.

[fleetwood]

A large amount of old orders swells the database greatly.
Once you no longer need them, delete the old orders, and then compact, and I think you will see improvements.
A sign that the database is getting too large is if your syatem starts crashing when trying to print an order.
This sort of database (MS Access) requires a decent amount of free resources to process indexes and the like, and is not good at managing space.
The database is a combination of the catalog and the stored orders. The larger the database grows, the longer indexing takes, and the more free resources are required to get through all the processing.
Keeping your records (both catalog and old orders) lean and mean, by deleting and then compacting old records, will help the program run more efficiently.
The compacting part is crucial, as Access fails to recognise that space has been freed up after deleting records, until you compact.

[PeterThake]

Thanks Fleetwood, that makes sense, I will give it a go

Once you no longer need them, delete the old orders

That raises a new question: how long should I retain old orders? I do not keep printed copies. I have a separate accounts package (Quickbooks) which has a sales receipt created for each completed order, so I guess that would keep the tax man happy? Plus I could always retain a snapshot just in case.

[pinbrook]

i export orders to xls. then you don't have to worry about having a version of actinic to go with the orders.

eg if you have orders within a v6 snapshot and a pc with vista your backup is worthless

[PeterThake]

Good point, and great idea Jo!

Though I am going to do anything to avoid upgrading after my last experience

[fleetwood]

Archiving:

1) snapshot routinely - it isn't ideal retrieving old order info from an old snapshot, but at least its there if you need it (but see Jo's caveat above..)

2) if you don't want to print hardcopies, why not get hold of a pdf writer (acrobat is the standard, but there are plenty of cheaper versions available).
You can then print old invoices to a pdf archive (prior to deleting them).
Acrobat allows you to archive multiple pages to one file (the other pdf writers may well too), so you can print say one months worth of invoices to a single file called Jan08, for example. The info is then there if you need it.
This won't replace tax records though, as you can't easily analyse the data once its been archived in this manner, so make sure you print off monthly and/or quarterly sales reports from Actinic.

You may need one of Jan's moleend add-ons to help printing bulk orders (we use one-stop order processing)

The tax man should be happy enough with a monthly sales report (VAT analysed), backed up by a pdf archive of old invoices.

As Jo says, exporting is a good way to store the data too, but does require a bit more knowledge, as you need to know what to do with the exported data if you want to use it again. The raw data is not that easy to understand.