Good question.

We recommend converting the minimum number of years from 8.2 to 9.0. Typically that would mean converting 2008 only, and maybe 2007 if you are still making changes to 2007. 2006 and earlier normally should not be converted. If you need historically reports, use Navigator 8.2 to open the archived data.

However, if you are using Advanced Reports and/or ROI, you will need to convert as many years as you use in Advanced Reports/ROI. If you typically run reports comparing the last five years, you need to convert 2004-2008 since all that data needs to be in 9.0 for Advanced Reports/ROI.

The reason we recommend converting the minimum number of years is that 9.0 puts all the payee/payor addresses in a single file for all entities. Also, 9.0 puts all the accounts for all years in a single file for each entity. When you convert 2008, those files are created. When you convert earlier years, old addresses and accounts are added to the files. This old information is probably no longer needed and will just get in the way when you select accounts or addresses. So it is better not to convert the old data in the first place, unless you have to.

You can mark accounts as inactive so that they won’t appear when you select the account list while entering a transaction or creating a report. In Chart of Accounts, enter a year in Active From and Active To. The account will then only appear when you are in a year in which it is active.

It sounds from your question that you have already converted all your years. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to delete a year in 9.0. If this is a big problem for you, we may be able to help you start over with a clean database.

Even "deleting" an entity in 9.0 only removes it from the Open screen. The entity data is in the database forever.

See also Delete a single year?.

- David
FNI Technical Support
Case #38-10866