Allday Consulting's Peachtree and QuickBooks Support Boards

Everytime I try to bring up a report such as Profit and Loss it takes 3 - 8 minutes to bring it up on the screen. Does anyone have any idea how to make this go faster?

Well, first, which software package are you using? QuickBooks? Peachtree? And which year and version? (You posted this in the general forum, which is not specific to one software package)

In general, a number of things can slow down reports.

- Large file size. Having more than 2-4 years' worth of data in a file, or having a file size above about 150 MB (both programs) will slow you down a bit simply because of having so much STUFF to parse through, 250+ will slow you down more; the size is more like 250/500 for QBES/Quantum. Doubling the sizes beyond those will slow you down more, and increase your likelihood for data corruption due to sheer bulk.

- Assuming you are on a network, anything which disrupts network communication will interfere with your data files, including (but not limited to): Use of a wireless network, system crashes or network instability, high amounts of latency and/or lag internally, viruses or spyware, incorrect network setup, loss of communication/sync (PT is especially vulnerable to disruptions in internal IP/DNS settings), and so on. Also, even small things like having transmission "timeouts" set too short can mess things up, especially when moving large amounts of data. Just having a large number of users on the network at a time can slow things down, as well.

- Running overly-complex reports. If your reports routinely have high page counts, they will simply take longer to compile. Ditto if you have info on there you don't need. Try customizing the reports to narrow things down and see if it helps.

- Having people working in the accounts you are trying to pull up on the report.

- Specifically for QuickBooks: On a network, make sure that no systems besides the Server are EVER in "Multi-user Hosting mode". They make this incredibly easy to turn on by accident, and it's both useless and disruptive for setups which store data from a network server. This is one of the major culprits I've seen quite often, and it can easily cause people to get disconnected from the data, as well as slowing down normal operations as well as reports.