Super Condense

What gets condensed and what does not

Super Condense collapses every posted transaction dated before your chosen cutoff into a single per-account opening journal entry that ties back to a documented 'Pre-Cutoff Opening' control account. Transactions on or after the cutoff stay untouched and fully drillable — invoices, bills, payments, journal entries, sales receipts, payroll runs, the lot. List tables are out of scope: customers, vendors, items, accounts, classes, locations, employees, and every other list survive the condense exactly. The structural rule is that the service only touches transactions, never lists, which is why it never silently drops a name.

Verification and the trial-balance match

Every Super Condense delivery is gated by a hard trial-balance match: the trial balance on the cutoff date in the condensed file equals the trial balance on the cutoff date in the source file dollar-for-dollar, on every account, and the verification PDF documents that match line by line. We also confirm A/R and A/P agings as of cutoff, sales-tax liability as of cutoff, payroll-liability accuracy as of cutoff, and bank-reconciliation status on every reconciled account. If any of those checks fail the file does not leave our environment — we fix the gap or refund the order, never a partial delivery.

Why this exists separately from the built-in Condense Data

Intuit's built-in Condense Data utility is intentionally conservative about which files it will condense and known to behave oddly on multi-currency, advanced inventory, and payroll-heavy files. It also can take longer to run on a large file than rebuilding the file by hand would, with no progress visibility while it runs. Super Condense replaces that utility for the firms whose files actually hit the limits — same-day delivery, predictable wall-clock time, deterministic verification, and a clear refund posture if anything fails the integrity gate. Different shape, different target audience.

How do I pick the right cutoff date for the condense?

Most clients pick the start of the most recent closed fiscal year, which keeps the entire current year fully drillable while collapsing the long tail of older history into the opening journals. If your business deals with regulated retention windows we recommend picking a cutoff at least one full year past the retention requirement so the open period covers any reasonable audit ask. The pre-purchase chat in the Portal will walk through your specific situation if you are not sure — this is the single decision that most affects the post-condense feel of the file.

Will historical reports still work for periods before the cutoff?

Reports that summarize at the period level — monthly P&Ls, quarterly trial balances, annual balance sheets — continue to work correctly for periods before the cutoff because the opening journal entries roll up to the same totals. Reports that drill into individual pre-cutoff transactions no longer work because the underlying transactions have been replaced by the opening journals. If your practice needs ongoing transaction-level access to pre-cutoff data, the recommended pairing is the CRA Period Copy service, which bakes a separate frozen file at the source detail.

Does Super Condense work on multi-currency or payroll-heavy files?

Yes — those are the file shapes Intuit's built-in Condense Data tool is most fragile against, and a major reason this service exists separately. Multi-currency transactions are condensed in their original posting currency with the per-account opening journals reflecting the home-currency balance at cutoff. Payroll runs and tax deposits are collapsed at the per-account level, with year-to-date amounts on each employee preserved as of cutoff. The verification PDF specifically lists multi-currency and payroll integrity as separate gating items so reviewers see them named.

How does Super Condense compare to Audit Trail Removal?

They target different bloat sources. Super Condense reduces file size by collapsing transaction history before a chosen cutoff date — the right service when transaction count is the dominant driver. Audit Trail Removal reduces file size by dropping the meta-history table that records every per-edit timestamp — the right service when the audit trail itself is the dominant driver. Many large practices benefit from both, run in sequence; the File Health Check service tells you which one to run first based on actual numbers from your specific file rather than on rules of thumb.