As computing capacity has grown the ease with which historical transactions can be saved and displayed is significantly better than it was in 1980.
There is no longer a reason historical transactions should be limited by default.
Instead, history should always be retained at maximum for all modules and instead require a separate purge option if a company needs to remove data.
As it stands now it's easy to overlook the myriad of different retention time periods. In some cases, the options are not clear on exactly what data may be lost by purging out certain types of data.
You can always purge data but once gone you can never get it back. More customers would benefit from retaining historical detail.
by: Wayne S. | over a year ago | General Enhancements
Comments
In the 2022 Release, the default number of years to retain history will be set to 5 years instead of 2 years. Considered setting it to 99 years, but the consensus was to set it to 5 years.
This would be wonderful given I work in a medical manufacturing company. I have patients that have been wearing our products since the '80s. It is very hard to track down their information for a reorder. In fact, we had to create a file using adobe acrobat. The search is even slower and not customer service-oriented.
Five? Isn't IRS retention guidelines seven? I doubt if there is a number that will make everyone happy, but after 22 years working with clients, NONE have their retention set for less than 15. 99 would make the most sense. As Wayne said above, you can always purge, but you can't recreate!
We set it to 5 years based on feedback we received from some partners, but you are correct, it should be set to 7 years to comply with IRS retention guidelines. We will change this in an upcoming product update or the 2023 release.
If we set the default to 99 years, we are concerned that customers will not change it, and therefore accumulate a huge amount of data that will slow down retrieval of data for lookups and reports.
The default number of years to retain history for new companies will be set to 9 years in the 2023 Release, scheduled for April 2023.