Here are a few friendly suggestions that you might want to park in the back of your minds that could help out with some yearly maintenance and upgrading.  These are not day-to-day type  things but can help out over time.

• There is a table in the system called tsmDBHistory.  For most of you it will not be a concern.  This table logs various things that will help with identifying system type things that have occurred.  We are currently utilizing this table to look for certain events that can help us easily identify if certain events have happened, and if they were successful, allowing for future similar events to easily identify if a related previous event has happened.  For most users, they will not know or really care about this.  This table is sometimes used by Sage Customer Support to troubleshoot should some sort of issue that is causing a problem.  Currently, we are also starting to use this table to identify if a 1099 update has happened, and if it happened successfully.  

In rare cases, someone might want to purge this table for various reasons.  One might be for space, but this system history generally does not generate much data in most cases.  I have to admit, over the years I have seen this table get purged for less than legitimate reasons in a FEW cases.  Regardless, should you want to purge this table, take care not to purge it completely and to leave three or more years of recent activity.

• When upgrading, always visit the portals to grab the latest client install and database upgrade utility.  Even if you have already have the utility installed, grab the latest one.  We sometimes update them.  When doing this, the link on the portal will be the same, but the actual files MAY have been modified.  Starting in 2023 and going forward, we now add internal information to the install process to know which version was installed.  It is possible that either a install issue, a data issue, or some sort of other issue may have been corrected, and if you are not using the latest you may experience an issue that has been addressed.  I mention this because next month we will be updating the 2023 DB Utilities install and possibly the 2021 also.  As DB upgrades support the version indicated, they also support two previous versions.  These particular DB Utilities include updating data that could not have possibly existed at the time of release such as 1099 data.  These type of updates cannot be delivered via a product update, and must happen by grabbing the latest version.  Also keep in mind that getting the latest client and DB utility installs is not the same as applying product updates.  It only updates the RTM version and not the product update version.

The history purge is something that will not affect most of you.  Getting the latest installs will only possibly affect you when upgrading Sage 500 ERP versions.  So these things are not a daily worry, but can help make some of those rarer events go smoother.