Purge Customer and All Related Data

This utility is used to purge client data with associated data, and to remove files that are no longer required by law to be retained. It removes all policy and transaction history for the customer.

After this data is purged, the purged customers’ user codes will be available for reuse.

Because purging is a permanent action, it is strongly recommended that you run Rebuild Line of Business Indicators  and back up your organization’s data before running this utility.

Use the following steps to run Purge Customer and All Related Data:

1. On the desktop, click Start > Programs > Applied Systems > Utility Manager.
   Note: TAMCloud clients should instead click Start > Programs > Applied Utilities > Utility Manager.
   
   Note: You must access Utility Manager this way to run this utility.
2. On the Utility Manager screen, open the General folder in the treeview.
3. Open the Purge folder and select Customer and All Related Data.
4. Click the arrow to continue.
5. Select the Purge Criteria:
   • The Purge Customer Selection radio buttons allow you to select Active Customers, Inactive Customers (default selection), or Active and Inactive Customers.
   • Use the Policy Expiration Date before dropdown menu to filter by date. Customers whose policies expired prior to the selected date will be purged. This selection defaults to six months before the system date, but you can select a different date if you wish.
   • Select the Pack Databases checkbox if you wish to have DBMaint pack and reindex the databases after the purge.
   • Use the Agencies and Branches to Includeradio buttons to include All Agencies and Branches, or only Selected Agencies and Branches. To choose specific Agencies and Branches from a list, click the Select button. Use the single and double arrow buttons to move Agencies and Branches between the Available list and the Selected list, and click OK when you have finished.
   • Use the Policy Types checkboxes to include Personal, Commercial, and/or Life and Health customers in the purge.
6. Click the Get Customers button to display a list of the customers available to purge based on your selected criteria.
   
   Note: Any customer for which the Do Not Purge checkbox is checked on Customer Detail will be excluded from the list, even if that customer meets the criteria you selected.
7. Use the single and double arrow buttons to move customers between the Available and Selected lists. Customers in the Selected list will be purged.
8. Click Preview to run DBMaint and view the items to be purged, or click the Run button to run the utility.
   • After the Preview runs DBMaint, a dialog displays to give you the option to run Close Items / Calculate First Open Item. You can click Yes or No, but if you select No, any customers whose accounts contain open items will be unavailable for the purge. Clicking Yes allows you to close these items.
   • The preview generates a log of open items, as well as opening a spreadsheet with sortable columns listing the Customers that can be purged. By default, this spreadsheet saves to H:\LOG as ClientPurge.xls, but you can use File > Save to save it to a location of your choice. Customers that can be purged display Yes in the Deletable column. For Customers that cannot be purged due to open items, the Claims, Activities, Memos, Transaction, Installments, and Outstanding Balance columns indicate which types of open items exist on these customers’ accounts.
   • Close open items for any customers marked not deletable that you wish to include in the purge.
9. You can run the utility directly from Preview, or click the Run button on the Customer Purge screen to run it without generating a preview. If you do so, DBMaint and Close Items will run first. Then a warning message will display to remind you that the purge is permanent and a data backup is recommended. Click Yes to continue with the purge or No to return to the utility.
10. When the purge is complete, DBMaint runs again and a Purge Complete dialog displays. Click OK to return to the utility.
11. To view a log of the start and end times for the purge, as well as any records that could not be deleted due to bad data or incorrectly formatted dates, access \LOG\PurgeError.log.
    
    Note: This utility cannot purge any customers whose records contain open items (memos, transactions, journal entries, etc.) or titled memos (i.e., memos not associated to a customer, date, or line of business).