How to purge closed jobs in Job Cost or "Cannot delete job numbers with job activity" in Sage 100

1. Open Job Cost, Main, Job Masterfile Maintenance, Job Status tab.
2. Verify the retention balance is zero. Retention balance should be removed by doing a retention bill through Job Billing Data Entry. In the invoice number field, type in RT and press ENTER. The invoice will then have an RT extension rather than an IN extension. This will bill the full amount currently residing in the Retention field in the Job Masterfile. When RT invoices are posted to AR, it is given an IN extension.
3. Verify the that all WIP and Unbilled Costs are zero.
   • If not, then the Job Close-Out Report in step four will relieve any unbilled WIP, recognized revenue, and clear any unbilled cost.
4. Verify that the Job Status in the Job Cost Masterfile is Closed otherwise change the Job Status to Complete and the Job Close Out report in the next step will changed the status to Closed.
5. Open Job Cost, Reports, Job Close-Out, select the posting date and then, the job number and run the report.
6. Open Job Cost, Main, Job Masterfile Maintenance, verify the Job status date. This must be on or before the last day of the current period.
7. Open Job Cost, Period End, Period End Processing, choose either Full Period End Processing, or Purge/Archive Closed Jobs.
   • The job will be purged automatically as part of period end processing or manually through the period end menu selection.
   • The only way to recover a purged job is to restore from backup prior to purging.
   • To avoid purging a closed job, change the job status from closed to another status prior to running Period End Processing. This will retain the job in the Job Masterfile, however, there is no mechanism except for one in TimeCard that will prevent you from posting data to a closed job.
   • If you post to a closed job, it will reset the status to open.
   • This task has been moved to the Job Cost / Utilities menu in version 2018.

Note1: All these steps must be followed in order to purge a job. If a job did not get purged as expected, repeat the procedure and verify that all the conditions were met.

Note2: If you do not want to purge Closed jobs completely from the system you can do the following:

1. Open Job Cost, Setup, Job Cost Options, Additional tab
2. Select ‘Retain Job Cost History’, press Accept to save selection.
   • During Period End Processing, instead of purging closed jobs, it will move the information to history files.
3. Jobs can be purged from history files using Job Cost, Period End, Job Cost History Purge Utility.
4. Jobs in history can also be restored to active files using Job Cost, Period End, Job Cost History Restore Utility.