CB/DB is a relational database, and will not allow you to delete any record that is referred to by another record in the system. You are allowed to delete a record if the deletion will not orphan another record. It is also not a good idea to change the name of existing account records even if they aren't used in the current year, since such a change might also impact transactions in prior years.

In most cases, the currently inactive accounts won't appear on reports if there is no activity in the current year. Family records have a check box to set their status to Inactive; this prevents their being used to create labels or appear in directories.

Audit procedures should dictate that all data be retained for at least 3 to 5 years. For that reason, you should neither delete records during that period, nor change the names to "recycle" them.