Clear Payroll Check Register In this age of fast computers and large hard drives, there is little reason to clear any checks at all. The only thing that might improve by removing older checks is that searches based on data or date ranges could become faster. If you go ahead and say clear. it will do a count of records that could be cleared and of those to be saved and show them to you. You can then quit or continue with the clearing. If any are cleared, a copy of the old check register is kept as 'apckreg.old'.