Best Practices For Quickbooks Backups
With all of the sensitive financial data a typical Quickbooks account holds, this is something most business owners can not afford to lose. Thankfully, Quickbooks is designed with state-of-the-art coding to protect against sudden crashes, failure and data loss. However, there’s always the possibility of your computer or device containing your Quickbooks files being lost, stolen or otherwise damaged. This is why it’s good idea to routinely back up your files as a precautionary measure.
Create Full Backup Files
It’s a common assumption among some Quickbooks users that portable company files (extension .qbm) are the same as full backups. While portable company files contain the core data of your account, including transactions, customer data, bank accounts, etc., they do not contain elements like letters, images, headers and logs. Because of this, portable company files should not be used as a substitute for full backups.
“Unlike a backup file, it does not include letters, logos, images, and templates. It also doesn’t contain a transaction log (.tlg file), which can be used to restore transaction data with the help of a technical support agent,” states the official Intuit website.
Backup Frequently
So, how often should you back up your Quickbooks files? The best way to protect your financial information is to back up your account daily. I know this might seem a bit over-zealous, but consider this scenario: you spend 4-6 hours adding new transactions into your Quickbooks only, only for your computer to suffer a hardware failure later that night. If you performed a backup after you performed these operations, all of your work will be saved and ready to import into your account. If you did not perform a backup, you’ll lose 4-6 hours of work.
Intuit Data Protect
If you really want to protect your Quickbooks files from ‘unforeseen’ data wipes, you should consider investing in Intuit Data Protect. This subscription-based service creates full backups of your Quickbooks files once a day, saving them online at Intuit’s servers. If something ever happens to your computer, you can rest assured knowing your Quickbooks files are safely stored online.
Currently, Intuit Data Protect is available for the low price of just $4.95/month or $49.95/year. For just pennies a day, you can have the peace of mind knowing that you are safe and protected against data loss. And if you want your entire computer backed up, you can choose the premium Intuit Data Protect plan, which costs $9.95/month or $99.95/year.