Please, please, please…heed this advice. I’ve seen it too many times in my QuickBooks Consulting career. A client is cruising along day-to-day using his or her QuickBooks data: invoicing, entering bills, analyzing various reports. THEN…
Bam! It happens.
They sit down at their computer one day and something is not right. The computer is slow or non-responsive. They are unable to access the QuickBooks data or any other data on their computer. The bottom line is, the hard drive has died; bit-the-dust!
This is a painful day and, in this day-and-time, so very unnecessary. Now I know what you may be thinking. “Why not just make a backup to a CD or a thumb drive?” Well, I will admit, this approach is better than nothing (though also often ignored). In that scenario, a regular habit of doing so would be advantageous. However, what if something more catastrophic occurs? What if your place of business is burglarized? Or, what if your place burns to the ground? Unless you are extremely disciplined with making daily backups and then taking these backup offsite with you, you may still suffer through additional pain and suffering; again, so very unnecessary in this day-and-time.
What are your options?
There are a plethora of service vendors who offer online backup. You should also know that you are NOT limited to just backing up their QuickBooks data with any of these service providers. You are allowed to backup other critical files on your computer too. Below are just a few of the service providers with which I have experience:
QuickBooks Online Backup Service
This is a service I have personally used for years for my personal QuickBooks data and other critical files.
As of this writing, QuickBooks offers users a 30 day free trial. While they do require a credit card, your card will only be charged if you opt not to cancel within the first 30 days. The price of this backup option is $4.95/month or $49.95/annually. At this price, you are offered 1GB of online storage capacity. While QuickBooks hopes you will need additional storage capacity (they sell 10GB for $149/annually), I personally have found 1GB to be sufficient for my needs.
QuickBooks Online Backup Service offers the end-user a scheduling utility. This approach lets you select the files to be backed up and also allows you to schedule the days of the week to backup (I prefer Monday through Sunday) and the time the files are to be backed up. Set the scheduler and you can pretty much forget about it after that. After completion of your backup, you are greeted with a dialog box indicating, “x Number of Files Successfully Backed Up” (where x represents the number of files you have selected for backing up).
In order to be successful with this tool, your files cannot be open when the backup occurs. This fact applies to almost all backup tools. If a selected file is open, all unopened files are backed up and the file that was left open is skipped. Additionally, the computer conducting the backup must be turned on when the backup occurs. So, if like me you schedule your backup for overnight, make sure you close all your files and keep your computer on. Click here to get your QuickBooks Online Backup Service now.
Carbonite
I began using Carbonite for my business data in March of 2007. I have opted for this tool to backup all data in the “My Documents” folder of my computer as well as some other mission critical files elsewhere on my computer.
As of this writing, Carbonite offers users a 15 day free trial and they do NOT require a credit card. When your trial expires contact us as we can get you a discount off the website listed price. The website price of this backup option is $54.95/annually or $99.95/two years. At the above prices one is NOT limited to data size. This is one feature which sets Carbonite apart from other backup service providers. Whether it’s 1GB, 10GB or more, Carbonite will back it up.
This solution allows users to select what files and/or folders to backup via the Windows Explore tool. From within Explore, simply right-click on a file or folder and select Carbonite and then select “back this up”. The initial backup, Carbonite tells you, can take 1 - 3 days to complete. My experience has been about 1 day. After the initial backup, Carbonite waits until your computer is idle and then begins backing up files which have changed. Click here to get your Carbonite Online Backup now.
Again, I encourage you. If you are not currently backing up your data online, do not put this off a moment longer. If you do, it may not be today, tomorrow or next month, but odds are it will happen to you eventually. You WILL loose your precious data.