Backing Up Files in QuickBooks

If you already have a backup procedure for all your company data, QuickBooks’ Backup command might seem about as useful as your appendix. Your company wide backups regularly squirrel your data files away in a safe place, ready to rescue you should disaster strike. Still, QuickBooks’ Backup command can complement even   

╉╉╉Backing Up Files the most robust backup plan. And if you run a mom-and-pop business, online backups let you back up all of your data without hiring an IT staff. Here are some ways you can put QuickBooks’ Backup command to work:

• Backing up one QuickBooks company file. Before you experiment with a new QuickBooks feature, you don’t want to back up all your data—just the company file. That way, if the experiment goes terribly wrong, you can restore your backup and try a different approach. You can also call on the QuickBooks’ Backup command when you’ve worked hard on your company file (pasting hundreds of inventory items into the file from Excel) and the thought of losing that work makes you queasy. In both these situations, running a QuickBooks manual backup creates a backup file immediately.

• Scheduling backups of your QuickBooks data. If you have trouble remembering to back up your work, QuickBooks’ automatic backups have your back. You can set the program up to automatically back up a company file after you’ve opened it a certain number of times. Then, if you mangle your data or it gets corrupted in some way, you can use one of these backups to recover. The program can also create company-file backups automatically according to the schedule you specify. For example, QuickBooks can automatically back up your company file Tuesdays through Saturdays at 2:00 a.m.

• Backing up your data online. Online backups are a handy alternative to setting up your own backup plan—scheduling regular backups, rotating backup media, storing backups offsite, and so on. You can select which data you want to back up and when. That way, when QuickBooks creates the backups, your backup files are encrypted and stored at secure data centers managed by IT professionals. If you don’t have IT staff to back up your data and keep it secure, this method may be worth every penny.

                                                                                                               

Note: QuickBooks backup files aren’t merely copies of your company files—they’re compressed files that take up less space. QuickBooks 2011 packs more backup into smaller files than earlier versions of the program. Even so, backup files still aren’t much smaller than company files—only 20 to 25 percent smaller, depending on what you store in your company file.

Whether you want to set up options for your backups, schedule backups, or run a backup immediately, open the QuickBooks Backup dialog box using any of the following methods:

• Choose File➝Create Backup. • On the icon bar, click Backup. If you don’t see the Backup icon, which looks like a floppy disk, click the double arrows (>>) on the right end of the icon bar, and then choose Backup on the drop-down menu that appears. If the Backup command isn’t on the icon bar.

• Choose File➝Create Copy, select the “Backup copy” option, and then click Next. This method actually opens the “Save Copy or Backup” dialog box instead, but QuickBooks still displays the “Online backup” and “Local backup” options and the Options button, which are what you want.   160   â•‰â•‰â•‰Backing Up Files

Note: What and how often you back up are up to you (or your company’s system administrators). It depends on what information you can’t afford to lose and how much data you’re willing to recreate in case of a disaster.

Choosing Standard Settings for Your Backups

For each company file that you back up, you can choose settings for when, where, and how many backups QuickBooks creates. These standard settings are great timesavers and make for consistent backups. For example, you can tell QuickBooks to ask you about backing up your data after you’ve closed the company file a specific number of times, or have it automatically append the date and time that you run the backup to the name of the backup file. You simply choose these settings once for each company file and QuickBooks uses them for every backup of that file—until you change the settings, of course.

Here’s how you choose your backup settings:

1. Choose File➝Create Backup.

The Create Backup dialog box opens.

2. Select the “Local backup” option, and then click Options.

The Backup Options dialog box, shown in Figure 7-1, lays out your choices for backing up the current company file.

3. In the “Tell us where to save your backup copies (required)” box, click Browse. In the “Browse for Folder” dialog box, choose where you want to save it, and then click OK to get back to the Backup Options dialog box.

To protect your data from human error and hardware failure, back up your file to a different hard drive or to removable media like a CD, DVD, or USB thumb drive.

Saving a backup file to the same hard drive where your company file is stored won’t help you if your hard disk crashes. So if you choose a backup location that’s the same as where you store your company file, QuickBooks displays a dialog box with two buttons. When a company-wide backup transfers data to removable media every night, backing up your company file to a hard drive is fine for protection during the day; in that case, click “Use this location”. To choose another location, click Change Location, which sends you back to the Backup Options dialog box so you can click Browse again.

Note: The “Browse for Folder” dialog box doesn’t let you create a new folder. So if you want to save your backups in a folder that doesn’t exist yet, click Cancel and create the new folder in Windows Explorer. Then, in the Backup Options dialog box, click Browse.  

Figure 7-1:╇ The top section of the Backup Options dialog box includes settings that apply only to local backups, like the location and the number of backup copies you want to save. The settings in the “Online and local backup” section, on the other hand, apply whether you create a backup on your computer or use one of Intuit’s online backup services. For example, you can specify how thoroughly you want the program to verify that your data isn’t corrupted.

4. To make sure that you never overwrite a backup file, turn on the “Add the date and time of the backup to the file name (recommended)” checkbox.

With this setting turned on, when QuickBooks creates the backup file, it tacks a timestamp onto the end of the filename prefix so that the name looks something like Double Trouble, Inc (Backup Sep 25, 2011 11 30 PM).qbb. So unless you make multiple backups within a minute of each other, you can be sure that your filenames are unique.

5. To cap the number of backup copies you save, turn on the “Limit the number of backup copies in this folder to” checkbox and type a number.

If you turn on this setting, QuickBooks takes care of deleting older backup files. If you back up your files to an insatiable hard disk, you can save as many as 99 backups before QuickBooks starts deleting older ones. If you use a full-fledged backup program to back up all your data including your company files, you can limit the number of backup copies to two or three. Otherwise, choose the number that makes you feel comfortable.

6. To have QuickBooks nudge you to back up your file every so often, in the “Online and local backup” section, turn on the “Remind me to back up when I close my company file every _ times” checkbox.

That way, when you’ve closed the company file that number of times, Quick- Books displays the Automatic Backup message box. If you decide to bypass this automatic backup, click No in the message box. To create a backup of your company file, click Yes instead, which takes you to the QuickBooks Backup dialog box so you can run a manual backup.   â•‰â•‰â•‰Backing Up Files

7. Select a verification option. QuickBooks automatically selects the “Complete verification (recommended)” option, which scrutinizes your backup file to make sure that the data you save isn’t corrupt. To speed up the verification process (at the risk of letting some corrupted data slip through), select the “Quicker verification” option. At the other extreme, for high speed—and higher risk—select “No verification”.

8. When all the settings look good, click OK to close the Backup Options dialog box.

Backing Up Manually

If you just spent 4 hours of tedious typing to create a few dozen new customers in QuickBooks, you definitely want to save that work. To run a backup right away, here’s what you do:

1. If you want to back up your file to removable media like a CD, DVD, or tape, put the disc or tape in the drive now. You don’t have to put the media in until just before you click Save, but you may as well do it now so you don’t forget.

2. Choose File➝Create Backup. The Create Backup dialog box opens with options for creating an online or local backup.

3. Decide where you want to back up your file (locally—on your computer—or online) and then click Next. To save the file to your computer, select the “Local backup” option and then click Next. To create an online backup, select (you guessed it) the “Online backup” option. QuickBooks’ online backup service isn’t free, but it has its advantages.   

 Up Files

4. On the “When do you want to save your backup copy?” screen, select the “Save it now” option, and then click Next. The Save Backup Copy dialog box opens, with the folder you specified in Quick- Books’ backup options selected, as Figure 7-2 shows. If you want to save the file somewhere else, browse to the folder.

5. Click Save. The Working message box shows QuickBooks’ progress as it verifies the data and creates the backup.

 Figure 7-2:╇ QuickBooks automatically fills in the “File name” box with the same filename prefix as your company file and adds a timestamp to show when you made the backup—unless you told it not to. For example, if you’re backing up your DoubleTrouble.qbw file, the backup file prefix is something like “DoubleTrouble (Backup Aug 09,2010 05 28 PM)”. In the “Save as type” box, the program automatically selects “QBW Backup (*.QBB)”.

Automated Backups

QuickBooks can back up your data without your help in two different ways:

• Automatic backup. This kind of backup runs after you close a company file a specific number of times, which is great for protecting the work you do in a few back-to-back QuickBooks sessions. You simply close the company file at the end of a session and QuickBooks immediately creates a backup if this session hit the magic number.

• Scheduled backups. You can also schedule backups to run at a specific date and time (typically when you aren’t around). A scheduled backup for a single company file is ideal when your QuickBooks data is the only data on your computer or you want to back up your books more often than your other data. Otherwise, you’re better off using your operating system’s backup feature (or an online backup service) to schedule a backup that captures all your data.

This section explains the differences and how you set each one up.   â•‰â•‰â•‰Backing Up Files

Setting up automatic backups

Automatic backups require a bit of setup up front. You tell QuickBooks where you want to store the backup files and the number of sessions between backups, and from then on, they spawn themselves quietly in the background. Here’s how you set this up:

1. Choose File➝Create Backup. In the Create Backup dialog box, select the “Local backup” option, and then click Next.

The “When do you want to save your backup copy?” screen appears.

2. To define a backup schedule, select the “Only schedule future backups” option, and then click Next. QuickBooks displays the settings you can use to define both automatic backups and scheduled backups,

                                                                                                 

3. Turn on the “Save backup copy automatically when I close my company file every _ times” checkbox. In the text box, type the number of sessions you want in between automatic backups.

For example, if you type 5, QuickBooks creates an automatic backup when you close the company file the fifth time since the last backup.

4. Click Finish.

QuickBooks starts counting. After you’ve completed the number of sessions you specified for the company file, the QuickBooks Automatic Backup message box appears telling you that it’s creating the automatic backup as promised.

Scheduling backups for a single company file

Although most companies back up all their computers on a regular schedule, you can set up a scheduled backup for your QuickBooks company file for an extra layer of safety. If you back up your data every other day, for example, you may want to back up your company file every night, and a QuickBooks scheduled backup is the ideal way to do it. Here’s how you schedule backups:

1. Choose File➝Create Backup. In the Create Backup dialog box, select the “Local backup” option, and then click Next. The “When do you want to save your backup copy?” screen appears.

2. To set a backup schedule, select the “Only schedule future backups” option, and then click Next. If you want to make a backup right away as well as set up the schedule, select the “Save it now and schedule future backups” option instead. Either way, the screen that appears includes a table showing scheduled backups you’ve already set up, plus each backup’s description, location, status, and next occurrence.

3. To set up a schedule, below the table, click New. QuickBooks opens the Schedule Backup dialog box with all the options you need to set up a regularly scheduled backup.

4. In the Description box, type a meaningful name for the scheduled backup, like Monthly Offsite.

When you finish defining the schedule, the description will appear in the table in the Create Backup dialog box. Consider including the frequency of the backup and where to find the backup (such as the network drive or offsite location) in the name.

5. Click Browse to specify the backup location.

QuickBooks opens the “Browse for Folder” dialog box. To choose a folder, hard drive, or other location on your computer, expand the Computer or My Computer entry (depending on your operating system), and then choose the location you want. If you want to store the backup on another computer on your network, expand the Network or My Network Places entry instead, and then choose a location. Click OK when you’re done.

Warning: If you’ve scheduled backups, don’t turn off your computer when you go home, or your backup won’t work. And if you back up to a hard drive on another computer, you have to leave that computer running, too. If you back up to any kind of removable media, be sure to place a blank disk or tape in the drive before you leave the office.

6. If you back up your company file to a hard drive and don’t want to overwrite your previous backup each time the scheduled backup runs, turn on the “Number of backups to keep” checkbox and, in the box to the right of the label, type the number of previous backups you want to keep. When you turn on this checkbox, QuickBooks uses the filename SBU_0_<company name> <date stamp> <time stamp>. For example, a scheduled backup file might be SBU_0_Double Trouble, Inc Sep 24,2010 01 00 AM (SBU stands for “scheduled backup”). Each time QuickBooks creates a new scheduled backup file, it renames the previous backups to the next number in the list, and then replaces the SBU_0 file with the new backup. For example, if you keep four backups, the SBU_2 backup becomes the SBU_3 file; the SBU_1 file becomes the SBU_2 file; the SBU_0 backup file becomes the SBU_1 file; and the new backup becomes the new SBU_0 file. The most recent backup always starts with “SBU_0.”   

 7. In the “Start time” boxes, choose when you want the backup to run.

The “Start time” boxes work on a 12-hour clock, so you specify the hour, minute, and a.m. or p.m.

Tip: It’s easy to confuse midnight and noon on a 12-hour clock (midnight is 12 a.m., noon is 12 p.m.). Avoid this gotcha by running your scheduled backups at 11 p.m., 1 a.m., or later.

8. To set the frequency of the backup, in the “Run this task every _ weeks on” box, select the number of weeks that you want between backups, and then turn on the checkboxes for each day of the week on which you want the backup to happen.

For example, for daily backups, in the “Run this task every _ weeks on” box, choose 1, and then turn on the checkbox for each weekday.

9. Click Store Password, and then type your Windows user name and password.

QuickBooks needs your user name and password so it can log into the computer to run the backup.

10. When you’re done, click OK.

QuickBooks adds the backup to your list of scheduled backups. 

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