How to Back Up Your QuickBooks Data File
A backup is an exact copy of your data file. Computers and hard drives are not infallible and problems happen all the time. I personally have had hard drives crash numerous times and fortunately had up to date backups of my data. Your company QuickBooks file is one of the most important, if not the most important piece of proprietary data you have. You need to think about how to back up your QuickBooks data and setting a plan in place for frequent backups of your data.
If your company has a backup plan, this section may seem redundant to you. If you use a network server and backup online or to tape on a continuous basis, this section may be superfluous, but there are times when you may need to save a backup of the file locally or on the network. Having a backup strategy for your company’s files isn’t covered in this tutorial, but creating a backup plan for your small business is an excellent idea.
If you don’t currently have a backup strategy or plan in place for your company, QuickBooks offers an online back service at a reasonable rate. There are a number of online backup services available for very little money – we highly recommend using one to keep your data safe in case of disaster. Having a hard drive crash and having to pay for recovery is not something I’d recommend anyone go through.
In this section of the QuickBooks 2010 Maintenance tutorial, you will learn how to run a manual backup of your company file. In the next section, you will learn how to automate it.
- Select the File menu and select Save a Copy or Backup.
- Click Next to start the backup process.
- There are two options available – backing up online or locally. QuickBooks offers the first as a pay service, about $5 a month for most businesses. If you’re not currently backing up your computer on a regular basis, this is an inexpensive option to keep your data safe. The second option, local backup, is only as good as your local backup strategy is. If you backup to your local computer and your hard drive crashes, you will lose your primary file and your backup file. Click Next to continue with a Local backup.
- For a local backup, the Options window will open.
- Navigate to the folder you want to save your backup in and click OK.
- Since we selected our local C: drive for the backup location, QuickBooks is kind enough to give us a warning:
- You are warned not to backup the same hard drive that has your QuickBooks data file. You can either change the location of your backup file, or ignore the advice of QuickBooks and save to the location specified. Our local drive is backed up using an online service, so it’s safe for us to store a local backup copy.
- You’re provided with three options: Save the QuickBooks download file now, save the file now and schedule future backups, or just schedule the future backups. We discuss automated backups in the next section. Click Next to continue.
- A dialog box opens to name your file. Do so and click Save.
- QuickBooks will verify the file integrity and make a backup. It may take a few minutes, depending on your file size.
- Once the backup is completed, a confirmation dialog box will appear. Click OK.
Congratulations, your QuickBooks data file is backed up.
