The good thing about cloud based programs is they take care of the backup, the bad thing about cloud based programs may be that they take care of the backup.
By now you hopefully are aware of how important it is to backup your data. Generally you want to use the backup capability of your software to make backups and then make sure those backups are backed up to the cloud or offsite for full recovery. It’s also important to test your backups to make sure they are recoverable. Cloud based programs take care of the backup so you don’t have to do it. This is a good and a bad.
It’s good, because it happens without you having to think about it. If the cloud server crashes no problem, they will get your data backup and running, usually pretty quickly. However, cloud software program backup are designed to recover when something happens to their data center or server. It is designed to recover when someone accidentally or on purpose goes in and deletes 100 emails or notes on 50 matters. If want to import data into your program and you do a whoops and create a bunch of bad records or overwrite existing records, you can’t usually call the vendor and say can you put me back to 10 minutes ago.
Some cloud based software does have ways around this. QBO offers a download to QuickBooks desktop for example. But, since they are different programs this is incomplete and you must spend time verifying and tracking differences. Not efficient especially if you want to backup before you do a series of imports or other actions.
For many firms this has been a concern. In recent months a number of third party vendors have come out with solutions to the QBO backup dilemma. Our friends at Insightful Accountant have put together a great article comparing these apps, including Backup Circle, ChronoBooks, Rewind Backups and SafetyNet. Before you make a decision, check out their article. Then reach out to us for help in deciding what’s right for you.