When Did You Back Up Last?
Your Smart Service and QuickBooks databases are the life-blood of your business. Keeping that in mind, it's a good idea to be prepared for anything. We recommend you create a database backup every few hours, or at least once a day.
When working with QuickBooks Desktop or Smart Service you need to generate a backup of your company file and store it on a removable drive, secure cloud, or at the very least, another machine in your office.
When working with Smart Service, it is up to the user to create frequent backups of the software which can be completed from any workstation. Make sure you have a few users in the office that are familiar with this process to ensure backups are made consistently.
How to Make a Backup
The first step to creating a backup of Smart Service is to ensure you have the right permissions to do so. You can verify your permissions by checking out our page on employees here. If you have permission to create database backups, you can click the “Settings” option on the ribbon at the top of Smart Service.
Inside the “Settings” ribbon, click the “Back Up Database” which will cause a prompt to display in the middle of your screen. This prompt displays the location where you backup will be deposited on the server. This is the only location Smart Service can create a backup copy.
The backup process may take several minutes depending on the size of your database and speed of your network. You will be notified once the process is complete. Your next step is to move to that file location on your server and transfer that backup to a safe location off the server.
Consider making a backup of QuickBooks at this time as well if you haven’t done so recently. The process outlined above creates a backup copy of Smart Service only. Here’s a link to the Intuit Community regarding a process for backing up QuickBooks.
Automated Solutions
We also offer a cloud backup solution to protect both your QuickBooks and Smart Service databases. Our specialized “Smart Backup” will create carbon copies of your databases daily and upload them to a secure cloud server for retrieval, which you can learn more about here.
Regardless of which backup service you ultimately choose to sign up with, we highly recommend you use an automated cloud solution to ensure backup copies are produced and stored properly.