6 Reasons Why You Should Back up QuickBooks Online

1. Limited native backup: QuickBooks Online has a native backup & restore feature that is available with the advanced subscription plan. Although the solution can automatically back up QBO data, it cannot restore individual transactions, lists, or items. QBO’s native backup can only roll back the entire company to the last backup date. Administrators cannot preview or restore individual transactions, or lists. 

2. Accidental deletions: Human error is unavoidable, but sometimes it can cost organizations valuable accounting data because there is no “undo” button in QBO. According to QuickBooks, any deleted transaction, list, or item on QuickBooks Online cannot be retrieved. Here are screenshots of a discussion on the QBO community site-

3. Lack of a fault-tolerant export option: Although QBO has a native export feature, it is limited to two formats- Excel and PDF. To top that off, any incomplete export job needs to be restarted manually. 

4. Absence of a single-click restore: QBO allows organizations to import data into the application. However, administrators might have to spend hours to find the relevant data to be imported. Any incomplete import jobs need to be restarted manually.  

5. Data corruption due to third-party app Integrations: Integrating third-party applications to QuickBooks online may help organizations save time and automate several tasks. However, app integrations have the potential to backfire by corrupting important files on the cloud or cause data loss due to sync-errors. To avoid losing business data, it is important to have a backup solution like SysCloud in place before integrating third-party applications with QuickBooks Online.  

Here is a screenshot of a warning on Chargebee support page cautioning users about potential sync-errors and data mapping issues with QuickBooks Online-Chargebee integration. 

6. Cloud outages: Although cloud storage allows better data accessibility, no cloud service can guarantee 100% uptime. QuickBooks is no exception- and an outage can leave an organization and its employees without access to important business information stored in the application. For instance, QBO users were unable to set up payroll on May 6th, 2022- here is a screenshot of the QBO status page stating the same. 

With important business information stored in the application and no way to retain deleted data, it is important to have a backup strategy in place for QuickBooks Online. Click here to learn more about SysCloud backup for QuickBooks Online.