Back up and restore your QuickBooks Online Advanced Company
by Intuit•3• Updated 2 weeks ago
Learn how to back up and restore your QuickBooks Online Advanced company.
Save a backup of your company so you always have a copy of your chart of accounts. You can also undo unwanted changes to suppliers, customers, settings, and other data if you need to.
In this article, you'll learn how to:
- Find out what data you can and can’t back up
- Turn on the Online Backup and Restore app for your data
- Turn off automatic backup
- Manually create a one-time backup
- Save your backups to Google Drive
- Restore your data from a backup
Note: If you want to use an existing company's data to start a new one, you can create a copy of it instead of a backup.
Find out what data you can and can’t back up
While you can back up data related to your chart of accounts, there is some data you can't back up. Here’s a list of data you can and can’t back up.
Learn what data you can’t restore
When you restore a backup, you can restore everything except:
- Budgets - you need to export them as a CSV file.
- Inventory - it doesn’t include the inventory history and inventory adjustments.
- Tax rates using expense accounts - the Online Backup and Restore app restores them in your liability accounts.
- Data backed up using the personal cloud archive feature - This data is saved in .cab format on your personal cloud account; Google Drive, for example. Restoring the data from a personal cloud archive is not supported at this time.
Turn on the Online Backup and Restore app for your data
When you turn on the Online Backup and Restore app, QuickBooks automatically backs up your data. Once it’s complete, it’ll track any changes made to your company data. Then you can restore a backup at any point in time.
- Go to Settings
- Select Back up company.
Note: You might need to sign in with Intuit account to proceed.
Turn off automatic backup
If you no longer need to backup your company, here’s how to turn it off.
- Sign in to the QuickBooks Online Advanced company you want to back up, as an admin.
- Go to Settings and select Back up company.
Note: You might need to sign in to your Intuit account to proceed. - Find the company with the automatic backup you want to turn off.
- Select from the Action column, then select Turn off Backup.
- Enter the text AGREE, then select Turn off Backup.
Turn on automatic backup
If you need to backup your company automatically, here’s how to turn it on.
- Go to Settings .
- Select Back up company.
Note: You might need to sign in with Intuit account to proceed. - Find the company with the automatic backup you want to turn off.
- Select from the Action column, then select Turn on backup.
Manually create a one-time backup
Maybe you're in the middle of an important project and want to save everything. No problem. You can do a manual backup anytime. Here’s how.
- Go to Settings .
- Select Back up company.
Note: You might need to sign in with Intuit account to proceed. - Select Add company.
- Select the Search for a company or firm ▼ dropdown, then select the company you want to back up.
- Select Next.
Note: If you have multiple companies to back up, repeat steps 2 to 4. - Find the company you want to back up.
- Select from the Action column, then select Run backup.
Save your backups to Google Drive
You can save your backups to Google Drive when you link your account. Here’s how to set everything up.
Connect your Google Drive account
- Go to Settings .
- Select Back up company.
Note: You might need to sign in with Intuit account to proceed. - Select the User menu.
- Select where you want to save your backup. Select Link Google Drive.
- Follow the steps to allow QuickBooks to create backups.
Note: This may take 10 minutes or more to see the file in Google Drive. Also, data saved using personal cloud archive cannot be restored using Online Backup and Restore at this time.
Restore your data from a backup
Use the backup to restore your data from a specific date and time. It may take up to an hour to restore a backup, but it usually takes much less. The fewer data the company has, the faster it takes.
Important: Don't do anything in your company while the Online Backup and Restore app restores your data. When it’s ready, you'll see a tick in the status. That’s when it’s safe to go back and use your company.
- Go to Settings , then select Back up company.
Note: You might need to sign in with Intuit account to proceed. - Find the company you want to restore a back of.
- Select From the Action column, select Restore.
- From the Date field, select the date you want to restore.
- From the Time ▼ dropdown, select the time you want to restore.
- Select Next. Follow the instructions given.
- Select Start Restore.
Sign in now for personalized help
See articles customized for your product and join our large community of QuickBooks users.