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Back up and restore your QuickBooks Online Advanced Company

by Intuit•1• Updated 2 months 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:

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.

Transaction dataList dataOther data
• Invoices 
• Estimates 
• Sales 
• Receipts 
• Payments 
• Deposits
• Bills and bill payments 
• Credit notes 
• Supplier credits 
• Journal entries 
• Purchases and purchase orders 
• Refund receipts 
• Time activities 
• Transfers		• Accounts 
• Budgets 
• Classes
• Currencies 
• Customers
• Departments 
• Employees
• Items 
• Payment methods 
• Tax agencies 
• VAT codes and VAT rates 
• Terms
• Suppliers (except the Tax fields)		• Attachments
• Company Info 
• Entitlements 
• Exchange rates 
• Preferences 
• Intuit Payroll info backs up as journal entries 
• Stock shrinkage and adjustments back up as journal entries






Some data can't be backed up. Since this data is non-posting, it won't affect your accounts:

  • Customer types and price rules
  • Delayed credits and charges (although associated invoices are backed up)
  • Recurring transactions
  • Bank feeds and their links to transactions and bank rules
  • Reconciliation reports
  • Account-based billable expenses
  • Item-based billable expenses with markup
  • Custom reports
  • Custom form templates
  • Audit log entries

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.
  • Stock - it doesn’t include the stock history and stock adjustments.
  • VAT 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 local backup is not supported at this time.

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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.

  1. Go to Settings Settings gear icon.
  2. Select Back up company.
    Note: You might need to sign in with Intuit account to proceed.

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Turn off automatic backup

If you no longer need to backup your company, here’s how to turn it off.

  1. Sign in to the QuickBooks Online Advanced company you want to back up, as an admin.
  2. Go to Settings Settings gear icon. and select Back up company.
    Note    : You might need to sign in to your Intuit account to proceed.
  3. Find the company with the automatic backup you want to turn off.
  4. Select three dot menu from the Action column, then select Turn off Backup.
  5. 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.

  1. Go to Settings Settings gear icon..
  2. Select Back up company.
    Note: You might need to sign in with Intuit account to proceed.
  3. Find the company with the automatic backup you want to turn off.
  4. Select three dot menu from the Action column, then select Turn on backup.

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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.

  1. Go to Settings Settings gear icon..
  2. Select Back up company.
    Note: You might need to sign in with Intuit account to proceed.
  3. Select Add company.
  4. Select the Search for a company or firm ▼ dropdown, then select the company you want to back up.
  5. Select Next.
    Note: If you have multiple companies to back up, repeat steps 2 to 4. 
  6. Find the company you want to back up.
  7. Select three dot menu from the Action column, then select Run backup.

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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

  1. Go to Settings Settings gear icon..
  2. Select Back up company.
    Note: You might need to sign in with Intuit account to proceed.
  3. Select the User menu.
  4. Select where you want to save your backup. Select Link Google Drive.
  5. 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.

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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.

  1. Go to Settings Settings gear icon., then select Back up company.
    Note: You might need to sign in with Intuit account to proceed.
  2. Find the company you want to restore a back of.
  3. Select three dot menu From the Action column, select Restore.
  4. From the Date field, select the date you want to restore.
  5. From the Time ▼ dropdown, select the time you want to restore.
  6. Select Next. Follow the instructions given.
  7. Select Start Restore.

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The Online Backup and Restore app saves all backup snapshots taken in the last 1 year. Backups that are older than one year won't be retrievable by the company. You can restore company data to within one previous calendar year.

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