Some Backup Questions

I'm here to help you with how company backup works in QuickBooks Online, HAM9.

Yes, the option to create a backup of a company file is currently available on the Advanced version of QuickBooks Online.

Please know that you should log in to your QBO Advanced as an admin to back up and restore your accounting data.

When you restore your company file, any transactions from your current file, such as recurring invoices, will be overwritten and replaced with the new information being restored. This means that the existing transactions will be deleted and replaced with the restored data.

Yes, it is advisable to create a backup of your data and recommended to restore it to another account or computer. Avoid restoring it to the same file account to prevent confusion between the original and backup files.

When the Online Backup and Restore app is turned on, QuickBooks automatically backs up your data. After the backup is complete, it will track any changes made to your company data, allowing you to restore a backup at any point in time.

These are the transactions that can be restored in QBO: Transactions Data, List Data and Other data.

Here's how to set up automatic back up:

1. Access your QBO Advanced account.
2. Head over to the Gear icon.
3. Select Back up company.
4. Find the company with the automatic backup you want to turn off.
5. Select  from the Action column, then select Turn on backup.

Additionally, you can take a look at this article to learn more about back up feature and the transactions that can and can't be restored in the Advanced version: Back up and restore your QuickBooks Online Advanced company.

Need to check on your data through reports? You can take a look at this article to help us familiarize the Reports feature: Run reports in QuickBooks Online.

If you have additional questions or concerns regarding with QBO Advanced Back-up feature, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below. I'm always here to help. Keep safe.

@ErwinQ Are you saying that after restoring a backup, things that cannot be backed up like Recurring transactions, Custom Forms, Reconciliations, etc done in the past will be wiped out or blanked out entirely after the restore?

Hello, @HAM9. Allow me to provide some information about how back-up works in QuickBooks Online Advanced (QBOA).

In response to your question about whether the data will be entirely wiped out after the restore, the answer is yes. For more information, you can check out this article: Find out what data you can and can't back up. Since this data will be overwritten and replaced with the restored data, you have the option to export the transactions and download them to your computer. 

Here's how:

1. From the Gear icon, select Export data.
2. Head to the Reports tab and set the date range.
3. Add or remove items from the Reports and Lists by switching the button on or off.
4. Choose Export to Excel. 
    

Once the process is done, you'll be prompted with confirmation that the data has been exported. For other non-posting transactions that are not included in Reports and Lists, check out this guide on how to export them: Export non-posting transactions and attachments.

I'm also adding this article to guide you on efficiently managing your reports inside QuickBooks: Run reports in QuickBooks Online.
 

If you have further questions about how back-up works in QBOA or any other concerns within the program, please add them in the comments below. Our team is always ready to help. Have a good one.

@ShangY So what I gather is that the lost data after restore would be the data that can't be backed up and hence not included in the backup that is being restored. Correct?

After exporting that data that would be lost from the live database before starting the restore process as described by you, one would need to import back again to the live database after restore process to recreate the lost data otherwise the live set of books would be deficient. It makes no sense just to download the data to a computer and let it sit there. 

It's silly to fix accounting or related issues by going to past backup to restore, given that there will be far too many things that will be wiped out simply because the backup features are not well rounded off by Intuit.

To me this Backup and Restore feature therefore really makes no sense for fixing any accounting errors. It could be useful in case of a heavy data corruption which is anybody's guess.

If features are introduced they need to be well thought out and rounded off before rolling out. And they need to be well documented also.