How do I perform an external backup?

I’ve got your back in backing up your QuickBooks Online (QBO) for requirements, treasurer.

Right now, only QuickBooks Online Advanced can save a backup of your company file directly. It is to keep a copy of your books, especially on undoing unwanted changes to vendors, customers, settings, and other data if you need to.

To start, let’s turn on the online backup and restore app for your data. This way, QuickBooks will automatically back up and track any changes made to your books. Here’s how:

1. Go to the Gear icon.
2. Then, select Back up company. There’s might a need to sign in to your Intuit account and select Authorize to proceed.

You can also create a one-time backup and save it to Dropbox or Google Drive by referring to this article: Back up and restore your QuickBooks Online Advanced Company.

However, if you’re using other versions of QuickBooks, we can manually export the following to get a copy. I’ll show you how:

1. Go to the Gear icon and select Export Data.
2. Select the date range in the Reports tab and toggle on the options or data you want to export.
3. Select Export to Excel.

Additionally, here is an article you can check when exporting them: Export reports, lists, and other data from QuickBooks Online.

As always, I’m here to back you up whenever you have queries about exporting data. The Community has your back. Have a good one!

@treasurer-abqbah 

You can convert your data to QB Desktop file as the backup.

There are several ways to perform an external backup.

1) Using QuickBooks built-in backup feature:

Open QuickBooks and go to File -> Back Up Company -> Create Local Backup. Select Local Backup and click Next. Choose a location (like an external hard drive, USB, or cloud storage folder) to save your backup file.

2) Using integration tools for Backup

If you need a more functional solution, tools like Skyvia can help. It is a no-code integration platform that connects QuickBooks to cloud storage (e.g., OneDrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive) or local storage. You can find more here.

Skyvia also has a dedicated Backup solution with data restore capabilities, if you don't mind that data will be stored on their servers in Microsoft Azure and It supports scheduled data synchronization, ensuring the backups are always up-to-date without manual effort.

If you have further questions or need assistance setting up any of these solutions, feel free to ask.