QBO Needs a Downloadable Backup and Restore!
We just found out that Intuit does not keep backups of our accounting data online so that we could not restore our company to a previous point like we used to be able to do in the desktop version. We find this unacceptable and at this time we would not recommend QBO to anybody based on this major flaw.
These are only a few reasons why restoring to a previous point may be necessary:
1) Angry employee changes/deletes transactions maliciously before quitting
2) New bookkeeper decides to rename all the accounts to a system they like but that confuses the rest of the company and transactions are placed in wrong places
3) Employee decides to go through all transactions of a certain type and change them, then realizing it was a mistake after having spent days working on it
I've seen all of these myself over the years. How many other scenarios there are where you wish you had a backup to restore to?
We've been using QBO for a couple years and I have to say I always assumed there would be backups of my data like all good cloud services provide. I've spoken to several support reps about backing up my data and they tell me that Intuit is not responsible for my data and I would have to recreate all transactions if something happened to them. I've tried using the Export feature to create backups but it's cumbersome since it requires Internet Explorer. How is this not a feature already? With the desktop version we'd backup every few times we closed the company files. If you don't want to store the multiple backups, how about giving us a single click option to download a backup, plus a feature to restore to a backup from file? Or even better a way to simply roll back to a previous date.
QBO needs to implement a downloadable backup. The backups that Intuit makes and keeps are just for the sake of maintaining the current data. But there's no historical backup you can reference if you want to roll your file back to a previous version, e.g. after you made many significant changes and need to undo them. This is a major issue and might force us to leave the QBO product.
Anonymous
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187 comments
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Sheila C.
commented
I have started to use an outside company called ChronoBooks. They cater for UK based clients, and offer a discount for ProAdvisors. It works!!!!
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Anonymous
commented
Nice!!
Learn the HTML full tutorials from here
http://myhtml5tutorials.com -
Suzette
commented
And here it is four years later still with no ability to do this. I, like you will NOT recommend QBO for people.
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Anonymous
commented
I am gobsmacked. I assumed back ups were available. I shouldn't have to pay a secondary provider to do this.
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J Terry
commented
I assumed that by using the online version of QuickBooks, this was an automatic feature. I will be looking at alternatives. Having a fully, easily restorable backup is the first item of business for any data system. It is unbelievable that this feature was not included in the online version of QuickBooks from day one.
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Anthony Bonomini
commented
I also raised this The answer I got was:
Restoring previous copy only applies to offline/desktop accounting softwares like MYOB or Reckon. Even Xero does not have that, common for online accounting software is to purge the account to start over.OMG - Start over.
Reenter ALL transactions, Wages, Invoices, purchases, products, customers etc.
Do they have brain damage! -
wil
commented
We have stopped using, recommending or even talking about QBO because of this.
Under review since 2015... Don't have a lot of faith!
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Anonymous
commented
A MAJOR failing in the product.
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Michael Yoon
commented
I am shocked that such an information security and policy gap is missing. I have been exploring a move to QBO and now will be staying on the desktop product and canceling this POC. As a 20+ year CTO of companies of different sizes, I am appalled that a SaaS company with this many clients is lacking such a basic feature for so many years.
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Hugues
commented
Or at least give an option to do a snapshot that is stored on your side. Then we can restore to that point in case we want to try some transactions or something goes wrong on our side. That way we don't have our data to run to the competitor, so we are still locked here, but we have the flexibility of doing our non-downloadable snapshot and going back to a point in time.
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Anonymous
commented
There are three aps in the AP store in QBO that are worth while exploring which all do backups.
- Rewind (free up to the first 2,000 items) has a few limitations but handles at least 90% of all critical items to back up. Low risk to try and likely a life saver in an emergency.
- Backup Circle - ($5 / mon) - read details to see if it fits your needs
- Chrono Books - ($10 / mon) - continuous backup - very robust -THESE ARE ALL IN THE AP ADD ON SECTION OF QBO - 3rd Party solution integration providers !! Yes I agree should be a standard feature of QBO for any of their products but frankly if you don't want to wait on Intuit, these are probably good solutions to at least be aware of !!
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Paul
commented
Rewind as well.
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Caleb L. Jenkins, EA, CQP
commented
Have any of you looked at ChronoBooks?
They have an incredible software that takes care of this problem: https://www.chronobooks.com/
Here's an article that Murph wrote about this app: http://www.intuitiveaccountant.com/vendor-news/a-first-look-at-chronobooks-backup-for-proadvisors/#.WntnHq5Kvcs -
CaBathtubs
commented
I completely agree with this statement. Our companies should be able to download all of our data from QBO. This is another very serious deal breaker for our company. With QB desktop we would easily back up our files when necessary and have multiple back ups ready just incase. Even if QBO is saving information to the cloud; it's our information and we should be able to download it whenever we need to. An option to download a backup to QB Desktop should be available so that any time I have new information on QBO that I want added back to my desktop as a back up, can be downloaded whenever necessary. Please fix this as this is one of our top 3 deal breakers for using QBO and we haven't even been using it that long.
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Julie
commented
Yes! "Click to download" a backup that can be restored in QB Desktop or QBO in the event of a cloud-based catastrophe, or the closing of a business.
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Sheila C.
commented
"Anonymous" links are to USA websites, and I think, having looked at them, that they only apply to the desktop versions (backups then held online for a monthly fee) so not much help for QBO users.
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Rob
commented
Intuit,
The verbiage in this link is very misleading and false advertising.
https://community.intuit.com/articles/1501992-intuit-data-protect-frequently-asked-questions"Intuit Data Protect only works with QuickBooks 2011 and newer, while QuickBooks Online Backup works with all versions of QuickBooks. You can run both services concurrently, although there's no reason to have QuickBooks Online Backup if you're using Data Protect."
I would suggest you get on this and make it happen asap.
Something like this should of been included from day one.....
How can you sell a half baked product?
You have a ton of subscribers and it sounds like a class action suit to me. -
Anonymous
commented
We have long had QBO backup add-ons, including https://myvao.com/2014/02/20/quickbooks-online-backup-101-cost-features/
We also have Intuit QBO backup
https://community.intuit.com/articles/1501992-intuit-data-protect-frequently-asked-questions -
Ines Martinez
commented
I agree with this, because I had the same problem
SHOULD BE AN OPTION FOR BACK UP IN QBO -
Ryan Martel
commented
Well the other option is that we 'all' repeatedly copy and paste the above in to the feedback function until the server crashes.
At least this might gain someones attention?!?