QuickBooks Pro Plus desktop 2022 backup file, get ready because we bookkeeping pros are plus it up the hill top with QuickBooks Pro Plus desktop 2022. Here we are on the desktop starting at the desktop this time because we want to make a distinction between the different types of things we’re going to be using to open up and back up our QuickBooks software, we in prior presentations downloaded the installer program looking something like this on the left hand side, once you have installed it, then you should have an icon something like this.
00:31
This is a shortcut to the actual software. This is what will typically be used by most people to open up the program, it being similar to a Microsoft Word type of icon. If you double click on the icon, you open up the actual program, then we created the data file, which this is the data file over here looks something like this. This is similar to a Microsoft Word document in our analogy. In other words, once you open up the program, you will then have to open up the file to have the data within it, you want to know where the data file will be stored. If I was to right click on this data file,
01:08
and go to the properties of it, let’s take a look at the properties. It is then a QB WQBW file. And now we’re going to make a backup file which will look a little bit different. The backup file is another place where you want to know where you’re storing the backup files, you want to backup your software from your data file from time to time, notice I put the data files in a separate folder, I’m going to put the backup file in this folder.
01:34
The reason I want to do that is because I want to distinguish from the data files to the backup files, I want to know where my backups are, I want to know where the data files are also, because the data files tend to have some other kind of junk, I would call it with it. That will that will kind of clutter up whatever folder you are using. So you want to have a separate file for them just so it can contain the kind of added things that are going to be in that folder.
01:58
So I’m going to go back to this one, this is going to be where we’re going to store now the backup file. So we’re going to open up the software, I’m going to open up the software here, double clicking on the software icon typically the way you open the software, if you had been using the prior company file, it would normally open to that prior company file. However, in our case, we’ve been using the sample file, therefore, it will probably tell you hey, this is the sample file, or it’ll go to the Open Windows screen where you can open the sample file, which would be something like this,
02:28
I have now opened the sample file, we got the warning saying hey, look, this is a sample file, I’m going to say okay, it’s a sample file. And there we have it. Now as you do the backups, you’re typically going to be wanting to do the backups periodically. Ideally, after every time that you basically add new data to the software, possibly on a nightly basis, or possibly every time you shut off the software, there’s a couple different reasons why you might want to have the backups. One, of course is that if you lose the data file, if your data file becomes corrupted, then you want to make sure that you have the backup files so that you can restore the data file.
03:04
So that is a great tool. And to do that, you’re going to want to make sure that you store the backup file, hopefully somewhere other than on the same hard drive, we’re going to be storing it on the same hard drive just for the example. But if your computer crashed, then you would like to have your data file somewhere separate than the backup file, then you can simply restore the program or the software in a similar way as you can kind of restore like a word type software.
03:30
And then you can find the document or the backup file and restore the backup file. The document file in our analogy being kind of a zipped Word document, you can’t open the Word document directly because it was zipped. But if you unzip it, meaning restore the backup file, then you can restore the file, which is a pretty straightforward and easy process to do. So general practice, you want to be storing it somewhere other than the same drive. If you stored on an external hard drive, that’s a good option. But even then, if it’s in the same house and you had a fire or something like that, and both your computer and the external hard drive burnt down, then the next thing that you could do is stored online.
04:11
And you could have an online backup with your backup files, making sure that the online storage is secure so that your data is secure. And that’s another way that you can have basically the storage protection of the back of files. The other reason that you might want to have a backup file is that you might be doing something that’s going to be experimental. And you might say, hey, look, I’m going to try this with a backup, I’m going to create a backup and if something goes wrong with it, I can simply restore what I had before. That’s a great tool that you have on the desktop version that you do not have as much on the online version.
04:44
Another reason you might have a backup file is that your accountant might want a backup file as of a certain point in time to help them to get the accounting information so they can look up the resources they need to do things such as the tax preparation, or year end financial statements or something like like that. So those are the main reasons for the backup file.
05:03
So we want to know first where you’re going to store the backup file. And then at the end of the night or the end of whatever time frame that you decide to do your backups, you’re going to go to the File drop down, and simply go to back up company, we’re going to backup the company, just simply create a local backup looking for the local backup.
05:22
And so you have the online option to get the online backup, get automatic online backup for your QuickBooks data, and other important documents using Intuit online backup solution. But I’m going to use the local backup here, so we’ll actually find it and I’m going to store it on the same drive to practice with. But if you’re doing the local backup, then of course, again, if you’re doing it for a backup purposes, in case your hard drive goes down, you want it on another drive typically.
05:49
So we’re going to do the local drive, save only to to a removable storage device, such as CD or USB flash drive, and so on. So I’m going to go next. And then we’ve got our options local backup only tell us where you want to save the backup, we’re going to browse to locate where we want to save it. Let’s do that. Now I’m going to hit the browse button. Notice it does this double kind of drop down, it gives us this kind of arrow thing. But then if you go into it again, it’s going to tell you exactly where you want, it’ll give you another option that gives you a little bit, I think an easier screen to navigate through. But I’m going to hit the little plus on the desktop here,
06:26
I’m going to go to QuickBooks, and I’m going to go to that QuickBooks backup file and just select or highlight that particular folder. That’s where we want it to go and say, okay, and then down here, it says add the data in time of the backup to the file name, that’s a great thing to have. Because if you’re backing it up period, like pretty often which you should be doing, then how are you going to distinguish between the backup files, it’s going to have a date stamp on each of the backup files.
06:53
So you can decide which is the latest backup file, which will probably be the most relevant backup file. And then you have the limit number of backup files. This is also a nice tool because if you’re putting this information into one folder, then after and you’re saving it in order to have a backup in case the hard drive goes down or something like that, or in the event that you have some kind of problem that you would like to restore the data to a prior point, then you don’t really need backups most likely for like 10 months ago or a year ago or something like that.
07:24
So if you backup like every day, you might say that every three backups, that would be that’s the standard here. But you might go back for like a week or something like that, at least. And then if there’s some kind of issue that happened throughout the week that caused a major problem or something, you could take a look and restore the prior file and see what happened at that point in time.
07:44
So notice, the backup file can be used for two things. In that case, it could be used one to keep things current as of the current time period. So don’t lose the latest data, which is the same thing that can be done with the online version. But the online version has a more secure kind of online source because it’s basically saved on the Intuit saw on the Intuit servers, which they have backup systems themselves, which are which are going to be good in solid backup systems. But the other thing you can do here is restore to a prior point in time. And that’s really nice.
08:17
Because like I say, if you have a problem, and you’re saying, hey, this problem, when did this happen, did happen sometime this week, could I go back to like last week and at least restore the backup file, I don’t have to overwrite the file I’m looking at right now, I could restore the last backup file and see if I could detect where the issue is that caused me some some kind of problem, I can also test things out. And then if the test doesn’t work, I’m not stuck with what I did, I could go back to the prior the prior thing before I did the test. So you might want to increase this up, I would increase it up more than three, the backups are still fairly large files.
08:54
So they will take up some room on the desktop, but they are zipped data files. So they shouldn’t take up too much room and you should be able to, you know, put a few on there. And then you got the remind me to backup when I close my computer every four times. So this will help you to get in the habit of doing the backup, it’ll give you that reminder, a lot of times people just skip the reminder because they just ignore it. But you want to get into some kind of backup system, possibly every time you make a change possibly every night. And so you could set this to give you that reminder to try to back up and get in the habit of doing so select an option to verify that your company data is okay.
09:32
That it is not corrupted when you say so if you’ve got the complete verification, that’s the recommended area, I would keep it there quick verification and no verification. So I’m going to say Okay, continuing on, it says you’ve told us to save the backup copies to the same hard drive the C drive that holds your company file. And they said we told you not to do that because if your hard drive crashes, then that’s going to crash the backup To but we’re doing it for practice purposes. So that’s okay, so we’re not going to change it to an external drive, we’re going to say use that location. I know what I’m doing here. When do you want to save your backup copy.
10:12
So we’re going to save it now versus save it on a scheduled future backup. So you could schedule the backups if you so choose. Only schedule future backups. So you could save it now and schedule future backups. Or you could set up the future backups note, if you are saving your your backup copy to a removable storage device, such as a CD or USB flash drive, insert the CD or connect the device now. So if it’s an external drive, USB drive or something like that, you have to have the drive connected to save it there. And then we go again.
10:44
Now it gives us the drop down again, to see where we want to to store it, which is an easier way to go. So if you can’t find the folder, and the last way they made us go here with the little arrow drop downs, you could just like choose the desktop. And then once you get this kind of easier method, you can go into the actual folder a little bit more easily here, and then go into the backup file, like that. And then save it here’s your name on down below. Notice that gives the timestamp and notice that it’s a Q BB file, not a QB W file, meaning that it’s going to be a backup file and not the actual data file. So we’re going to say, Okay, let’s do it. Let’s do this thing.
11:25
And so it’s verifying data integrity. So it could take a little bit of time, depending on how large your quickbooks file is. If you have a lot of data like years worth of data in there, it’s going to be longer a longer process, if it’s a new company that you’re starting out and putting new information in should go a lot more quickly. And then hopefully, we get something like this. It says QuickBooks Desktop information, QuickBooks has saved a backup of the company file for Rockcastle construction to and it gives the mapping of the location.
11:53
So I’m going to say Okay, and let’s check it out. Let’s see if we know if I could find where it put the thing. Where did it put it, QuickBooks just told me. So I put it on the desktop, this folder right here, and then we go into the backup file, backup file, I’m going to make it large. So it looks large, when we look at it, make it extra large, extra large. So there it is. And you can see it right here. It says it’s a backup file gives you the timestamp on it looks similar to the data file, but it says back up here, it’s not exactly the same icon, but it looks kind of similar with that color.
12:24
And then we’d go to the properties. And you can see here that it’s going to be a QB file, the backup file, that means it’s zipped. That means you can’t open it up directly within QuickBooks, I can’t just double click on it and open it like I could with a Word document and the word software, Microsoft Word document, Microsoft Word software, but rather have to open up the software, restore it to a date to a file, and then it’ll basically open up. If I go on over here, notice the similarity and look to the to the data file. This is the data file the one that we have been using the ones you can actually open up. Also just note that the backup files, then typically, if you have to, if you restored or backed up with the software using, for example, this version 2022,
13:12
you won’t be able to restore it in prior years 2021 2020 And so on. However, if you’ve made the backup with 2020, or 2021, and you then have 2022 software, you can typically restore those backups, as long as you’re plussing up or increasing to a later version. However, once restored, your data file will be in a 2022 version. So let me tell you tell you where the limitation on this typically will happen. If you’re in a situation where you’re working with an accountant or you are like the tax preparer, and you’re asking for a backup file from your client, you have software 2022 client has software 2021, they give you a backup for the 2021 software, you restore it to your 2022 version,
14:02
no problem. But you have to restore and update the file to 2022. If you want to then save changes to give it back to your client and you make a backup file giving it back to the client, they will not be able to restore it because they have the older version of the software and you have now updated your version your your file to 2022. So they won’t be able to restore it you can see where the kind of issue comes in and that play. Now note that that issue is going to go away a little bit more you would think after this new subscription model takes place because they’re basically requiring people after they purchase 2022 To have the latest version from here on out.
14:42
But that’s still going to be a big issue for a few years to come because a lot of people are probably going to by 2021 and stick with it if they can for as long as they can, which is a few years at least before they before they purchase the subscription model. That’s just kind of how it it’s always been kind of that way with it with a desk Top so you got to work around those those different those different versions even though the prior year versions work quite well for the most part