Backing Up QuickBooks Isn't Enough
Backing up QuickBooks protects your accounting file—but what about estimates, contracts, emails, job photos, and payroll documents? Learn why small businesses need a broader, tested backup plan to protect the information they depend on every day.
A Vancouver contractor called me one Monday morning after an office computer failed. The owner wasn’t overly concerned: “Our QuickBooks backup runs every night.”
Well, that’s cool. The accounting file was safe. Unfortunately, the estimates, signed contracts, customer emails, job photos, payroll documents, and scheduling spreadsheet stored elsewhere were not. That data wasn’t backed up and was subject to loss. Now, I was able to take the drive, mount it using a SATA-USB kit, and scrape the data off of the disk with its BitLocker Key. Also cool, but we got lucky. There are plenty of things that could have gone wrong with that strategy.
Folks tend to have a myopic perspective about their information system. “All that matters in Quickbooks” isn’t the right mantra here. QuickBooks may contain the financial heart of your company, but it does not contain everything your business needs to operate.
What Else Does Your Business Depend On?
Try to think about what your staff uses during a normal workday. Important files may be spread across employee computers, Microsoft 365 or Google Drive, shared folders, email, and industry-specific applications.
Losing those files can delay billing, stop projects, create compliance concerns, and leave employees unable to help customers. Even a few days of disruption can be expensive for a small business.
Back Up More Than the Company File
Take an inventory. Start by identifying every place where important business information is stored. Include desktops, laptops, servers, email accounts, OneDrive or SharePoint folders, and any software used for scheduling, customer management, payroll, or project documentation.
If a file would be difficult, costly, or embarrassing to lose, it belongs in the conversation. Having a list of where critical information system content can be found is the first step to protecting it.
Keep a Separate, Protected Copy
After extending backups to those locations, think about your backup strategy. A backup stored on the same computer—or on a drive permanently connected to it—can disappear during hardware failure, theft, fire, or a ransomware attack. So why would you back up anything locally like that unless it was structurally massive: too big to rely on remote data recovery.
Broadly, backups should be protected from everyday users, be remotely accessible, and automated. For many businesses, this means a properly managed cloud backup solution.
Back Up Google Drive and Microsoft 365 Data
Microsoft keeps its services running, but that does not mean every deleted email or overwritten document can always be recovered when you need it. A separate Microsoft 365 backup using a 3rd party can provide additional protection for Outlook, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams data, but in a pinch, Microsoft’s own 365 Backup Service is a great way to hedge against loss.
Google Drive content is just as much at risk. Sure, there are ways to recover that data with native features, but isn’t it always best to carry a copy, just in case? A good 3rd party solution for Google Drive and M365 is Backupify.
Test the Recovery Process
A successful backup notification is reassuring but it is not proof that your business can recover. Periodically restore a QuickBooks file, document folder, and email account to confirm that the data is complete and usable.
A Complete Backup Plan Protects the Business
Sure, we were able to recover the accounting records and project information, but like I was saying, we got lucky. A broader, tested backup plan would have reduced that disruption from days to hours.
If you run a small business in Vancouver, WA, or Portland, OR, Mickler & Associates, Inc. can review your backups and help protect QuickBooks, Microsoft 365, computers, and other essential systems. Contact us for friendly, practical help with cybersecurity, cloud services, managed IT, and professional IT support.
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Business Continuity Planning: Why Local Matters in a Crisis
When small business owners hear "business continuity," they often picture massive enterprise operations running complex simulations. In reality, your business faces the exact same operational threats, just without the multi-million-dollar safety net. While AI cyberattacks are an escalating risk, day-to-day survival hinges on mitigating human error, equipment failures, software glitches, and extreme weather. Discover how defining a practical Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and automating cloud backups can secure your livelihood. Learn why a plan is only a theory until it is tested, and how simple exercises can turn your IT into an unbreakable shield.
When small business owners hear "business continuity," they often picture massive enterprise IT departments with a huge staff running endless drills, preparing for “the big one.”
To a small business like yours, those kinds of exercises feel out of reach. But in reality, your business faces the exact same operational threats, just without the multi-million-dollar budget.
Let’s Talk About Risk
While automated AI cyberattacks are an escalating reality, they aren’t the only — or even the most common — threat to your data.
In day-to-day practice, the greatest risk to your digital assets is actually human error. Accidents are the most common problems I encounter in my practice. An employee accidentally clicking "delete" on a critical folder happens far more frequently than a targeted hack.
Compounding this are escalating environmental risks. Driven by climate change, extreme weather events like floods, wildfires, and severe storms are increasingly knocking out local power grids and damaging physical offices.
Hardware failures are inevitable. We often take our office technology for granted until it stops working. From a sudden power surge frying a server motherboard, to a hard drive degrading over time, or an office router simply dying after a botched firmware update can paralyze your operations instantly.
Third-party software updates are necessary to patch security holes, but they frequently introduce unexpected bugs. A routine operating system update or a background software patch can conflict with your critical business apps, causing system crashes, frozen databases, or a total loss of local connectivity.
What Can You Do to Manage Risk?
To protect your livelihood, you need a practical continuity plan centered on your Recovery Time Objective (RTO).
RTO is the maximum amount of time your business can afford to be offline before the financial damage becomes fatal. Can your operations survive being down for two hours? Two days? Two weeks? Have you ever thought about it? Probably not.
But answering that question determines how you configure your backups. For a small business, a robust strategy involves:
Automated Cloud Backups: Protecting against local hardware failure or natural disasters.
Immutable Snapshots: Preventing accidental employee deletions from permanently erasing historical data.
Recovery Planning: Mapping out a clear, step-by-step checklist of who to contact and which systems to restore first so your team can work uninterrupted during an outage
But Planning Isn’t Enough
However, a plan is only as good as its last test. A backup that has never been restored is just a theory. You don’t need a massive audit. Just set aside time once a year to physically restore a few random files.
Wanna have some fun? Secretly shut off your internet and see what happens — seriously, you can learn a lot by doing! Get a feel for what eventually will happen.
Ensuring your team knows exactly how to flip the switch before a crisis hits transforms your IT from a vulnerability into an unbreakable safety net.
Need help? We’re right around the corner.
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The Importance of Data Backup and Disaster Recovery for Medical Offices
Medical practices can’t afford downtime. From ransomware attacks to hardware failure and power outages, data loss can stop operations instantly. Reliable, encrypted backups and a tested disaster recovery plan ensure patient records remain protected and systems can be restored quickly. This article explains why backup strategy is a management responsibility — and how proper planning keeps your practice running, protects patient trust, and prevents costly disruptions.
Every medical practice depends on access to patient records, scheduling systems, and billing platforms. When those systems go down — whether from ransomware, hardware failure, or even a local power event — the entire office can grind to a halt. That’s why reliable data backup and disaster recovery planning are essential for modern medical offices.
Ransomware remains one of the most disruptive threats facing healthcare providers. A single click on a malicious link can encrypt files and lock staff out of critical systems. Without reliable backups, practices can be forced to pay a ransom or face days (or weeks) of downtime. Even then, recovery isn’t guaranteed.
Hardware failures are another common issue. Servers and workstations age, hard drives fail, and devices are occasionally damaged or stolen. Add in regional risks like severe weather or power outages, and it becomes clear that data loss isn’t a hypothetical scenario. It’s a matter of when, not if.
A proper backup strategy goes beyond simply copying files somewhere. Medical offices need encrypted, automated backups stored securely offsite or in the cloud. Just as important, those backups must be tested regularly. Further, management should know how quickly systems can be restored and what the recovery process looks like before a real emergency occurs.
Disaster recovery planning also includes clear roles and communication. Who do you call if systems go down? How will staff access schedules or patient information? How quickly can operations resume?
With the right backup and recovery strategy in place, most disruptions become manageable events rather than business-ending crises. For medical offices, protecting data means protecting continuity of care and ensuring patients can continue to rely on your practice when it matters most.
Give me a ring. I’ve got solutions.
R