QuickBooks® 2010 For Dummies®

Chapter 17. File Management Tips

In This Chapter

• Backing up QuickBooks data

• Deciding when and how often to back up your data

• Restoring your QuickBooks data (if you lose it)

• Using Accountant's Review

• Creating and using portable files

• Using the Audit Trail

• Setting a closing date and password

Okay, you don't need to worry about the data files that QuickBooks stores your financial information in. Pretty much, QuickBooks does all the dirty work. But that said, you do have a few housekeeping tasks to take care of. In this chapter, I describe these chores and how to do them correctly with minimal hassle.

Backing Up Is (Not That) Hard to Do

Sure, I can give you some tricky, technical examples of fancy backup strategies, but they have no point here. You want to know the basics, right?

Tip

The guiding rule is that you back up anytime you work on something that you wouldn't want to redo. Some people think that a week's worth of work is negligible, and others think that a month's worth of work is negligible.

So here's what I do to back up my files. I back up every week after I enter my data for the week. Then I stick the disk (you might use any removable disk, such as a USB flash drive, a Zip disk, or a writable CD) in my briefcase so that if something terrible happens (like a meteor hitting my office building), I don't lose both my computer and the backup disk with the data. (I carry my briefcase around with me — a sort of middle-age security blanket — so that it won't get destroyed in some after-hours ...