APP COMPARE: QuickBooks Online Back-up Solutions

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While one of the features and 'sales points' of QuickBooks Online is that you never have to worry about backing-up your data because Intuit is continually backing-up QBO within their overall server-redundancy environment, the reality is that these safeguards are intended for Intuit's use, users have no control over those backups. There is no way for a user to restore their data from some past date to start moving forward using the data that Intuit maintains internally. Intuit's backup system is aimed at 'disaster recovery' not selective recovery.

In an August 2016 article I addressed the need of a user-controlled mechanism for backing-up QuickBooks Online data. I recognized the fact that users could 'download' a copy of their QBO data in two different formats. The first copy being a simple download which was essentially worthless since it was in QBO format with no way to restore it to an empty QBO file. The second was as a QuickBooks Desktop file, but many (far too many) times irregularities in that data produce an out-of-balance file. 

The solution I identified in my article was SafetyNet, a form of QuickBooks Online backup originally developed as the award winner for the 2014 Hackathon competition by Jobber. The problem was that SafetyNet was incomplete, and many of the original development team had left Jobber for other opportunities. In fact within a few months of my article Jobber announced they were going to retire SafetyNet which was still in Beta. 

That left QBO users, not back as square one, but at square none, with no way to make any user controlled backup of QuickBooks Online. But in the two years that have passed things have changed substantially. The following are four cloud based applications have emerged on the market, each are designed to provide back-up/data-security (redundancy) for QuickBooks Online in addition to providing mechanisms to restore data on a user-controlled and selective basis.

Be aware, the applications have been listed in 'alphabetical order' without regard to any assessment of their performance. And sorry, these are neither comprehensive reviews nor side-by-side comparisons and rankings, so you will still need to do your own homework, although I will say that we have previously give a 'first look' to at least a couple of these over the past two years.

BackupCircle

With BackupCircle you can backup and restore your QuickBooks Online Company. Backup Circle provides a reliable and affordable backup-as-a-service solution. With BackupCircle you can schedule your backup or automate your accounting data protection. To maximize reliability, BackupCircle takes a full backup of your data every single time.

You can restore your data at your convenience. If something goes wrong, BackupCircle can restore your QuickBooks Online company to the selected date you choose from your backup versions. They offer unlimited backup storage for each company, unlimited users for each subscription, no backup or data-set size restrictions, email alerts, seamless QBO integration, and more.

BackupCircle is an initiative by Caravel Advisory GmbH, CH, an International focused Advisory company of Baar, Switzerland. BackupCircle offers a 15-day free trial period. For more information see the BackupCircle landing page at the Intuit QuickBooks Apps Center.

ChronoBooks

ChronoBooks makes full use of every QuickBooks Online accounting API resource (including attachments) to back-up data. ChronoBooks stays in constant communication with QuickBooks Online, storing every change that you make. Best of all, you will never have to run a manual backup once you are connected to ChronoBooks because they are fully automated. You can work with impunity knowing that your accounting backup is never more than a few minutes old.

ChronoBooks hardens your accounting controls by safeguarding data from accidental, unintended changes. With ChronoBooks, you can roll back your accounting data to any time since the first backup— down to the minute. ChronoBooks also provides the ability to copy current or historical data to a new company— great for training or reviewing historical data.

You can even make a copy of your QuickBooks Online company's data from any time since it's been backed up to test new integrations in a "sandbox" or directly compare historical accounting data between two sets of data.

ChronoBooks is developed and supported by Chrono LLC, a Reno, Nevada based company. Pricing is per QuickBooks Company, but special pricing is available for QuickBooks ProAdvisors. All plans offer a 14-day free trial. For more information see the ChronoBooks landing page at the Intuit QuickBooks Apps Center.

Rewind Backups

Rewind Backups offers easy, automatic backups and recover for QuickBooks Online. You can link one or all the QuickBooks Online accounts you manage to Rewind.

Using Rewind, a full backup will automatically begin for each of your accounts as soon as they are connected, in the future each account gets backed-up automatically within 5 minutes of any/all future changes.  You will have full access to all your backups inside the secure Rewind Vault.

Rewind gives you more control over your accounting data, with Rewind you will have the ability to undo mistakes or unwanted changes, recover deleted items, or rewind your entire account to an earlier time. Rewind makes it easy to restore as little (specific items) or as much (entire sets) of your accounting data as you need.

Rewind Backup is a service of Third Blink Software, Inc. which is based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and provides telephone, email and in-app chat support. All Rewind Backup plans provide a 7-day free trial. For more information see the Rewind Backups landing page at the Intuit QuickBooks Apps Center.

SafetyNet

SafetyNet originally developed by Jobber and won the Hackathon in 2014 but it was phased out in 2016. In 2017 Jungle Disk purchased the rights to SafetyNet and began updating it to the most current QuickBooks Online API. Today, SafetyNet can fetch all the data in your QuickBooks Online Account(s) and create backup(s) of them. Each time you create a new Archive, SafetyNet will ask QuickBooks Online for all your objects and record them as an Archive.

At any point in the future you can then restore your QuickBooks Online company to look exactly as it did when the Archive was created. With the Professional version of SafetyNet you can keep as many Archives as you like, allowing you to keep a history from any point in time. SafetyNet can be deployed for an unlimited number of companies tied to an individual account which makes it ideal for accountants, and those with multiple firms.

SafetyNet is intended to provide safe, secure, reliable backups for accountants, small businesses and bookkeepers using QuickBooks Online, it is supported by Jungle Disk which is based in San Antonio, Texas. SafetyNet is available for free introductory trial. For more information see the SafetyNet landing page at the Intuit QuickBooks Apps Center.

Editor's commentary:

We have provided you summary information about each of these four Apps, and representative depictions from the materials they provide on their Intuit App Center landing page including screen shots if those graphics contain their 'identity', if their identity does not exist on the graphic we make no attempt to include it in our article.

There may very well be other backup Apps 'in the market' that provide similar services that do not appear on the Intuit App Center; however, this is an area where we feel that an App Developer should have strong ties to Intuit and formal recognition as an approved App since you are not only giving them the authority to access your QuickBooks data for limited purpose(s), but to potentially alter your data totally and completely. We therefore feel that their underlying API compliance should be obligatory, and so we made no attempt to identify or recognize any developer providing backup Apps not on the Intuit App Center.