QBO Backups App Compare: A Worst-case Scenario Revisited

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In August of 2016, I first introduced the idea of a ‘worst-case scenario’ as a prime reason why users needed a ‘self-controlled’ backup solution for QuickBooks Online. At the time the only alternative to the backups incorporated by Intuit into QBO was an App called ‘SafetyNet’ from Jobber that won the Hack-a-thon at the first QuickBooks Connect. A lot has changed since then.

A brief history of Backup Apps for QBO

When I wrote that article, Jobber was the only backup App for QBO, it lets a user control when backups were made, and when they were restored. Jobber wasn’t perfect, there was a lot it couldn’t do, but it was better than no backup App at all, and remember it was ‘free’ at the time because it was still in Beta. While I had written my 2016 article in an attempt to help spawn an interest in SafetyNet, Jobber went ahead terminated it due to a lack of interest, and later sold the rights to another company we will talk about further down in this article.

Approximately 8 months later Nate Tippie and I spoke about ChronoBooks, a backup App he was developing; I presented it during Scaling New Heights of 2017 and wrote a First Look in July of 2017. Within a few months users began to get the point, they needed a backup of QBO they could control, especially when it came to restoring the data. Some users even wanted the ability to restore one QBO file to a different (new) QBO file, and Nate soon introduced that feature.

Other developers began to see a market for QBO Backup App development. Rewind had been working on backup solutions for eCommerce platforms and turned their attention to QuickBooks Online. Not too long after that Backup Circle began offering an App to backup QBO. Then Jungle Disk purchased the rights to SafetyNet from Jobber, did some work to bring the product up to the current API, and also released a new ‘Beta’ version.

The next big development came late in 2019 when Intuit purchased Nate Tippie’s ChronoBooks and shortly thereafter announced that the product would become part of QuickBooks Online-Advanced and would not be available to other QBO users. As a result, Insightful Accountant published an article in January of 2020 in which I provided a summary comparison of Backup Circle, Rewind, and SafetyNet and also provided (with Intuit’s permission) a comparative chart by Alicia Katz Pollock which had been commissioned by Intuit.

Since a majority of former ChronoBooks users on QBO had to find another platform, the early indications appeared they favored Rewind based on input we received here at Insightful Accountant.

Speaking of Rewind, be sure to sign-up for their webinar, Key Trends & Changes In Cloud Security on Tuesday, February 23, 2021 at 2:00 PM Eastern (1:00 PM Central). In this session, Garrett Wagner, CPA, CITP will explore the key trends & changes that are evolving in the cloud environment, and offer expert insights to help firms in developing and implementing key security practices for their firms and their clients.  REGISTER HERE

Soon thereafter, another new player showed up quietly, Skyvia started offering a backup App for QBO that stores data securely under Microsoft Azure GRS, but they didn't list themselves on the Intuit QuickBooks Marketplace.

With this history in place let’s turn our attention back to my original issue in 2016 which illustrates the need for a Backup App that supports QuickBooks Online, then we will look more closely at the current App offerings.

A Disaster in the Waiting

One of the features and selling-points of QuickBooks Online is that you never have to worry about backing-up your data because Intuit is continually backing-up your QBO data for you. In reality, safety copies of all QBO data supposedly exist so that if one server goes down, a copy of the data is resident on another server, a concept known as ‘data redundancy.’ This is done for purposes of ‘disaster recovery’ on a global scale, not ‘data recovery’ on a personal scale. 

So, despite these safeguards and redundancies, users have no control whatsoever over any back-up which Intuit makes of their data. There is no way users can decide to restore their data from any past point-certain and start moving forward again using a backup Intuit has made. The actual QuickBooks Online backup functionality which Intuit provides is aimed exclusively at restoration of files if files no longer become available as a whole. As I said earlier, it’s about ‘disaster recovery’, not selective restoration data recovery.

When it comes to ‘disaster recovery’ you might think of something like a natural disaster like a tornado, fire, or flood. Well, I just happen to live in Moore, Oklahoma, perhaps the tornado capital of the world with a history of 3 major tornadoes in the last 20 (or so) years, one of which had the 'fastest wind speeds ever recorded on the face of our planet.' Obviously, an F5 tornado can render even the most 'disaster resistant' data center a mess. That is why major data centers like AWS which is used by Intuit to support QuickBooks Online have a redundancy factor that includes 'secondary' locations where the data is continually archived in case the primary data center becomes ‘non-operational.'

As bad as a tornado, fire, flood, or almost any such situation that might impact your QuickBooks Online service via the primary Intuit Data Center would be, the redundancy factor would kick in and you would still have access to your QBO data. Even if you had a local disaster you could get to your QBO data as soon as you had access to the internet from anywhere you were at or could get to.  So, a 'data center disaster' or 'local disaster' would prevent a return to normalcy of your QuickBooks Online data.

A Worst-case Scenario

What I am talking about when it comes to a 'worst-case scenario' is the intentional destruction of your QuickBooks Online data. Although you could even have an unintentional destruction of your QBO data. But here is an example of how an intentional case might happen1.

A trusted, long-term employee, let's call her 'Betty Bookkeeper', has been growing more and more disgruntled over the last few weeks. You really can't figure out what is going on with her, so you simply ignore the situation assuming things will improve with a little time.  You count on Betty for everything and trust her implicitly. She keeps your checkbook, issues all the invoices to your customers, makes your bank deposits, pays your vendors and other operating expenses.  She even works with the payroll provider to ensure your employees are paid on time. You hardly know what you would do without 'Betty.'

On Monday morning you arrive at your office to find a note from Betty.  When you read it, you are shocked. The note pretty well tells you that “you are the slime of the earth” and that she 'hopes that your business falls totally apart.'  You can hardly believe your eyes.  You attempt to call her on her company cell phone only to find that it is ringing in the drawer of her desk.  You try her home phone, and it has been disconnected. Nobody has seen here since the end of work last Friday.

Suddenly the thought crosses your mind that she might have emptied your bank account so you log-in to QuickBooks Online to check.  But there is a big problem, the bank balance can't be right, it's way too high. So, you call the bank and find out that you do have an amount of money in the bank close to what you think it should be, but why does QBO show it is off as much as it is? 

As you begin looking at QBO you notice your outstanding invoices are way too low.  You are certain you should be owed a great deal more money from your current customers.  In fact, QBO doesn't even list invoices from just 4 days ago that you still have copies of on your desk.

After a couple of hours of reviewing your QBO data, you realize that Betty must have spent the entire day last Friday randomly deleting transactions, erroneously editing other transactions, and adding a ridiculous number of fictitious transactions to your QBO data. You don't have a clue how you can possibly get your 'books' right.

Besides calling the Police Department to file charges, how would you resolve this situation, and more importantly, the problem of your QBO data?  Can you realistically expect some restoration of your QBO data to a date certain? 

Well, you certainly can’t expect Intuit QBO Technical Support to help you, their Backup copies… well that’s for their ‘disaster recovery’ and this isn’t a disaster as far as they are concerned.  It may be a disaster for you and your business, but not for them. And besides, that’s what a Backup App for QBO is for, everyone knows that, right?

While we only had one such ‘Beta’ App back in 2016 when I first wrote about this kind of ‘worst case’ and everybody laughed at my example, today we have a user controlled backup included for QBO-Advanced users, and the users of the other QBO platforms have a choice of four optional Apps they can acquire.

2021 QBO Backup App Compare

The following Apps are designed to provide a user-controlled backup capability for QuickBooks Online in addition to providing the ability to restore data on a selective basis. Some of these apps may permit you to restore a copy of the QBO backup to a different (new) QBO file.

These applications are listed in alphabetical order without regard to any personal assessment of their performance. And since Insightful Accountant has also prepared a new 'FREE' PDF graphic comparison you can download that's extremely informative, I'm keeping my descriptions short, sweet and to-the-point.

BackupCircle

BackupCircle provides a reliable and affordable solution that lets a QBO user backup and restore their QuickBooks Online data. With BackupCircle you can schedule your backup so that you can automate your accounting data protection. To maximize reliability, rather than produce incremental backups of only what's changed with your data, BackupCircle makes a full backup of your data every single time. Routinely it produces a full backup of your data weekly, of course, you can set-up manual full backups to run whenever you want. BackupCircle also gives you the ability to restore your data. If something goes wrong, you can restore your QBO company to the selected date you choose from your stored backup versions.  BackupCircle subscriptions are $4.99/month per company file, offer unlimited backup storage for each company, unlimited users for each subscription, and no backup data-set size restrictions. For more information see the BackupCircle landing page at the Intuit QuickBooks Apps Center.

Rewind

Rewind offers easy QBO user-managed automatic backup and recovery for QuickBooks Online. Users can link one or all of their QuickBooks Online accounts to Rewind. Using Rewind, a full backup will automatically begin for each of your accounts as soon as they are connected, then another full backup is performed nightly. Each QBO account gets backed-up automatically within 5 minutes of any/all future changes, or users can initiate an on-demand backup. Users have full access to all their backups inside the secure Rewind Vault. With Rewind users have control over their accounting data because they can undo mistakes or unwanted changes, recover deleted items, or rewind their entire account to an earlier date and time. Rewind makes it possible to restore as little data (such as specific items) or as much data (entire sets of data) to the QuickBooks Online account as needed. Rewind also offers the ability to restore a copy of QBO data from one file to a different QBO file, a feature they call ‘Rewind Copy’. Rewind subscriptions begin at $19.00/month per company file, offer unlimited version histories. Rewind Copy is billed separately and is pay-per-use at $29.00 per Copy. Rewind also offers an Accountant Plan requiring a minimum of 2-files to start at $9/month/per company file, they also offer an enterprise (discounted) pricing option for professionals with more than 25 company files. For more information see the Rewind landing page at the Intuit QuickBooks Apps Center.

Remember, Rewind is conducting a webinar titled, Key Trends & Changes In Cloud Security on Tuesday, February 23, 2021 at 2:00 PM Eastern (1:00 PM Central). Garrett Wagner, CPA, CITP will not only explore the key trends & changes evolving in the cloud environment, but also offer expert insights to help firms in developing and implementing key security practices for their firms and their clients.  REGISTER HERE

SafetyNet

SafetyNet (by Jungle Disk) allows QBO users to create backups of all the data in each of their QuickBooks Online Account(s). Each time users create a new SafetyNet Archive the App polls QuickBooks Online for all data objects accessible under the API and record them as an Archive. At any point in the future users can restore their QuickBooks Online company to exactly as it was when any SafetyNet Archive was created. With the Professional version of SafetyNet, users can keep an unlimited number of Archives so that a complete history from any point in time may be maintained. SafetyNet can be deployed for an unlimited number of QBO companies tied to an individual account which makes it ideal for accountants, bookkeepers, or businesses with multiple QBO accounts. SafetyNet remains available for free during their 'Beta' period. For more information see the SafetyNet landing page at the Intuit QuickBooks Apps Center.

Skyvia

Skyvia (Backup for QBO) is another backup alternative for your QuickBooks Online data. It takes only minutes to configure how you want your QBO backup set to run on an automatic basis, and you can manually backup your QBO data whenever you want. Your backup data is safe because it’s stored in Microsoft’s Azure cloud. Skyvia Backup allows you to recover your QuickBooks Online data quickly and easily, right from your web browser, all you need to do is to select the data to restore and click the Restore button. Any restore scenario (bulk, granular, change undo, relations restore, even restore to another QBO account) can be done in just a few clicks. And Skyvia even gives you the ability to export your data to a CSV file. Skyvia has a ‘free’ start-up (Beta) plan that may be sufficient for your needs since it provides 1 GB of storage, or you can step up to the next level for $9/mo./file (or $84/yr./file) for 20 GB of storage (Skyvia also has TB storage plans). Skyvia is NOT listed on the Intuit QuickBooks Apps Center.

Remember you can download Insightful Accountant's new 'Free' PDF graphic comparison of these four Backup Apps for QBO HERE. 

Footnotes & Disclosures:

1 - Worst-case Scenario adapted from my earlier article: 'What about a QuickBooks Online Worst-case Scenario?'

Prices provided in this article, for any of the products mentioned, are as of the time/date of publication, and are subject to change. Insightful Accountant is not responsible for any difference or change in price that may exist either at the time of publication or subsequent thereto.

Insightful Accountant App Compare articles, including this special edition on QBO Backup Apps, are editorial features, they are NOT sponsored content. While they may (or may not) contain references or 'inserts' that refer (or contain links) to sponsored content, or sponsored webinars, the actual feature is intended as an informational resource for our readers.