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Expert Tips: Automatic QuickBooks BackUps, No Guarantees!

After many years of computer and QuickBooks Backups, I know that even my Expert Tips for Automatic QuickBooks Backups have No Guarantees. In fact, the only thing you can absolutely guarantee about QuickBooks Backups and computers is that computers will fail, often at the worst possible time, destroying all your data. There are only three ways you can prevent this disaster:

1. Backup and restore.
   
2. Backup and restore.
   
3. Backup and restore.

Even with these Expert Tips for Automatic QuickBooks BackUps there are still No Guarantees. On the other hand, without carefully following these Expert Tips for Automatic QuickBooks BackUps, you can absolutely guarantee that your computers will fail, often at the worst possible time, destroying all your data. Computers are now rather cheap. Data is precious. Many small and medium sized companies go out of business after losing data. Here are the endlessly repeated saddest words of QuickBooks users:

1. I have no current QuickBooks backup (or computer backup).
   
2. My new QuickBooks backup wrote over my old backup.
   
3. My QuickBooks Backup does not work.

Intuit Data Recovery does an outstanding (if slow) job with QuickBooks data files, but they rarely recover QuickBooks Backups. Therefore, you have No Guarantees. To paraphrase the movie Fatherhood, "You need license to buy a dog or drive a car... You even need a license to catch a fish. But they'll let any... own a QuickBooks computer." Yes, to really screw things up you need a computer. Forget even one of these Expert Tips for Automatic QuickBooks Backups and you will have less than the usual No Guarantees:

1. Run Automatic QuickBooks Backups every time you exit QuickBooks. The best QuickBooks and computer consultants forget to backup. What will you do about your work for tomorrow if you must do your work over for yesterday and today?
   
2. Make a minimum of three date stamped versions of Automatic QuickBooks Backups.
   
3. Run scheduled Automatic QuickBooks Backups to a different drive at least weekly. Extra computer drives cost almost nothing, compared to the value of your data and the time it will take to accurately recreate it, if it is even possible to do that. We make many changes to many QuickBooks client files by the time we finish tax returns. Drives are so cheap that we run a complete automatic backup of our entire data drive, to one of two extra drives each night. That's right! All these Automatic QuickBooks Backups, which take seconds, are in addition to these complete nightly data drive backups. I know there are No Guarantees, so I insist on this. Must you wait until you too are seriously hurt or killed before you stop playing Russian Roulette?
   
4. Restore occasional QuickBooks Backups! Do not trust your Automatic QuickBooks Backups unless you occasionally restore one and test the restored file. It is sad how often QuickBooks Backups do not work when you need them.
   
5. Do not make QuickBooks Backups to floppies. Low cost USB jump (thumb) drives now cost far less than very slow floppies. They also are far more reliable and usually hold 100 or more times as much. QuickBooks Backups on floppies soon become very unreliable, as floppy drives get increasingly out of alignment. Never trust QuickBooks Backups on more than one floppy. Multi-floppy QuickBooks Backups are RIDICULOUSLY unreliable, especially after long storage.
   
6. You can make QuickBooks Backups to a CD or DVD. Depending on your CD software and QuickBooks version, you may need to do QuickBooks Backups to your hard drive and copy them to the CD or DVD.
   
7. Do not (only) make Automatic QuickBooks Backups on the same drive as your QuickBooks data file. You really have No Guarantees when you lose Automatic QuickBooks Backups at the same time you lose QuickBooks data files?
   
8. Have some multi-user Automatic QuickBooks backups use a folder like C:\\zz-QBbackup. This keeps Automatic QuickBooks Backups out of the way, while each user has QuickBooks Backups on different drives. You may thank me for this some day, even if your battery backups do not beep many times a day. Lightning, power surges, fire, theft and disgruntled employees or spouses can destroy several computers at once.
   
9. Run anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall software. You often cannot use Automatic QuickBooks Backups infected with viruses or spyware.
   
10. Use occasional Portable QuickBooks Backups and restores. A Portable QuickBooks Backup strips indexes from QuickBooks files. A QuickBooks restore creates a new index from QuickBooks data. This often Speeds Up QuickBooks, by fixing file corruption.
    
11. Watch out for a big weakness in Automatic QuickBooks Backups. I once got very upset when a staff person gave me several QuickBooks files without setting Automatic QuickBooks Backups. This is the FIRST thing they must check in QuickBooks. I later found that even a provider of Expert Tips for Automatic QuickBooks Backups can set up Automatic QuickBooks Backups improperly. To do it right go to the QuickBooks File menu (top left), Save Copy or Backup, then Backup Copy and Next. This brings you to a screen where you click Local Backup and Options. I strongly suggest No Verification, but watch out! It is very important that you choose, "Save it now and schedule future backups." It is only after this that you permanently enter a number for "Save backup copy automatically when I close my company file every 1" (or other) times.

For the ultimate in safety and convenience, do Automatic QuickBooks Backups to the web. QuickBooks does good Automatic QuickBooks Backups online. However, the fastest and easiest online backup service gives you enough FREE space for most Automatic QuickBooks Backups (or other data backups). Even if you accidentally delete files, you can quickly recover them from the web for quite a while. This FREE space can protect your priceless photo collection, personal correspondence or anything else you wish. You can even automatically share the latest version of your QuickBooks or other files on your home computer and other (perhaps 10) local or remote computers. Copy most files to a desktop folder and they will be waiting for you at home, usually before you even leave the office. There are many different plans for extra storage, at the lowest price I know. You can even share many different folders with different clients, for less than the cost of a weekly Starbucks visit. Finally, you and those you refer get lots of extra storage even if referrals only use free accounts. You also get substantial commissions for their paid accounts.

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AccountingWeb carried this article at http://bit.ly/1a8Kry, but does not give the link to this outstanding and inexpensive backup and synchronize service http://SugarSync.com/.

Ultimate QuickBooks Add-ons, QuickBooks Interface: Intuit Federated Applications

I began this at 4 AM Sunday, too excited to sleep until almost 11 AM. I am using my Florida home computer from Massachusetts, during a short visit with my programmer son and his family. My excitement relates to a meeting tomorrow with my new hero, Alex Chriss. He runs the new Intuit Federated Applications effort. Why will Intuit Federated Applications soon revolutionize your life, even if you never hear of them again?

In 2001 a U.N. committee said we could save two trillion dollars a year ($2.5 trillion in 2009) with international e-trade. This will start with better privacy standards, electronic signatures, standard business forms and uniform e-business standards. Banks, investors and creditors will better analyIze financial statements faster and easier, with no data entry or errors. It should provide big data entry savings, with better accuracy and automation of succeeding processes, for QuickBooks and QuickBooks add-ons that interface to QuickBooks. Remote accountants may later, for example, insure your bank statements automatically reconcile, as automatic cash flow projections send overspending warnings, loan requests, essential and discretionary purchases and transfers to or from investment accounts, all subject to your approval. This will be the best kind of a Stimulus program.

Intuit has 94% of the small business accounting programming market with QuickBooks and almost no home checkbook program competition with Quicken. QuickBooks has 100 international currencies and Intuit and its partners are fast increasing small – medium business offerings in many countries. This means only Intuit can link your wants and needs to the wants and needs of many small and medium companies everywhere, with big savings.

Intuit Federated Applications can quickly, easily and inexpensively link any web program to you and the four million companies using QuickBooks (and their 25 million employees), as well as the users of QuickBooks interfaces or QuickBooks add-ons. These Intuit federated Applications can use any programming language or database, while you get a simple single login. More than a thousand independent web developers are now working on Intuit Federated Applications, to provide QuickBooks interfaces to old and new QuickBooks add-ons. Intuit hosts and promotes the first seven.

Alex also supervises the QuickBase web database and the desktop QuickBooks Software Development Kit (SDK). Most of the Fortune 500 use QuickBase. In seven years of annual QuickBooks, QuickBase and SDK upgrades, no upgrade ever broke a QuickBooks interface between these products and the 600 or so independent QuickBase and QuickBooks add-ons. Intuit Federated Applications and these 600+ programs eliminate the error-prone duplicate data entry, increases accuracy and speed processing, while vastly extending QuickBooks into new areas. Thse QuickBooks interfaces and QuickBooks add-ons already do what the many Intuit Federated Applications soon will do, in terns of avoiding the expensive initial costs, upgrades, data conversion, training, consultants and staff of less tested bigger company programs. Together with increasing Intuit scalability, these QuickBooks interfaces, QuickBooks add-ons and Intuit Federated Applications give you 600+ reasons why your company will not outgrow QuickBooks.

One key to this is the integration CPAs and managers have fought for since the 1960s, when I became a CPA. Intuit founder Scott Cook spoke of a second key long ago: small business people and consumers do not want to rely on remote computers. Alex and his Intuit Federated Applications will not make us do that. He understands we badly need maximum integration of business processes. However, his web links will not make us depend on remote computers. Our accounting programs, QuickBooks interfaces, QuickBooks add-ons and some of our Intuit Federated Application will run locally. They will use web updates only when available (are we screwing up software as a service - saas).

Intuit Federated Applications also should soon link 30+ million more Quicken, TurboTax, professional tax and other Intuit program users. However, even if they do not, Metcalfe’s Law will apply to Intuit Federated Application and QuickBooks interface and QuickBooks add-ons networks. Metcalfe was the inventor of Ethernet computer networks. He said network value does not increase by multiplying the network value to one user times the number of users. This is because each extra user can connect to each of the prior users. Therefore, Metcalfe’s Law says the value of the network doubles (increases geometrically) for each new user. That is, it does not go up 1, 2, 3, 4…, but 1, 2, 4, 8… A network with 10 users is worth 1,024 as much. A 20 user network it is worth a million times as much. An QuickBooks interface, QuickBooks add-ons and Intuit Federated Applications network will be immensely valuable. It will give us something like a black hole in space. That is, the Intuit Federated Applications network value will be so valuable and have so many users that it will draw in anything remotely near (all who learn about it). However, it will only tend to destroy those who do not link.

The best is yet to come, with Alex and QuickBooks interface - QuickBooks add-ons - Intuit Federated Applications being one more delightful step. By 2030, inventors and futurists like Ray Kurzweil predict we each will link to 1,000 computers. Some will be as smart as we are, or we would be without them. This will largely automate our learning and adapting. They will be able to inventory our refrigerators and automate our orders and meal preparation. They will be able to schedule appliances, cars and us for convenient repairs and maintenance, at fast, easy, inexpensive and reliable locations. They also should, about then, help us conquer most diseases, while manufacturing and installing replacement body parts (The singularity is near).

Until then, this is only URGENT for web developers, programmers, those wanting inexpensive custom programs, consumers and investors. You have until Monday noon to make sure I ask Alex your Intuit Federated Application questions (this time). Of course, I will be available to you at any time for QuickBooks accounting software help.

Repairing Corrupted Data Files in QuickBooks, Speed Up QuickBooks

Repairing Corrupted Data Files in QuickBooks is a terrific AccountingWEB article by Joe Woodard. The process of Repairing Corrupted Data Files in QuickBooks is an essential key to being able to Speed Up QuickBooks. This Repairing Corrupted Data Files in QuickBooks article is especially concise, effectively illustrated and easily understood. It made me really regret having to miss Joe's 2009 QuickBooks Conference. I will soon watch his QuickBooks Conference simulcast samples and will surely be at his next QuickBooks Conference. Joe and his speakers should then be able to tell us much more on Repairing Corrupted Data Files in QuickBooks and how to Speed Up QuickBooks.

Joe has long been a nationally recognized top QuickBooks expert. I well remember him as an outstanding QuickBooks teacher and writer. These skills are especially evident in his new Repairing Corrupted Data Files in QuickBooks article.

I am not someone Joe paid. I am saying this as one who had a popular QuickBooks Errors - QuickBooks File Repair Procedures web page long before Intuit had anything like this. Intuit and AccountingWEB also copied my Speed Up QuickBooks web page, with attribution. These and related articles still give me the top 1-5 and 9-10 Google links for QuickBooks Errors and the top 1-4 and 6-8 links for Speed Up QuickBooks.

If Joe's new Repairing Corrupted Data Files in QuickBooks article excites even me, as a way to better Speed Up QuickBooks, you should not miss it.