How to back up your data in Reckon Accounts Hosted

Reckon Accounts Hosted keeps your data files in Amazon Web Services data centres in the Sydney region. Reckon does back up those servers, but only so it can recover from a disaster. It doesn't make individual backups of each customer's data file, and it warns that without backups of your own you could lose your financial records.

Your Hosted account has two drives. My Live, the Q: drive, holds the company file you work in, which has a .QBW extension. My Backup, the B: drive, is where backups go. A backup copy has a .QBB extension and a portable company file has .QBM, and the backup window offers both; the steps below make a backup copy.

Hosted verifies the file before it makes the backup, and you choose how thorough that check is. Reckon recommends the Complete verification option as a way to check that a backup will restore without corruption.

1. Log in to Reckon Accounts Hosted and open your company data file.
2. From the File menu, choose Save copy or Backup.
3. Select Backup copy and click Next.
4. Select Local backup and click Next.
5. When asked for a location, leave it set to the B: drive, which Hosted chooses by default.
6. Choose the verification type, such as Complete verification.
7. Click OK, then Finish. Hosted verifies the file and then creates the backup.
8. When it's done, click My Files on the toolbar and open the B folder.
9. Click the Last modified column header to sort the files by date, so the newest backup is easy to spot.
10. Click the .QBB file to download it to your computer. Repeat for any other backup or portable file you want a copy of.

A new backup file now sits in the B: drive of your Hosted account, and once downloaded, a second copy sits on your own computer. Reckon recommends making backups regularly and downloading each one, so a copy is kept on your own PC for safekeeping rather than only in Hosted.

As a further precaution, Reckon suggests saving the downloaded files to a cloud storage service as well as to your computer.

If Reckon Accounts freezes or stops responding while backing up, or you need another way to back up a large data file, Reckon has separate articles for both situations. If you can't see the file you want in My Files, check you've opened the right folder: company files are normally in Q, and backup and portable files in B. For anything else, Reckon points to the Reckon Accounts Hosted section of its Community forum or to logging a support ticket.