
Don’t leave yourself guessing about old financial records. Back up now. Photo by Becky McCray.
Backing up your accounting data used to mean printing off reams of paper reports stuffed into boxes, and then you had to find a place to keep all that. Today, backing up your accounting data means generating a few PDFs and keeping extra copies electronically.
1. Save PDF versions of year-end accounting reports
Accounting systems change. In over 20 years with computers, I can’t even remember how many different accounting systems I’ve used. There’s no assurance you’ll be able to read your accounting data next year. Today it’s easy to create PDF that will be readable even after you change software systems. Here are the reports to save:
- Profit and Loss, Jan 1 – Dec 31
- Balance Sheet, dated Dec 31
- Detail of every transaction, Jan 1 – Dec 31
- Payroll tax details for each employee, Jan 1 – Dec 31
Make sure you backup these important reports into more than one location.
2. Download online banking statements
Think about all the banking-related services you use online: PayPal, online banking, Square, Dwolla, and others. These are key financial records that you don’t want to lose, and most of them limit how long you can download detail. For my local bank, I have access to one year of statements. PayPal recommends downloading your history each and every month. So now is the time to download PDF copies of all your banking transactions.
3. Backup your cloud
Quick! How many different cloud services are you using? Google Docs/Drive, Evernote, iCloud, DropBox, and all the others are wonderful, until they don’t work. Take time right now to export and save a copy of all important documents in your cloud services. You can back them up to another cloud service, or to a local hard drive. With portable hard drives under $100 and online backup systems under $100 per year, it’s a good investment in your business.
New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Get our updates.
- 3 Major factors in rural remote work: incentives, flexible workspaces, and a sense of community - June 6, 2022
- How to recruit new residents, remote workers, or remote entrepreneurs - June 2, 2022
- How cooperatives improve small town economies - May 8, 2022
- Metaverse business idea: virtual world tour guide - April 15, 2022
- Make extra money from extra workspace: co-working and 3rd workplaces in small towns - March 28, 2022
- Trade show booth design trend: hand drawn visuals - March 21, 2022
- New business sign design? Don’t use cursive script - February 14, 2022
- Way more people prefer rural than urban, new Pew Research study finds - February 1, 2022
- Top 5 Rural and small town trends 2022 - January 3, 2022
- How to start a real small small business - December 17, 2021