Backups for business software: why, how often and how to know they actually work

Backups of your business software should run as often as your data changes, be stored away from the software itself and, above all, be tested. A backup nobody has ever restored is a promise, not a backup.

When a business moves from spreadsheets to its own software, its whole day-to-day ends up inside: appointments, sales, the cash register, customers, inventory. That's what makes it so useful, and also what makes losing it so painful. I won't get into how backups work under the hood. I'll tell you what to ask for and how to tell it's been handled properly.

A five-minute exercise

Picture this: tomorrow you open up and the software is empty. Not broken. Empty. What did you lose?

Next week's appointments, and with them the phone numbers of the people who booked. This month's sales and what was in the register. Your customers' open accounts, which nobody wrote down anywhere else. Each customer's history, the thing that let anyone on your team serve them well.

Some of that can be rebuilt with patience. Some of it is gone for good. That exercise is the best way to see why backups matter, and it also answers the next question.

What you'd lose, and what it takes to get it back

How often? As often as you're willing to re-enter

The useful question isn't “how often do backups run?” It's “how much work am I willing to lose?” If the latest backup is from last night and everything disappears today, you lose today. If it's from last week, you lose a week.

A business entering sales and appointments all day needs very frequent backups. One that updates its catalog once a month can space them out. What matters is that you choose the schedule knowing what it means, rather than living with whatever the default was. And keep several backups, not just the latest, because sometimes a mistake is only noticed days later.

Where backups should live

No technical knowledge needed. These are three rules you can insist on:

• Away from the software. If the backup sits in the same place as the system, whatever breaks one can break the other.
• More than one. A recent backup plus some older ones, so you can go back to a point before the mistake.
• One within your reach. On top of full backups, the software should let you download your key data to a spreadsheet you keep yourself.

How to know they actually work

This is the part almost nobody checks. “Backups are running” tells you nothing. What matters is whether they can be restored. Some backups fail silently for months and nobody notices until the day they're needed.

Ask for two things. First, the date of the latest backup, any time you ask. Second, and more important, a restore test: whoever maintains your software restores a backup somewhere separate and shows you your data is there, complete. It doesn't need to happen often, but it should happen now and then, and always after a big change to the software.

Questions to send today

If you already have business software, send these to whoever maintains it: How often do backups run? Where are they stored? How many are kept? When was a restore last tested? Can I download my data to a spreadsheet?

If the answers are clear, you're in good shape. If any of them is “not sure” or “it's automatic,” keep asking. These questions are part of a longer list in website security basics for small business.

How I handle it in the software I build

When I build custom software, backups are agreed with the owner from day one: how often, how many are kept and what they can download themselves. It goes in writing as part of maintenance, the same as with 3D configurators, which I covered in maintaining a 3D configurator.

If you want to see what custom business software looks like in practice, start with custom business management software.

Frequently asked questions