Spotlight: Backup Strategies

July 2022    Tags: Accounts Payable, General Ledger, PracticeMaster, Tabs3 Billing, Trust Accounting

When was the last time you backed up your Tabs3 Software data and tested the viability of your backup? If your firm was required to restore from a backup right now, how much data would be lost?

Regular backups are critical to the safety of your data. Tabs3 Software automatically prompts you to run a backup when a function cannot be easily reversed or when interruption of a process can cause errors in the data. When prompted to make a backup, review the date and time of the last backup shown on the prompt, and ask yourself how much data will need to be reentered if a restore is required. If you are not comfortable with the amount of work required after restoring, then you should back up your data before going any further. If you regularly find yourself skipping backups because it’s difficult to get every user to exit the software, consider the Platinum edition of Tabs3 Software. The HotBackup feature allows you to make backups while other users are still working in the software and Tabs3 Platinum Software can automatically recover from interruptions to many functions, including Update Statements.

Tabs3 Software provides the ability to back up and restore data from within the software. If you are using the non-Platinum edition of the software, you can keep up to three internal backups with a size limit of 2GB each. If you are using the Platinum edition of the software, backups are practically unlimited! You can keep up to 198 user-defined HotBackups, each limited in size only by the available hard drive space.

But is that enough? Backups made via the Tabs3 Software are considered temporary backups and only include your data files. These backups do not include executable files to run the programs, nor is every file in the Tabs3 Current Working Directory included. We recommend making regular backups of the entire Tabs3 Current Working Directory via a third-party backup program for purposes of recovering from a catastrophic failure, such as flood, theft, server hard drive failure, etc. If you already have a third-party backup in place, make sure that it is periodically tested to verify it is working correctly.

Now may be the perfect time to take a closer look at your current backup strategy and to verify the procedures you have in place. If you cannot take the time to review procedures now, add a reminder to your calendar to review them as soon as possible. Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security; backups that don’t restore correctly, or not having a backup, can cost you a great deal in both time and data loss.

For a list of resources on backing your data up and restoring, visit Knowledge Base Article R11524, “Backup/Restore Information Resources.”