Sage Timberline Office News & Tips
Technical Tips and Tricks: Backups to Keep Your Data Safe

I often hear stories about companies and employees who lose lots of data when disk drives fail. What is the best way for me to protect my Sage Timberline Office data in case I ever need to restore it?

What are the recommended backup procedures for my Sage Timberline Office data?
This article is available in Sage's online Knowledgebase by searching for KB30819.
By following the backup recommendations below, you will be prepared to restore your Sage Timberline Office data or application folder. These recommendations are a guideline, and you may decide to back up more or less often depending on how much data you enter each day. For more information on backing up your files, refer to the Sage's TS-Main help topic, "About backing up your files. "

• Daily
  We recommend that you back up your data every day. Back up all files in your data folders each time you perform a backup. Use removable media such as tape, diskette, or CD to make your daily backups, and do not overwrite the previous daily backup. Date these backups and delete them after you have a good permanent month-end or quarter-end backup.

• Safety
  Create a safety data backup every time you perform a major procedure that affects your files such as posting, moving files, or printing checks and invoices. You can make safety backups prior to performing major tasks to personal hard drives or to the network drive.

• Month-end
  Make month-end backups just prior to closing the month using a permanent backup such as a removable media. At month-end, back up your Timberline Office application folder because some of the subfolders contain customization like payroll formulas, security, and custom reports. (Your application folder is where your Sage Timberline Office products were installed on a network server or host computer.)

• Quarter-end
  Make a quarter-end backup just prior to closing the last month of the quarter using a permanent backup such as a removable media.

• Year-end
  Prior to closing the last month of the year, make a permanent year-end backup using a removable media.
  

You may want to store permanent data backups or copies of the data backups off site or at a secure location.

File Tools allows you to back up all or part of your data files. For more information, see KB226403 in Sage's online Knowledgebase.

Regardless of the backup program you use to back up your files, you should occasionally check the integrity of the data being backed up. If you cannot access the data from your backup, or if your system cannot read the data, then the backup is not usable.

Bonus Tip
Did you know that you have a Sage Timberline Office resource available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? You do not need to pick up the phone or connect to the Internet. Sage's online Help system contains all the same information you would find in a software manual.

To access Help in any Sage Timberline Office application, click Help in the menu or on any window. You can search the Help system for information by entering terms in the search box or in the index. You can also browse through the table of contents. When you find the topic that answers your question, you can read it or print it for reference.

Beginning in the 9.5 release, each topic also contains a feedback system for your remarks. If you have a comment on a Help topic, please send it in! The Sage Information Design department reads every comment and uses your feedback to continually improve their topics.