WHY BACKUP TIMESLIPS?
- Protection if the server or computer hard drive fails
- Tool to recover from database corruption not immediately detected
- Rolling backups to be able to retrieve a snapshot as of a certain date
- Reprint old bill images that have been overwritten over the years
Based on these 4 reasons, a single “last time used” backup of Timeslips is not sufficient. Therefore, TSR Consulting Services has developed a recommended backup routine to assist in all of the above situations. It consists of a daily, monthly and yearly backup. Here is the pattern:
EVERY DAY: Back up your database and name the file with the 2-digit date. This will provide a month’s backups if you were to overwrite the prior month’s date. Example: On the 29th of each month, back up to 29.bku. You will have no more than 31 daily backups spanning different months.
EVERY MONTH: At the end of the month, create a backup and name it with the month_year.bku. On March 31, 2012 your backup will be named 03_2012.bku. These backups will not be overwritten.
EVERY YEAR: At the end of the year, create a backup and name it year.bku (2012.bku). The yearly backup will probably have the entire year’s bill images for “reprint bills” purpose.
This routine will provide you with a variety of backups but will not fill up your hard drive with bku files.
WHERE TO BACK UP YOUR DATA:
It is recommended that your backups reside on a drive other than where your database is located. If your server is backed up regularly AND YOU ARE SURE THE BACKUPS WORK, backing up to a server drive is acceptable. For a server with an unreliable backup, save the files to an external hard drive or to another computer’s hard drive. Click here to link to the Sage City blog describing backup options.
REPRINT BILLS – ANOTHER FORM OF INSURANCE
In addition to backups, remember to reprint bills on a regular basis to a PDF file. Insurance to protect against losing the bill image you need to reproduce months or years later. Refer to the article on reprinting bills (click here).