Start a Bookkeeping Business

If there is one lesson that I have learned well as a freelance bookkeeper, it is this…if you don’t backup your accounting data, you might as well hang up your shingle.

I’ve always been one to do weekly backups and this practice has rewarded me time and time again. I’ve found that hard drives and motherboards are notorious for frying out, even when a computer is fairly new.

I’ve even had several hard drive failures on the same computer. I’ve always had backups of my essential accounting and administration files so this has never resulted in a major problem. The computer techiess were always able to restore all of my data so the only thing I lost was the down time in having my computer in the shop.

But during my last computer crash, I wasn’t so lucky. The only data the techs were able to retrieve was completely useless stuff that I didn’t really care about or need. Of course I did have my latest weekly accounting data backup so all I had to do was re-post everything I’d done up until the time of the computer crash.

But unfortunately I’d also lost other files and computer software that I’d bought online and hadn’t backed up. These files, that at the time I didn’t consider important when I was backing up, come back to haunt me on a daily basis as I try to get my work done.

Then, when I consider the software that I paid money for online but never bothered to copy onto a CD, I have to give my head a shake and ask myself “what was I thinking?”

So, lesson learned. I now backup my entire hard drive onto an online backup service without even having to think about it. I found an online backup service and it’s been great because it automatically backs up my entire hard drive for me whenever I make any changes to any files.

So, as a bookkeeper, can you imagine what would happen if you didn’t backup your clients’ accounting files? Yup, hang up your shingle, unplug your calculator and kiss your bookkeeping business goodbye.

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