Your accounts are the one thing you cannot type again
Stock can be counted and bills can be printed again from the party's copy. Years of vouchers, ledgers and GST returns cannot. Yet in most offices the whole history sits in one folder on one PC, and the "backup" is a pen drive someone remembers to use now and then.
This guide covers what to back up, the options you already have, and the checks that tell you a backup will work on the day you need it. It is written for TallyPrime, but the same steps apply to Busy, Marg and most other accounting software.
Step 1: find where your data actually lives
Before you back anything up, find the data folder. In TallyPrime the company list shows where each company's data is kept. On many PCs it is a folder such as C:\Users\Public\TallyPrime\data, but installers and dealers often move it to another drive, so check rather than guess.
- Back up the whole data folder, not one company. Each company is a numbered folder inside it, and a client with several companies, or a new financial year split off, will have more than one.
- Note any other locations. If you have run Tally on more than one PC, or on a server with clients connecting to it, the data may sit on the server, not the PC you use.
- Include the rest of the office. The same PC usually holds GST working files, Excel sheets, scanned bills and letters. A backup that saves Tally and loses those still leaves a hole.
Step 2: know what the built-in backup does
TallyPrime has its own backup and restore, which writes a compressed copy of a company to a folder you choose. Recent releases can also run backups on a schedule and send them to TallyDrive, Tally's own cloud storage, which needs an active TSS subscription. Tally's own page on automatic backup explains the current options and limits.
If you only need Tally data copied, and your TSS is active, that is a sensible place to start. Where offices get caught out is everything around it:
- Other software and files are not included. A built-in Tally backup covers Tally. Your other folders, and any database your billing or ERP software uses, need their own backup.
- A copy on the same PC is not a backup. If the disk fails, or ransomware locks the PC, the backup folder on that disk goes with it.
- A pen drive left plugged in is not safe either. Ransomware encrypts every drive it can reach, including the USB disk beside the PC.
- Nobody checks the copy. A backup that was never opened is a hope, not a backup.
Step 3: the mistakes that lose data
We see the same few problems again and again when a business asks for help after a crash:
- The last good copy is months old. Someone stopped doing the weekly backup and nobody noticed.
- The backup only had last night's copy. A mistake made two weeks ago, or a file that was already damaged, was copied over the good one every night since.
- The copy was taken while Tally was writing. A file copied in the middle of a save can be half old, half new.
- The backup and the PC were in the same place. A theft, fire or water leak took both.
Step 4: what a good Tally backup looks like
Whatever tool you use, check it against this list:
- It runs by itself every day, after office hours, without anyone remembering.
- It keeps earlier copies, so you can go back to last week or last month, not just last night.
- It is stored away from the office, so one bad event cannot take the PC and the backup together.
- It cannot be changed from the office PC, so ransomware on your network cannot reach the copies.
- It tells you every day whether it worked, and tells you loudly when it did not.
- It has been restored at least once, into a separate folder, and the company opened in Tally.
The last point is the one most backups fail. Do a test restore today: bring the latest copy back into a new folder, point Tally at it, open the company and check the last voucher date. If that works, you have a backup.
A note on open files
Tally keeps its files open while it runs. A plain file copy of an open company can fail or give a damaged copy. Two ways round it: close Tally before the backup runs, or use a backup tool that copies from a Windows snapshot (VSS), which reads the files as they were at one moment, the same state Tally itself would find after a power cut. Closing Tally at night and running the backup in the evening gives you the cleanest copy of all.
How JS1 Vault handles this
JS1 Vault is the backup service we built for exactly this job. It backs up your Tally, Busy or Marg data folder along with your other folders and files, and SQL Server databases, every evening:
- Locked files are read from a Windows snapshot, so the copy is taken even if someone left Tally open.
- Only the files that changed are sent, and earlier versions are kept.
- Copies are encrypted on your PC, kept in India, and cannot be changed or deleted from your PC.
- Every copy is checked, and an evening email tells you everything is safe, or tells you and us at once if something went wrong.
If your accounts also sit in a SQL Server database, read our guide to automatic backup for SQL Server Express. And if you are wondering how long you must keep all of this, see how long to keep GST, income-tax and company records.
See how JS1 Vault works and start a free trial.
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