Quick Start with a QuickBooks Desktop Expert

Hello Community! We’re back with another round of tips for managing your QuickBooks Desktop data.

This week we asked Daniel, one of our amazing Senior Service and Support Specialists, what tips he gives customers to have a successful experience when it comes to data management. So let's dive in to what he has to share!

Tip #1. Plan to Fail & Don’t Fail to Plan

Don’t think that data loss cannot happen to you. This could be caused by a virus/malware/ransomware, physical drive failure, or theft of the PC in a business break-in. Because of this, backups should be redundant in multiple routines. 

When setting up the PC that holds the actual data files it’s wise for the IT department to provision a PC with two hard drives. One for the operating system and installed products like your QuickBooks Accounting software, and a second drive just for the data files and all supporting documents that are user-created. Some will be tempted to save money by purchasing one large hard drive and partitioning it into a C and D drive. The problem here is if the one drive fails then BOTH partitions are lost. All the eggs in one basket—not good.

Intuit Data Protect is an online backup utility bundled with some licenses (non accountant) and copies files to an online portal. Use it if it’s available to you.

For more information on Intuit Data Protect, check out this FAQ article.

*Note to Remember: You backup your data to keep from having to retype a whole lot of stuff. If your file is low-traffic a weekly backup may be sufficient. However, if you are running a retail business like an auto parts store you may want to backup 2 times a day.

Best practice is to also make backups that leave with the owner off-site and restore it to a computer at home running a mirror of the business computer. What if there is a business break in or fire from a neighboring business and everything on-site is wiped out? The “spare tire” PC to the rescue. When the east coast was hit by Hurricane Sandy most people were without power for a week or two. The Internet was out for six weeks in some hard hit areas so a backup in the cloud was inconvenient. Local backup on a USB drive was King in that rare occasion .

Tip #2: The wonder of the Portable Company File

Back in the day (2004 and earlier) most QB desktop backups were small enough to be emailed if need be. In the early years of the millennium we started getting 21st century requests for product enhancements such as: “I want to link my QB to ZenCart” or “We have an idea for an app”—but our database was a proprietary database at that time. In 2005 we switched to an SQL database to make it more open for 3rd party apps to access. The after-effect of this was that desktop file sizes grew by about 3 fold.  A backup that used to be 10mb in size was now 30mb in size and would be too large for most email attachments back in the day. So, one person's fix was another person’s folly. 

The answer from engineers was the Portable Company File. This used a bigger compression ratio and shrunk the file down a bit further. An unforeseen windfall of this utility is that it can actually help data issues that Verify & Rebuild may not fix.

One day I had a contact who was getting an error making a standard backup. We ran the data verification and we had issues. When I looked at the QBWIN LOG File I thought I was being pranked. Nearly every error in our knowledge base was in this log. To the point I was thinking, “How is this file even running?” I tried 3 consecutive rebuilds, file doctor, etc and no go. It was a newly established policy that we couldn’t send a file to Data Services until we made & restored a portable and retested the failure point. Needless to say I was skeptical due to the number of errors listed but  I made & restored the portable and lo and behold all the errors were gone and the caller could make a regular backup.

Another thing the portable file fixes is DB File Fragmentation. The database can get fragmented over time by shutting QuickBooks down improperly or system crashes/disconnection of hosted files. If we hit CTRl-1 or the F2 key while in a file it will bring up a Product Information screen like this:

Notice that the DB file fragments are a low single digit? This is ideal.

The file being fragmented is like having a cluttered house. All your things are there, it just takes longer to find them. Imagine running a huge report like General Ledger for all dates or a large Audit Trail report and suddenly the software stops responding with an error and abruptly kicks you out—high DB fragments are likely the culprit. 

Simply go to 

1. Go to File
2. Select Create Copy
3. And choose Portable Company File
4. I usually save it in a Desktop Folder and once the portable is restored to that same folder, you can see if your problem is resolved. 
5. If so, copy the fixed restored portable to where the normal file is usually stored and delete the folder off the desktop so accounting is not put in there accidentally.

In addition to these great tips from Daniel, here are a few more resources to help you care for your QuickBooks Desktop data.

• Backup your QuickBooks Desktop company file
• Restore a backup company file
• Set up Intuit Data Protect

That’s it for this round of Quick Start with an Expert. Now that you’re more familiar with best practices for managing your QuickBooks Desktop data, you can take the necessary steps to protect your files. I hope you found today’s article helpful and as always, please feel free to reach out here in the community for any questions!