Backing up

Fortunately, many of the tools outlined above store your records and work securely on their servers. It is always useful, though to back up your records personally in order to avoid complete loss which could reset the clock on your business growth to Day 1.

Items to back-up are your TMs (these are prime assets), your client lists and details, your accounts and project records. The tools mentioned above let you export this data as individual files, to be saved to a location separate to your home and these services.

This ensures that if you were to lose your computer and, on the same terrible day, all of the above services stopped working, you’d be able to open these files from any computer, reimport the information and carry on working as before.

You can save your key data to a USB stick stored in a fireproof safe, or a webserver you can only access through shared authentication keys, but if neither of these are an option for you there is always your email inbox or a service such as Dropbox. Although more of a folder synchronising application than a dedicated backup tool, it is a quick way to store remote copies of key files. I recommend encrypting, or at least password protecting, your files before uploading them to any third-party services, despite the security features they offer. One rogue employee could do well from your list of contacts, for instance. The point is that there are secure third-party locations in which to keep your data safe in case of disaster, aside from a fireproof safe or USB stick.

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