Business Backup
- Accountants

The data backup requirements for Accountants vary considerably from that of other industries.
Some of the starkest differences may be listed as follows.

Considerable confidential third party information.
In addition to their own information, an accountants practice will carry information of a most critical and confidential nature for practically all clients. The practice has a responsibility to keep this data safe from the public domain and for the client. In addition, much of the data will involve work in progress and the ability to retain recent copies has a direct impact on work advancement, completion and earnings.

Low overhead data types.
Despite the importance of the information and number of clients for whom information is held, accountants generally hold low storage overhead data when compared to other sectors. The easiest way to understand this is to compare from a storage overhead point of view, an accountants store for a client versus, say a sign writer or video producers storage requirement for a client. Accounting data, weather in Sage, Quick books, TAS or even Excel generally requires far less storage than a short video or multiple rewrites for print and design. This low storage requirement to extreme importance of data ratio is the reason online backup is ideal for accountancy data retention.

Varying data retention requirements.
For most business types, it is relatively painless to establish a workable and affordable data retention period. For accountants however, this is generally not the case. For some clients, there may be short retention requirement such as if the work in progress period is short and the final result is provided to the client and they then resume responsibility. For most, there will be continual work in progress and a requirement to retain at least as far back as last returns with the client taking responsibility for previous data. There will likely be other hopefully well paying clients for whom you take care of long term data retention. The issue here is not just your perception or understanding but the requirement of joint client and accountant understanding and agreement on this. Even if you manage this well from an agreement point of view, you still need a system which will allow varying and changing retention on an individual backup set level. Backupanytime provide the facility to run multiple schedules with differing and changeable retention periods. We also have the largest default retention period in the market at 365 days and allow unlimited retention. Some clients run retention periods of seven years or more with backupanytime.
In addition to running online backup yourself, it would be wise to recommend clients to use the same service and forward completed work to them on a regular basis, therefore providing ownership and responsibility to your clients. If you have not addressed the issue of client data responsibility, please contact backupanytime today. We have a standard template letter addressing this issue which practices have amended and sent to clients therefore informing clients of the need to backup their data before sending to their accountant and immediately on receipt of completed or stage work.

Data availability.
Should any business have a data outage, they will want to restore promptly. There are however certain times of the year when an accountant simply can not suffer prolonged data outage never mind loss without significant danger to the business. A major concern with online backup is the dependence on connectivity to restore. If you have one problem (whatever it is that caused the data outage) it is more than conceivable that you could have other issues including a broadband outage.

Backupanytime offers the facility to retain an encrypted and compressed local store in addition to your online data. This allows fast local restore in a connection outage situation. Also, we can courier encrypted data directly to a client. The encryption offers safe travel and the delivery provides local availability. Data loss protection is far from being the only consideration when acquiring a data backup system. “Don't worry, we have your data and can start the three day transfer period as soon as you get your broadband back” offers cold comfort if you are in the middle of a returns period with idle staff and anxious clients.

Support
Not all clients will sing from the same hymn book. Given the wide variety of software packs you need to work with, you may need to amend your backup sets at regular intervals to allow for individual software upgrades and local network data location changes. It is essential that you can avail of excellent support in this area. Your online backup providers should involve themselves even to the point of contacting software vendors such as Intuit, Sage, TAS and others in order to establish new data type inclusion. This will add to your providers knowledge base and assist with other same industry installations. Any disinclination to do this (there may be a free data check annually and moderate charge for additional requested instances) is more than a red flag.

Security and confidentiality
Our first listed difference between the backup requirements of accountants and most other professionals was “Considerable confidential third party information”. The consequence of this is the requirement for absolute security and confidentiality. The requirement is the same for all companies regardless of industry or size. Backupanytime excel in this area. Our products and services exceed the competition in every crucial area. Non more so however than with regard to security and confidentiality. So, what is the difference? There are four distinct differences between the security and confidentiality we offer as opposed to the vast majority of other providers. We have not yet (time of print Dec 07) identified one other provider worldwide offering all four!

Encryption type
There are numerous encryption types available. Most provider put all there eggs in one basket and make a decision on encryption type for their clients based commonly on budget. We at backupanytime offer all of the prime industry encryption types. Our default encryption is to bank level. If you use banking online you use this encryption type already. In addition, if there is a worldwide scare pertaining to a particular encryption type becoming “crackable”, our system allows the encryption type to be changed at client end with or without our involvement.

Encryption Level
In addition to the type of encryption, you can amend the encryption level at client level. Increased encryption increases the backup time window. With our software you can avail of the highest possible encryption level for your network, given data type, quantity and maximum allowed backup window.

Encryption source
This is a very important distinction between our system and most worldwide. With most systems, the provider issues the encryption details to the client. This very serious weakness means in effect that the client could read your data. No matter your level of trust with your own data, there are serious ethical questions surrounding your right to decide to trust with your client data.
With our system, the encryption code is generated at the client and in addition, the client can change this with or without reference to us. This single difference (amongst many) is a major contributing factor to our increasing client base.

Security and confidentiality sign off.
With most software installations (including ours) the user is required to accept terms on installation. When considered in the cold light of day, it seem absurd that the party handing over control of a critical area of their business be the only party required to agree to something. As part of our contract we manually sign off our confidentiality agreement and on the validity of the above claims pertaining to the security of our system.

Conclusion
Data security, confidentiality, backup, availability and management are of great importance in business. Your business is in a high data dependence and risk category. Regardless of your on site backup policy and procedures it is near inevitable that you will move to online backup at some point in time. Contact backupanytime to avail of premium online backup service from people who demonstrate respect for your backup needs by providing the following.

• Largest default retention period in the industry.
• Bank level encryption.
• Multiple backup set functionality.
• Fully configurable variables for retention, encryption and compression.
• Client side generated encryption with client side encryption control.
• Manual sign off of confidentiality.
• Fully automated reporting.
• Local restore point.
• Encrypted data courier service.
• Backup and restore specific support.

Data outages can not be completely avoided. Data management and availability are the key protecting your digital world.

Backupanytime.com, the worlds hardest working data management people.