The even bigger question is what will they do when they find out? But first, let’s maybe cover why they might find out you haven’t done any backups.
Most customers of accountants and bookkeepers trust that their accountant has it covered and are well educated on the ins, outs, ups, and downs of cloud accounting systems. Sometimes that’s not the whole story, accountants and bookkeepers know how to use cloud accounting systems to ensure their customer’s financial data is up to date and accurate but as for the accounting platform, that’s another issue.
What you need to know about protecting your customers’ cloud accounting data.
- Your cloud accounting platform provider is not responsible for the information you enter into their system. You can read about their lack of liability, (multiple) in their Terms of Service.
- Your cloud accounting platform encourages you to make regular backups of the information you enter into their system. You can find the suggestions, (multiple) in their Terms of Service.
- Your cloud accounting platform provider occasionally has outages, system errors, and failures. The most popular services even maintain a service outage webpage, look here for more information; https://downdetector.com/status/quickbooks-intuit/ and https://status.xero.com/history
These three points should be sufficient to help you arrive at the place of “it’s not if it will happen, but when it will happen.” I won’t concern you with the multiple possibilities that could affect your customers’ data, but if you have experienced no problems up till now, that’s GREAT!!!
Let’s get back to the original question. Does your customer know?
Typically when a system failure happens, the customer doesn’t become aware that a backup will help resolve it, and they most likely won’t blame you for the problem. They are normally prone to accepting that computer problems happen from time to time and that if they can be fixed, “no problem.” Just how quickly can it be fixed?
For speeds of how fast a backup can be restored, check out our previous article here: https://wowzerbackupandrestore.com/2023/01/03/why-just-having-a-backup-of-your-cloud-accounting-data-is-not-enough/
And finally, the ultimate question, “will my customer fire me if they find out I’m not backing up their cloud data?” Chances are no, customers are hesitant to fire a good accountant because continuity is important to long-term success. But…it does make you vulnerable if a second problem happens or someone else offers a service level that includes backup and restore capabilities. Ultimately trust has been broken, if only on a subconscious level, it’s still broken.
Don’t be the last accountant or bookkeeper to have backup and restore as part of your app stack. I expect that someday regulators will be cracking down on those who don’t have cloud data backed up and stored in a safe environment. Get started today!
