Backups and data safety

The garage's books, the car histories and the customers' balances all live in one database. If the computer fails, is stolen, or is damaged by a power cut, a recent backup is the difference between a bad morning and a lost business.

What Zeyto does for you

Backup is on by default. You do not need to remember to switch it on, but you do need to check that it is working. A backup you have never looked at is a hope, not a plan.

The manager's routine

• Check weekly that a recent backup exists and that its date is today or yesterday.
• Keep a copy away from the shop computer: on an external drive or a second location. A backup on the same disk dies with the disk.
• Test a restore at least once, on a spare computer, before you need it.
• Take a manual backup before risky changes such as a software update, a large import or changing the company's tax settings.
• Never ask staff to delete the database folder to fix a problem.

Backups protect against loss, but they do not undo a mistake inside the books. A wrong invoice is corrected with a credit note or an amendment, not by restoring last week's backup, which would also erase a week of valid work.

A simple weekly checklist

1. Open the backup screen and read the date of the last backup.
2. Copy the latest backup to the external drive or second location.
3. Write the date and your initials on a sheet kept in the office.
4. Once a quarter, restore a copy on a spare computer and open a few invoices to see that they are there.

Name one person responsible, and one person who covers him on leave. A job shared by everyone is done by nobody.