I know how unpleasant it is to think about the time and expense involved in replacing a crashed or stolen computer. Unfortunately, we regularly talk to customers who find themselves in these situations. We feel really bad when an inconvenience turns into a major payroll headache because they didn’t take a few minutes to set up an automatic backup.
To spare you that pain, this issue of Tips & Tricks will show you how to quickly schedule automatic backups using the utility built right into your time clock software. We’ll also talk about another great use for backups: moving your time clock to a new computer. Finally, I wanted to let you know that we posted a minor maintenance release for Virtual TimeClock ‘13.
Scheduled backups are super easy to set up. You can schedule how often you want automatic backups to occur and where you want to store the backup file. Just make sure you don’t store them on the same computer as your time clock. You can also set the time you want the backup to occur and how many old backup files you want to keep around. Backups are scheduled from the Server Manager if you’re running the Network Edition and from the Configure menu if you’re running Virtual TimeClock Pro.
We’ve found Dropbox to be a great solution for storing a copy of your time clock data in the ‘Cloud’ so even if your computer crashes your data will be safe. Sign up for your free account.
A common question we get asked is “How often should I back up?” The answer to that question varies from business to business and as someone told me recently, “It depends on how much data you want to recreate.” The most common backup schedule we see is to backup every day and keep the last 5 backup files. Since scheduled backups happen in the background, you’ll need to check the backup logs to verify that they were successful.
You can also perform a manual backup anytime you need to. This is helpful when you want to take a copy of your data offsite or need to send a copy to tech support for troubleshooting.
How Do I Check the Backup Logs?
Get in the habit of checking the success of your scheduled backups on a regular basis by choosing Program Logs from the Configure menu for the Pro Edition and from the Logs panel of the Server Manager.
How Do I Move My Time Clock?
If you need to move Virtual TimeClock to a different computer because of a computer crash or you just want the time clock in a more convenient location, then you’ll need a way of moving your database file from one computer to another (like a USB memory stick) and a copy of your license key.
​Make a backup of your time clock database.
Register Virtual TimeClock on the new computer.
Your Virtual TimeClock licenses will work on both a Windows PC and a Mac, so there’s no problem moving your time clock from one platform to another.
We posted a maintenance release for Virtual TimeClock '13 last week that fixes a number of minor issues related to the new report preview window, QuickBooks payroll export now properly saves to the selected export folder location, saving new leave awards once again work reliably for all users and categories, and clients that lose TimeClock Server connectivity no longer receive a spurious error. Check the Virtual TimeClock '13 release notes for a full list of fixes.