It’s currently pouring rain here in Massachusetts, and with the lightning storms we’ve had the last few days, I think it’s a sign to remind folks about making backups.

First, the big one, Desktop Club Accounting:

1. To manually make a backup, go in to the File menu, and select Export.
2. From the window that comes up, click Browse, and pick a location for your backup file. Now, it’s your computer, and you can put the file anywhere you want, but I strongly suggest making the backup to a portable drive. If you don’t have one of these already, it’s a good time to get one. I found one a couple of weeks ago for a little over 9.00, with enough space to hold a few thousand backup files; unless you’re making a new backup every day, one of these drives could last you a long, long time.
3. If you want, you can also have the program remind you about making a backup each time it closes. Go into the Tools menu, and select Settings. From there, put a check mark in ‘Show backup warning on exit’; click OK, and every time you close Club Accounting, it’ll ask you to make a backup. As long as you have that extra drive plugged in, you only need to select it once; after that, the program will always try to go back to the last place you made a backup.

Next up, Toolkit:
Some of this I’ve written about in other notes, specifically in Support Ticket 7, 7.5 and a little bit in Support ticket 12, so this is going to be a little bit of a light touch on the topic. I would suggest taking a look at 7, and 7.5 in particular.

1. Open Toolkit and click on Options > Database Utilities.
2. Select the first option, to make a backup of your database
3. Select C:: -Fixed from the drop-down menu, and click OK.
4. From the list of places, select the drive that you want to make the backup to. If you are using a removable drive, and aren't sure which letter it is, unplug the drive for a few seconds, and then plug it back in. When unplugged, one of the listed drives should disappear after a few seconds, and then re-appear when the drive is plugged back in.
5. Click OK
6. Toolkit should report that the database was backed up. Click OK
7. You can now remove the drive or floppy disk from the computer.

Now the myiclub.com web site makes its own backups, so it’s not technically necessary to make a separate backup, but because of this, I think there are a fair number of clubs that don’t make use of it when it can be really useful to do so.

1. From the main accounting page, click the Utilities heading in the left hand column.
2. On the Utilities page, you have two options, Export, and Backup Manager. Export works very similar to the Export option in the desktop Club Accounting; you click a Browse button, and select a spot on your computer. Since this is online accounting though, I want to take a look at the Backup Manager.
3. The first time you go into the Backup Manager, it’s going to look sparse; there’s a Make Backup button, and not too much else. Go ahead and click the button if you haven’t already, and in a few seconds you’ll see the screen refresh with a line showing the name of the club, and the current date. To the right of this is a small Recover button. If you click this, the system will undo any changes you’ve made since that backup.
4. You can make as many backups here as you want, and each one will be kept separate, and will only be removed if you put a check mark in the box next to a listed backup, and then click the Delete button.

What I usually tell folks is to use this if they’re about to try a transaction they’ve never entered before, or if they’re going to be working through auditing some of the records. If you make a backup here, it’s a great safety net; if you get to a point where things just don’t look right, you can always return to that backup you made before you got started.


Last up for today is Stock Analyst

1. In Stock Analyst, go to Options menu, and select Backup Database.
2. As with the Club Accounting program, you can save the file anywhere you like, but I’m going to assume if you’ve read this far, that there’s a portable drive plugged into the computer by now, so first thing, select, Computer
3. From there, double-click on the portable drive. As with Toolkit, if you aren’t sure which drive it is, unplug the drive for a moment, and then plug it back in; the drive that disappears, and then re-appears will be the one you’re looking for.
4. Click the Save button.
5. Click OK when the backup is complete.

And that’s all for now. The rain has died down a bit here, but I hope you’re able to make use of these steps the next time you find yourself on a rainy day, not able to remember the last time you made a backup of your important information.