I’m a little surprised with myself that I haven’t written anything about this before, but I was reminded today about the importance of making a backup that isn’t just to a folder on your desktop.

I’ve done a piece before (Support Ticket 14) on some standard steps for making backups with Club Accounting, Toolkit, and the online accounting.

As Russell Malley noted at the time, it’s also a good idea to have a backup that doesn’t sit just on your computer. He suggested to email yourself a copy of the file. While this is an excellent idea, the trouble (as with most exercise programs) is in keeping to your schedule.

With that in mind, I’d like to suggest a piece of software I’ve recently started using on my computers, which is Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com/).

It’s a free service (up to 2 GB of storage) that allows you to make a backup both into their online servers, and also to other copies of the software. One of the nice touches about this is that the company has written editions of the software not only for Mac and Windows, but also for iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, and most of the phones using Google’s Android service.

Aside from having the software available on a wide range of computers and devices, the thing I’m finding most handy about this is how it appears, and is used on the computer. When you install the software, it appears as a folder on your computer. Since Windows recognizes it as a folder, so does Club Accounting, and so does Toolkit. This means you can tell either one to make a backup to your Dropbox folder. The magic part of the software runs in the background; so as long as you have an internet connection, anything you put in the Dropbox folder on your computer will get copied over to their server, and from there on to your other computer, phone, ipod, etc.

For good measure, here is a link to the Security section of their web site:

https://www.dropbox.com/privacy#security