AccountEdge Backups: Best Practice & Considerations

Article ID: 2027014 Last Updated: 27 July 2027

Protect Your Business

Your accounting software is central to how your business runs, records data, and stays compliant, so losing that data can be genuinely disastrous.

Data loss can strike in many ways: hardware failure, software glitches, human error, theft, cyber threats, or natural disasters. Without a reliable backup routine, the fallout can mean financial disruption, legal complications, reputational damage, and in the worst cases, business closure.

Think of backups as insurance for your business. The cost of a proactive backup routine is small compared to the cost of recreating lost records, resolving legal issues, and rebuilding customer trust.

Why Regular Backups Matter

AccountEdge is installed locally, so your company files (.myo>) and backups (.zip) live on your own computers, networks, or drives.

Your AccountEdge data remains entirely under your ownership and control. Ledger One Limited does not own, control, or store this data.

That means backing up is an important part of your use of AccountEdge and should form part of your routines, not a one-off task.

Back up at the end of every working day or session. This limits how much data you could lose, allows fast recovery, and keeps a complete historical record for audits, compliance, and any future access needs.

Check Your Backup Settings

In AccountEdge, go to Setup > Preferences > Security and make sure these are ticked:

Prompt for Data Backup When Closing
Check Company File for Errors Before the Backup Process
Prompt for Data Verification When Opening

With these enabled, you're never more than one session away from a fully verified backup. If you use more than one company file, check these settings in each file.

Diversify Your Backup Locations

Relying on a single local backup leaves you exposed to hardware failure, theft, or damage. A layered approach is much safer:

External hard disks: Inexpensive (from around £50) and quick to restore from.
Automated tools: Utilities such as Apple's free Time Machine, for backups that happen without you thinking about it.
Cloud storage: Saving your backups to services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, or OneDrive add an off-site layer, protecting you against physical loss and letting you access backups from anywhere. Most offer useful free storage to start with.

Best practice: Combine local and cloud backups. If cloud storage isn't an option, keep external drives off-site, away from your premises, for similar protection.

Backups and Your Service Agreement

Good backups don't just guard against technical failure, they also matter if you ever choose not to renew your Ledger One service agreement. Your .myo company files and backed up .zip files can only be opened while a full or temporary Ledger One Service Agreement is active, but any reports or data you've exported stay in your possession and remain accessible independently at any time.

Keeping regular backups, reports and exports means that you'll always have your accounting records to hand. Accounting and tax records often need to be retained for five years or more, so check with your accountant or HMRC on what applies to you.

See End of AccountEdge Service Agreement for full guidance on exporting and retaining your data at the end of your Service Agreement.

Do you know your backup system?

It's worth pausing to check you could actually recover if something went wrong. Ask yourself:

Who owns responsibility for your accounting data, and for backing it up?

How does your backup system work, and how often does it run?

Where are backups stored, and who knows how to restore from them?

How many company files do you run, and are they all backed up?

If your AccountEdge computer failed right now, how would you recover?

If your office suffered a fire, flood, or theft, could you recover your data?

How long would recovery take, and what would that cost you in time, compliance risk (payroll, VAT, accounts), and customer trust?

If your service agreement were to lapse, would your current backups and exports give you everything you need to access your historical records?

If you're unsure of any of these answers, speak to your manager, IT administrator, or the Ledger One support team.

Safeguard your business today by ensuring you have a robust backup strategy.