Xero needs no introduction in the accounting and business world, it is one of the most popular and innovative cloud-based accounting platforms, loaded with useful features and technologies to help businesses manage their money, operations and staff.

Needless to say, this means your Xero account is loaded with large amounts of critically important data. Cyber security is a massive threat to all businesses, not just those operating in the cloud, so protection of this data is something all businesses must consider carefully.

How Xero protects your data

Fortunately, Xero has a number of key safeguarding features to keep the data protected and backed up:

• Daily backups across multiple secure data centres
• Real-time data replication to protect against failure or disaster
• Bank-grade encryption of all data in transit and at rest
• Strict user access controls

However: Xero does not provide a user-facing backup or restore feature. If something is accidentally deleted or corrupted, it may not be recoverable.

What Gravitate recommends

Xero’s own safeguarding systems are a great start, but we believe additional peace of mind can be gained through a few more proactive steps.

1. Export Data Regularly

On a monthly or quarterly basis, we recommend that you export all key financial data, this includes:

• General ledger
• Invoices and bills
• Bank transactions
• Journals and reports

If you are a Gravitate client, we will happily do this for you to ensure everything is done correctly (and to save you some time!)

2. Use Third-party Backup Tools

There are several reputable third-party backup tools and apps within the Xero ecosystem, offering reliable backup solutions. These include:

• Boxkite
• Redstor
• Control-C
• Rewind

These tools will create daily backups of your entire Xero file, including any attachments, and will also allow you to restore historical versions of the file.

3. Gravitate's Contingency Measures

In addition to the above, Gravitate also maintains important internal safeguards to protect all clients, these include:

• Scheduled report downloads for clients who request this as a service
• Advisory support in selecting backup tools
• Support restoring data to new systems if ever required

Our Bottom Line

While a system-wide failure of Xero is highly unlikely, yours and your clients’ financial data is too important to leave to chance. That is why we recommend treating backups like insurance; you hope never to have to use them, but you are glad they are there.

Do you need help setting up a data continuity plan or backup tool?

If you need assistance with anything mentioned in this blog, please contact us and we’ll be more than happy to help.

We can also help you with data back up and protection for other accounting platforms, including Sage, FreeAgent and Quickbooks.