The answer to this question should be dependent on how you answer these questions.

Would it be acceptable if you lost all the changes you made in RetailEdge yesterday? #

If it is not acceptable, you should be backing up daily. If it is acceptable then you should consider weekly or monthly backups.    We also have Cloud Services that will backup your data every 2-5 minutes.

Am I about to make a large change to my RetailEdge Data? #

If you get a RetailEdge message telling you that you should perform a backup or a message that asks “Do you want to continue?, Are you REALLY sure…?, This is your THIRD and LAST warning” you should consider making a backup. Before a data merge, import, inventory zeroing, or data purge are all good times to do backups.

Will I need to see this snapshot of my data in the future? #

A pretty typical snapshot would be at the end of the year so you could go back to your inventory levels for tax purposes. If you think you are going to want to go back and see how things were at a particular time, do a backup.

How Long Should You Keep A Backup #

You might want to keep your archival backups indefinitely. You might want keep daily or weekly backups for 6 months to a year. After six months, you can delete your daily backups and just keep weekly or monthly backups.

How To Backup All Your RetailEdge Data #

Creating a RetailEdge backup is easy. Here is the Help Link that tells you how to do it. RetailEdge will automatically prompt you to do a backup after you close for the night so you won’t forget.

Automating You Backups #

There are many companies that perform automated backups (e.g., Carbonite, etc.) affordably. In addition, with the latest versions of Windows you can setup File History and automatically backup your RetailEdge data every day to an external drive (NAS) or computer.  RetailEdge Island will give you real time backup of your data on the Island computer every couple of minutes.   Just be careful and make sure the backup process is working. Don’t find out months later your nightly backups have not been occurring (a real event).