Recommended backup procedures By following these backup recommendations, you are prepared to restore your Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate (Sage 300) data or application folders. These recommendations are a guideline and you may decide to back up more or less, depending on how much data you enter each day.
For more information on backing up your files, refer to the TS-Main or Sage Desktop help topic, "About backing up your files."

NOTE: In addition to backing up data files, it is imperative that you backup the application data files found in C:\ProgramData\Sage on your server.

Daily:

We recommend that you back up your data every day. We also recommend that you back up all files in your data folders each time you perform a backup. Use some type of removable media such as tape, diskette, or CD to make your daily backups and do not over write the previous daily backup. Date these backups and delete them after you have a good permanent month-end or quarter-end backup.

Safety:

You should also do a safety data backup every time you perform a major procedure that affects your files such as posting, moving files, or printing checks and invoices. You can make safety backups prior to performing major tasks to personal hard drives or to the network drive.

Month-end:

Make month-end backups just prior to closing the month and use a permanent backup such as a removable media. At month-end, we also recommend you back up your Timberline Office application folder because some of the sub-folders contain customization. For example, payroll formulas, security, and custom reports. (Your application folder is where your Timberline products were installed on a network server or host computer.)

Quarter-end:

Make a quarter-end backup just prior to closing the last month of the quarter and use a permanent backup, such as a removable media.

Year-end:

Prior to closing the last month of the year, make a year-end backup that is permanent to a removable media.

Notes:

• You may want to store permanent data backups or copies of the data backups off site in a secure location.
• You may use a third party backup solution to backup your files. The third party backup solution must be able to restore the entire data folder and retain the existing folder structure.
• Your IT professional should already understand there are three types of backup methods: Full, Incremental and Differential. Only the Full backup method is supported. Incremental and Differential backup methods are not supported:
  • Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate does not update some of the file attributes that incremental and differential backups rely on.
  • Sage has observed customers experience significant data loss using incremental and differential backup systems.
• File Tools allows you to back up all or part of your data files. For more information, see How do I use File Tools to back up data files?
• The System Administrator tool can be used to back up and restore your data in versions 17.1 and later. For instructions, please see How do I use the System Administrator to backup and restore data in versions 17.1 and later?
• Regardless of the backup program you are using to backup your files you should occasionally check the integrity of the data being backed up. If you cannot access the data from your backup, or if your system cannot read the data, then the backup will not be usable.
• You should also consider restoring your backups when you upgrade so that you can upgrade the backup data and then back them up again and continue to store as before. If you do not keep your backup data current, you may get to a point that your current software will not be able to view/upgrade it - see Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate and Sage Estimating (Pervasive) Upgrade Paths
• Protecting yourself from virus or ransomware infections include the following considerations:
  • Virus or ransomware infections have the potential to encrypt your data, and also encrypt any attached hard drives or network storage devices used for backups.
  • If you use a cloud backup that does not have the ability to roll back to a previous period in time. When the data is encrypted, there is the potential to have the encrypted data overwrite data backed up on the cloud.
  • Paying the ransom to decrypt your files will typically not work. Customers who do pay the ransom, find that the decryption process damages the internal structure of the file rendering the files unusable.