QuickBooks Online Advanced Backup Omits Bank Feeds and Recurring Transactions
QuickBooks Online Advanced's backup app leaves out bank feeds, recurring transactions, and custom reports; here is what it covers and what to do.
A quiet gap is catching QuickBooks Online Advanced subscribers who rely on the edition’s backup app. The tool, Online Backup and Restore, saves a wide slice of company data but leaves a specific set of items out entirely. The trouble usually surfaces after a restore, when the missing pieces have to be rebuilt by hand.
What does the backup app actually copy?
On the transaction side, coverage is broad. Invoices, estimates, sales, receipts, payments, and deposits are all captured. So are bills and bill payments, credit notes, vendor credits, journal entries, purchase orders, expense receipts, time worked, and transfers between accounts.
Lists copy as well. The backup includes the chart of accounts, budgets, currencies, customers, cost centers, departments, employees, items, payment methods, tax agencies, tax codes and rates, and payment terms. Vendors are included, though their tax fields are not. Attachments, company information, credits, exchange rates, and preferences round out the set. Inventory reductions and adjustments are captured indirectly, as journal entries.
Once you switch the app on, the first backup runs on its own and the tool then watches for changes. There is no schedule for you to manage.
Data that never makes it into the backup
The exclusions are where users get caught. The app does not back up any of the following:
- Price rules
- Pending credits and charges, though the invoices tied to them are saved
- Recurring transaction templates
- Bank feeds, including their links to matched transactions and any banking rules
- Reconciliation reports
- Billable expenses tracked by account
- Billable expenses tracked by item with a gross markup
- Custom reports
- Custom form templates
- Audit log entries
Two further limits sit alongside these. Copies archived to a personal cloud drive, such as Google Drive, cannot currently be restored through the app. QuickBooks Online Accountant does not support the backup app at all, so accounting firms need to plan around it.
Restores bring some data back changed
A restore has its own exceptions. Budgets do not come back, and the accepted advice is to save them as CSV files outside the app before you depend on one. Inventory returns without its history or its past adjustments. Tax rates that use expense accounts are placed into liability accounts instead, which shifts where balances land. Reconciled transactions also lose their reconciled status, so accounts must be reconciled again afterward.
These exceptions are easy to miss until a restore is already under way. That is why the surprises tend to arrive late.
Covering the gaps yourself
The realistic approach is to treat the app as partial protection rather than a full copy of your books. For a manual safety net, export your data to Excel. That route is the practical option wherever the backup app is unavailable.
A few habits close most of the remaining gaps. Save budgets as CSV files on a regular basis. Keep a written list of recurring templates so they can be rebuilt quickly. Note which custom reports and form templates exist, since those must be recreated by hand. After any restore, reconnect bank feeds, review your banking rules, and work back through reconciliation.
One adjacent feature is worth separating from all this. If your goal is to start a new company using existing data, the product offers a company copy for that purpose. It is a different mechanism from backup and restore, and confusing the two leads to expectations the app cannot meet.
Is the backup still worth switching on?
Used with open eyes, yes. The app gives you a way to undo unwanted changes to vendors, customers, settings, and other covered data without starting over. What it does not give you is a mirror of everything.
The sensible view is that it protects the transaction core of your books while leaving the connective tissue in your hands. Feeds, templates, rules, and custom reports are your responsibility. Plan for that split, and the restore day holds far fewer surprises.