You work hard to make sure your QuickBooks data is accurate. Make sure it's safe, too.
Your QuickBooks company file contains some of the most sensitive information on your computer. You may have customers' credit card numbers and employees' Social Security numbers. An intruder who captured all that data could create tremendous problems for you and a lot of other people.
That's probably the worst-case scenario. But other situations could also spell disaster for your business, which involve losing your company data through fraud, hacking, or simple technical failures.
We can't overstate the vital importance of protecting your QuickBooks company file, especially your customer and payroll information. Whether someone steals it or it's inaccessible for another reason, it's gone. Keeping your business going after such a loss would be very difficult - maybe even impossible.
Here's what we suggest to prevent that.
Internal Safeguards
No business owner wants to believe that his or her employees could use their QuickBooks access to commit fraud. But it happens. Your company file contains credit card and checking account data that could be used for nefarious purposes. As we discussed last spring, you can restrict user access to specific areas and actions of QuickBooks.
You can limit your employees who have QuickBooks access to certain areas and activities.
To get started, open the
Company menu and select
Set Up Users and Passwords | Set Up Users. The
User List window opens. It should have at least one entry there, for you
(Admin). Click
Add User and enter the employee's name and password in the next window that opens, then click
Next.
Tip: Your QuickBooks license limits you to a specified number of users. If you're not sure how many you're allowed, click F2 to open the Product Information page. The number of user licenses you've paid for appears in the upper left.
On the next page of this wizard, click the button in front of
Selected Areas of QuickBooks. The following screens will let you define that employee's access permissions in areas like
Sales and Accounts Receivable, Inventory, and Payroll and Employees. When you've clicked through every screen and reviewed the summary displayed, click Finish. Your user will now be able to sign in and access the areas you specified.
You can-and should-take numerous other steps to keep your QuickBooks data safe. If your company is big enough to have a dedicated IT expert, he or she will handle most of this. But there's a lot you can do on your own to prevent data loss and theft.
Keep Your Operating System and Applications Updated
Don't ignore this dialog box.
Software companies' occasional updates offer more than just adding new features and fixing bugs. They sometimes refresh your software to ensure greater security based on new threats. Don't forget about those all-important antivirus and anti-malware applications, as well as QuickBooks itself.
Use Common Sense
You can fight data loss and theft by being cautious. Be diligent about backups. Ideally, you should keep copies local, offsite, and in the cloud,
Shred papers that have sensitive information on them. Log out of QuickBooks when you're not using it or when you leave your office. Be aware of who may be around you, looking over your shoulder.
We take data security very seriously in our own office, and we strongly encourage you to do the same. If your organization needs an independent cyber security assessment, we have experts who can help. See article below on
cyber security assessments.