In the extremely fast-paced retail industry, data is the lifeblood of any business. From sales transactions and inventory levels to customer information and financial reports, every piece of data plays a crucial role in retailers’ operations. However, many retailers face the age-old challenge of protecting this invaluable data, as unexpected events such as system crashes, hardware failures, or even cyber attacks can happen in the most critical moments. Data loss can and will inevitably disrupt your business and impact your bottom line, which is why it’s essential to implement a robust data backup strategy.
For users of our enterprise-level point of sale (POS) system, Barter XI (BXI), we understand these concerns all too well. In this blog, we’ll show you how to automatically back up your POS using a free software, SQLBackupAndFTP. By ensuring that your data is securely backed up every day, you can minimize downtime, safeguard your business against data loss, and maintain smooth, uninterrupted operations. Let’s dive in and see how easy it is to protect your critical data effortlessly.
Of course, make sure you’ve already downloaded and installed the latest version of SQLBackupAndFTP on the computer where your POS is running. When you’re ready to go, start the software and follow the steps below.
- Connect to database server: Upon opening, you will immediately be asked to connect to a database server. Select your server type from the dropdown list and then set the connection parameters for the selected database type. Verify the connection by clicking on “Test Connection.” If the connection is successful, you can click “Save & Close.”
- Select databases to backup: Since you’ve successfully connected to your database server, you now need to select which databases in particular you want backed up. Click the gear icon in the “Select databases” section in the user interface and select databases as you see fit. You can also choose to just backup all non-system databases by ticking the top-most checkbox.
- Select destinations to store backups: At this point, you need to select where you want to store your backups, whether it’s on a local or network folder, an FTP server, or in the cloud. Simply select your storage location of choice and fill in all the required information.
- Set up notification emails: Toggle the “Send confirmation” switch on and insert the email address that you want the software to send notifications to. This email address will be notified about the success or failure of certain backups.
- Run the job: Click “Run Now” and verify if (1) the email address that you inserted in the last step was able to receive an email and that (2) the target destination of the backups actually contains the backups. You can take testing one step further by trying to restore the databases as well, just so you’re 100% sure that the files can be used in the case of actual data loss in the future.
- Schedule the backup job: Toggle the “Schedule backups” switch on and choose a time to do a full backup. The software will automatically back up your data at that time on a daily basis.
At that point, you should be fully set up. You can find all of your backups “History & restore” section, which is home to three other buttons: Open Log, Download Backup, and Restore from Backup. And really, that’s all you need to automatically backup your POS data for free!
In case this tutorial was confusing to you in any way, you can access this tutorial by the creators of the software themselves. They come with screenshots that may make the instructions much clearer.
In its free version, however, SQLBackupAndFTP can only back up a maximum of 2 databases. Any more, and you will have to upgrade to a paid version (more information in this link, if you’re interested). Nevertheless, the free version should suffice for most use cases.
By following these steps, you can rest assured that your POS data is securely backed up daily, protecting your business from unexpected data loss. This software offers a simple yet effective solution, ensuring that your data stays safe without an additional cost. It takes very little time to set up, but can save you a lot of potential headaches and disruptions in the future. If you need tutorials for anything else regarding this software, you can refer to their official blog for additional guidance.
