Back Up and Restore Your Account

Maxio keeps backups of your account so your data can be recovered, and lets you take one yourself whenever you want a known-good point to fall back to. Take one before any large change, since an import or a data clear cannot be undone once it runs.

Important: Working with backups requires Admin permissions, and the Backup option appears under Utilities only when backups are enabled for your account.

When backups happen

Backups happen three ways, and only one of them is something you start.

• Nightly, automatically. Maxio backs up every account each night as part of overall system management. These exist to restore the whole system after a significant hardware or software failure.
• Before a destructive operation. Maxio takes one automatically before an action such as clearing data, unless a backup already succeeded in the previous 12 hours.
• On demand. You can take one yourself at any time from Admin > Utilities > Backup.

A backup captures your account's database records. It does not cover anything held outside the database, so treat it as a way to recover your data rather than a copy of everything in your account.

What you can do with a backup

Any backup, however it was taken, can be used to make a copy of your account as a Sandbox.

Restoring your production account is also possible, but only on request and only in certain circumstances. All of the following must be true:

• You are not connected to Avalara.
• You are not using e-Bill.
• You are not using an integrated ePayment solution.
• You are using Maxio for analytics only, importing or syncing data from another system.

Restores are run by Maxio rather than from the application, so contact support@maxio.com if you need one.

Run a backup yourself

Selecting Backup from the Admin menu opens Backup Results, newest first. Each row shows its date and status, and View Details opens the full result.

The list covers backups you run yourself, plus the ones Maxio takes automatically before a destructive operation such as clearing data. The nightly backup does not appear here, so an empty list does not mean your account is unprotected.

A row's status is Succeeded, Failed, or Expired. A backup expires 90 days after it was taken, and an expired entry stays visible as a record of the run rather than as something you can still restore from.

To run a backup

1. Go to Admin > Utilities > Backup.
2. Click Backup on the Backup Results screen. This opens Perform a Backup.
3. Optionally enter Notes. These are recorded alongside the result, which helps when you have several backups to tell apart.
4. Click Begin Backup.

The backup runs in the background, so Maxio takes you to a task page where you can watch its progress rather than finishing while you wait. The finished result is time-stamped in Backup Results.

Only one manual backup can run at a time. If you request another while one is still going, Maxio cancels the new request and tells you the status of the one already in progress.

Request a restore

Only Maxio technical personnel can restore a backup. Contact Customer Support with a ticket describing the backup, the situation, and what you need, in as much detail as you can give.

Related information

Before running an import, which cannot be undone, see Understand Imports.

To bring historical balances in rather than restore existing data, see Migrate Legacy Data with Open Balance.