Back Up Everything (And Understand What Backup Actually Means)

Before you export anything, freeze your data state.

QuickBooks Desktop

File → Backup Company → Create Local Backup. Save to an external drive. Name it QB_Snapshot_PreMigration_YYYY_MM_DD.

QuickBooks Online

Here’s something most people discover too late that QBO doesn’t provide a true backup. Settings → Export Data gives you reports, not a restorable snapshot. It’s a data extract, not a backup. You cannot restore a QBO instance from these exports.

What this means: if something goes wrong mid-migration, you can’t roll back QBO to its pre-migration state. Plan accordingly. Consider running parallel systems longer than you’d like.