Mmmmm, let me think.
How do you recover a spreadsheet if you have deleted in (And you've emptied the recycle bin)
How do recover a month's data in eg. Pastel?
Backups are NOT optional!! Having your system set up to do daily backups is NOT a luxury! Setting it up is NOT difficult! Hard drives DO NOT last forever. Flash drives DO NOT work forever!
So, to answer your question - are you prepared to lose all your data or even a month's work - or even a day's turnover?
Well I'm not! In my business I have 3 different backups running daily.
1. A backup utility (MDBTask for free & on the 4POS CD) that runs at 02h00 daily to backup my pricing file to a 2nd computer.
2. A backup utility (Allwaysync) that backs up all our scanned docs, (We file all invoices & scan it as well because I can find it easier that way rather than looking in a filing cabinet, that I don't understand...), All our excel files which includes Quotes, Invoices or whatever we do in Excel, my folder that I use to keep copies of transfers made etc etc. All of this goes to a 3rd computer.
3. Allwaysync to back up the data from the 3rd computer to a 4th computer.
4. Weekly/Monthly backups to an external hard drive that is locked away for safe keeping.
Paranoid? No, I simply hate losing data as this is what makes my business decisions!
I call it good practices....
Lastly - without knowing the background & seeing errors - if any, I can't comment. I would suggest that you at least do a backup before monthend - just in case!
One of our customers, as mentioned in another discussion, was conscienteous enough to switch the mains off on his way out of his business - while the monthend was running.....