A week ago, we had a little bit of a scare when our cell phones were going off with emergency messages letting us know that our area was under a tornado warning. The first thing you think of is getting you and your family members to safety. My wife and two sleeping children camped out in our basement for about half an hour waiting for the storm to pass. While holding my youngest daughter I started thinking through a lot of what ifs. One of those what ifs was how fast could I get my business systems up and running in the event of a disaster? We did have a flood at our old house so sometimes I get a little worried about things like this. For the most part it would just require me getting a new computer. Most of my applications and client data are on the internet. I make regular backups of my data via a cloud-based storage application. My bookkeeping clients are all on Xero which means I will not lose this data since stored on the web. I would have to restore my tax software, which would not be a big deal as this application is downloaded via email. The same thing goes for my file preparation software. However, I am in the process of converting my year end files (non-bookkeeping clients) to Xero as well in order to leverage the cloud and make my work a little more efficient. This approach can potentially allow me to use other reporting applications to gain further insights into my clients’ records. Therefore, as you can see I can get up and running pretty quickly if needed. If you are not using cloud-based applications, please ensure that you are doing regular backups of your data and are taking a backup offsite after hours. Hopefully, this will ensure that you are protected if a disaster were to strike. Want to know more? Shawn Oldridge shawn@oldridgeaccounting.ca 519.995.1153