Manita's avatar
Manita
Member
1 month ago
Status:
New

Request to Reinstate Offline Backup Functionality in MYOB AccountRight

Dear MYOB Product Team,

I am writing on behalf of our accounting practice regarding the recent removal of the offline backup function in MYOB AccountRight 2026.5.

We are extremely concerned that the ability to create and retain our own offline backups has been removed. As a professional accounting practice, we have always maintained independent backups of our clients' MYOB company files as part of our disaster recovery procedures, business continuity planning, and professional risk management obligations.

While we appreciate the convenience of cloud backups, they should complement—not replace—the ability for users to maintain their own offline backups. Relying solely on cloud-stored backups does not meet the needs of many accounting firms, particularly where we have established backup policies, regulatory obligations, cyber security requirements, and the need to retain historical versions for extended periods.

Removing the offline backup option has created a number of concerns, including:

  • Loss of an independently controlled backup that can be stored within our own backup systems.
  • Increased reliance on MYOB's cloud services for disaster recovery.
  • Difficulty maintaining long-term archival copies in accordance with our firm's policies.
  • Additional business continuity risks should internet access or cloud services become unavailable.
  • Reduced confidence in our ability to recover client data quickly and independently.

We respectfully request that MYOB reinstate the option to create offline backups to a user-selected location, such as a local drive, network drive, or external backup device. This functionality has been relied upon by accounting firms for many years and remains an essential feature for professional practices.

If there are technical or strategic reasons for the recent change, we would appreciate a detailed explanation and any alternative solution that provides the same level of control and independence over our backups.

We value MYOB and have supported the platform for many years. However, we believe this change represents a significant reduction in functionality for professional users and hope that MYOB will reconsider its decision.

Thank you for taking the time to consider our feedback. We look forward to your response.

Kind regards

Manita

13 Comments

Show More
  • Mike_MYOB's avatar
    Mike_MYOB
    Community Manager
    13 days ago

    Hi Manita​ , you're correct that the online backups are currently only retained for 6 months.
    This is being reviewed alongside other possible changes we could make based on customer feedback for the removal of offline backups.

    However, the old process of taking a backup every payroll or financial year should be based on how some of our legacy software operated. 
    Older versions of AccountRight would previously have locked older financial years, and in some cases purge data after 2 years. This has not been the case for a long time now though.

    While you have an active subscription, you have access to al historical data in the file.
    The online backups exist as a means to 'undo' recent changes in the file if mistakes have been made and you need to restore back to a previous point in time.

    When closing a business or cancelling a subscription, this is when you need to consider how you will retain your records.
    Right now the options available here are a low cost read only subscription, downloading data via report packs, or requesting a server backup retrieval.
    When subscriptions are cancelled, a final backup is taken by MYOB and retained for 1 year.

    As mentioned though, MYOB is actively reviewing the feedback and processes around this

  • toip's avatar
    toip
    Experienced User
    2 hours ago

    I make daily backups, each with a different name, because that is the onlyway I can safeguard my data. If each backup over-writes the previous one, an un-detected database bug can render subsequent day's backups useless. With a named, daily backup, it is easier to locate the correct file, then repeat the losty transactions.

    But under the new backup structure, I have to request (pay?) for a specific file to be recovered. And also have no idea whether the files are still on the server (or for how long).

    And because I can't directly access my backups, I am dependent on MYOB's response times (which have been very poor) to get my business back up and running in event of a problem.

    If MYOB truly cared about users, they would allow us to choose our OWN network backup destination. I personally don't like on-line/cloud backups and would rather them on my backup drives. But if MYOB insist that doing so is the "old way", then I have to accept that the backups will go to an on line server. But it should be a server of my choice.

    So please, MYOB, add an option which allows users to make a backup of THEIR data (it is not yours, it is ours) on a destination of OUR choice. Even if this means writing it once MYOB's servers and then again to the server of our choice.

    In fact, this is something which we as users should DEMAND

    I worry that MYOB is motivated more by the fear of customers, who have ready access to their data, moving it to competitors, than it is for looking after the customers it has

     

  • Mike_MYOB's avatar
    Mike_MYOB
    Community Manager
    2 hours ago

    Hi toip​ - sounds like there is some adjusting to the new online backups that needs to happen here.

    You can take manual point in time backups with online backups and you can still give these unique names like you did previously.

    Taking a new online backup does not overwrite any previous online backups.

    An online backup is automatically taken by MYOB once every 7 days, and you can also take your manual point in time backups, and these are stored for 6 months.

    If you want to restore any online backup from the last 6 months, you can do this yourself, simply go to file menu > restore and select the backup you want. There is no cost for this.

    The online backups are also stored on a different server to your live data. I know this is not the same as a server of your choice, but some customers were concerned that live data and online backups were on the same server so I wanted to confirm this as well