Before You Upgrade Financial Software

Although most financial software upgrades are error-free, your financial data is so important and sensitive that you need to take measures to ensure that you still have your data should the upgrade not work.

Follow this procedure and you should be covered:

1. Back up your data file. If you do not back up to a CD or other removable media, be sure this back up copy is not in the same folder where the data file is stored.

2. If your current software is more than two versions behind your new upgrade, the new software may not be able to restore from a backed up data file. You need to copy your data file to removable media such as a CD, DVD or flash drive for use in the event data is corrupted during the install. Data corruption is infrequent but not unheard of. This is not necessary if you are only updating the current version of your software!

3. Create and print out reports that show the balances of every account you track in your financial software.

4. Install the software upgrade. The new software should find your current data file and convert it for use with the new version.

5. Run the same reports that you printed out previously and compare the results to the balances prior to the upgrade. If everything matches up - and it usually does - you are ready to use your new software.

6. If the numbers on the reports do not match, contact tech support for your financial software. Check the web site for the software for a link to Support, often found at the top of the web page. Until the problem is fixed, you can uninstall the new version and reinstall your old version and then restore the backup file. Be sure to restart your computer between uninstalling and reinstalling.

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