Organisation settings - Backup / export copy of Xero file
Ability to export copies of the Xero org data.
Purpose: Because the ability to export the copy of the Xero file data makes the user more comfortable. In case there’s incident happens.

Hi everyone, we appreciate wanting the ability to create your own back of your data. For individual use, we recommend creating your own backup by exporting the relevant data from Xero - There are many areas of Xero you can export data from and we have an article that details this more.
Protecting your data is important to us. We do daily backups of customer data to safeguard against data corruption and any hosting service failure. However, these backups aren't designed to be used by individual organisations to undo/reverse data changes performed by users in the organisation.
You can read more on Security at Xero on our website.
Being transparent, this isn't something we're looking to develop for individual use ourselves. If of importance to your business, we do have some official app partners who can fulfill this need and you can explore these through our Xero App Store.
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Vince Williams commented
Hi Kelly
Thanks, understood.
However it is important for us to our own back ups to, for peace of mind and compliance with codes of practice.
If Xero can do complete back-ups automatically then please share the method with us, or devise a method that caters for small businesses to do the same.
Kind regard
Vince -
Waddington Educational Resources commented
Kelly Munro says the same things we've all heard before and confirms how Xero is like a brick wall - totally uninterested in anything being said in this thread and all those which came before it or are hidden in the ether. Won't be long and dictionaries will have a new concise meaning for the words, 'doing nothing through obfuscation' and that will be a single word, "Xero"
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Gregory O'Donohue commented
Xero needs to provide a datat backup feature. It is imperative to business security and reliability.
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Nigel Soakell commented
Hi Kelly Munro, as you can see by the number of people voting/commenting here this is something the a lot of people would like to see developed. So I'm not sure why Xero is not choosing to do so as it is clearly being requested.
As for the article to export data, this may be fine for someone who needs to get that data elsewhere but Xero cannot seriously expect people to do this on at least a daily basis. We changed from Quickbooks to Xero, and in QB backup was built-in and seamless, and typically we backed up twice a day if not more. And restoring was just as simple.
There should be a way in Xero whereby we can backup all of the company data to a local computer and then if need be restore that data. Problems and mistakes happen and there should be a way to recover from them. Which we don't have with Xero.
I've looked at some of the apps and in some cases these don't provide a decent backup either, or based on some of the reviews are not that reliable and in other cases cost for subscriptions to those apps can cost multiples of the cost of Xero itself, eg Coupler.IO which is $100 USD per month. Which as you can appreciated does not make any financial sense. Based on marketing Xero appears to be aimed at the Small to Medium size business all of which typically can't afford to just keep on buying monthly subscriptions.
So I think it's about time Xero took these requests to heart and did something about them.
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Sarah Hart commented
Thanks Kelly Munro. However I think if Xero read all the comments it would see that what users expect is a backup file, not a bunch of pdf reports. In other words a backup of the kind provided by QuickBooks and other competitors. It's obviously possible because Xero has licensed the API to third parties (who can access and back up customer data incompletely, for a fee).
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Dinah Barclay commented
Xero - I can't find anywhere how to backup/download attached pdfs - the supplier invoice pdfs attached in Xero. We can do individually but not in bulk. How do we do this please?
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Wesley Higbee commented
How in the world do you continue to jack up the price of your plans and not provide a backup?!
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Claire Lambert commented
Backups are critical for an accounting solution.
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Billy Boys commented
On an ongoing basis, does anyone find that any of the backups currently offered by XERO are particularly worthwhile running?
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John Horton commented
Must have a way to create and save offline backups.
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Phillip Jolliffe commented
Migrating away from XERO as this option isn't available. Xero accept no liability for your data, which would be fine IF they let you back it up and restore it.
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Mark Wasmuth commented
This function needs to be provided or you should remove your current statement in 'Export data out of Xero' "You're responsible for keeping records of data entered in Xero, so we recommend you regularly perform your own back ups." Xero take some ownership.
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Karl Ferguson commented
Backups are essential. Everyone is vulnerable to data loss including XERO
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Billy Boys commented
2 things are substandard with XERO. Not available for current climate backups and the inability to provide a view only product.
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Gillian Rowe commented
Critical for organisations to meet regulatory requirements - especially in this current environment. Thank you
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Waddington Educational Resources commented
Thank you Andrew for finding that Australian Cyber Security Centre Essential requirement. Maybe that might get through the Xero brick wall here. Xero has long been on notice about this need for years.
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Andrew Adamson commented
Regular backups of important data are a requirement of the Aust Cyber Security Centre's (ACSC) Essential 8.
In case of cyber attack, both Xero and my business could be found negligent if we are not taking a regular backup of our critical accounting data!
It astounds me that the ability to backup data isn't already a Xero feature.
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Vince Williams commented
My attempt to backup Xero now consists of semi regularly exporting contacts and products, then trying to remember to daily export invoices
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Accounts Arbor commented
A backup facility is a must, so that a data set can be saved and imported again, even if it's just in case of data corruption. I can't believe Xero doesn't already have this feature.
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David Taylor commented
I don't think people necessarily expect Xero to hold the backups... if there was a simple file export that we could hold ourselves, and a recovery routine that could take the backup file as an import, I'm sure we'd all be a lot happier.
It is bonkers that this is even an ongoing and unresolved matter.