The Bottom Line Accounting Service

"I had a backup program that I thought was working," says Sue Matson. "Then, when my hard drive crashed, I found out that it hadn't backed up anything for months. It made me sick to my stomach to think of all that client data that could have been lost."

Matson is the sole proprietor of The Bottom Line Accounting Service, a Montana-based firm that handles financial records for over 80 clients. During a business trip last September, Matson's laptop began failing; when she brought it in to her IT consultant, she found out that the backup program she'd been using hadn't been working. The last time the application had saved data was months before, meaning that she could have lost a significant amount of work. Fortunately, she was able to retrieve the data and put it on an external drive, and the first thing she did after that was find a better backup solution. "I thought, that's it," she recalls. "I wasn't about to trust my data to some software that tells me it's backing up when it might not be."

Wake-Up Call

In looking for a strong backup system, Matson wanted a solution that did what it promised. Since she works alone and has such a large client load, she didn't have time to employ a complicated backup system, and she didn't want to pay her IT consultant to come in on a regular basis.

"At a past employer, I'd make backups and bring them home in case something happened to the office," she says. "But that didn't seem like a good solution either. What if there was a fire in my house? What if I lost them on the way home?"

If anything happened to the data, she knew that she'd have to reconstruct it on her own time—and what's worse, her clients could sue her. She knew there had to be a better way.

Finding a Solution

While golfing with a friend, Matson described her recent scare, and the golfing buddy mentioned using Carbonite. "I heard about how much they loved it at her company, so I thought I'd give it a try. I'm so glad I did, because now I definitely sleep better at night."

She'd heard about off-site backup services in the past, but had always trusted her own hardware. After the crash, though, she realized that having online backup that's accessible anytime and runs in the background would be the best fit for her.

Some of her favorite features

• The easy setup

  Matson says putting Carbonite in place was a "piece of cake" that required only a few clicks.

• The automatic backup

  Since Matson makes frequent changes to client files, she appreciates having a solution that backs up changes quickly as she's working.

• Peace of mind

  Matson's data can be accessed at any time and is kept safe and private, letting her focus on her work instead of data backup concerns.

Matson notes that she utilizes other backup media as well, since she's paranoid after the data loss scare, but Carbonite is what gives her the most assurance when it comes to backup. "It's like a little angel sitting on my shoulder, giving me help when I need it," she says.