Help Center › Data & Tools

Back up and restore your data

Download a backup file of your customers, suppliers, items and invoices, save a copy to the cloud, and understand what a restore does.

Only the business owner sees this screen. Other users who open it see "Only OWNER can access Backup."

Before you start

Know what the backup file holds. It contains your customers, suppliers, products, sales invoices and purchase invoices (with their lines, including credit and debit notes), and your list of users without passwords.
It does not hold your chart of accounts, journal, receipt and payment vouchers, opening balances, stock journals, delivery challans, business profile or settings. Keep your reports (for example Trial balance and Product register) exported as well.

Download a backup

Open Administration > Backup.
Click Download Backup (ZIP).
Save the ZIP file somewhere safe, such as a pen drive or your own cloud storage. Do not unzip or edit it if you may need to restore from it.

Save a backup to the cloud

Open Administration > Backup.
Click Backup to Cloud (S3).
The new backup appears in the Cloud Backups table, with its Last Modified time and Size.
To get a copy, click Download on its row. It opens in a new tab.

If the screen shows "S3 backup not configured", cloud backup is not set up for your account. The Backup to Cloud (S3) button stays grey. Use Download Backup (ZIP) instead.

Restore from a backup

Open Administration > Backup.
Click Restore and pick a backup file (.zip or .json, up to 50 MB).
Wait for the "Restore OK" message.

A restore adds every customer, supplier, product and invoice in the file as a new record. It does not delete or overwrite what is already in your books, so restoring into a business that already has data creates duplicates. Restored invoices are not posted to your accounts or stock. Users come back without passwords. Talk to Arthlekha support before you restore into a live business.

Common problems

Save failed — the download or restore did not finish. Check your internet connection and try again. For a restore, pick the ZIP downloaded from this screen (a .zip or .json Arthlekha backup, up to 50 MB). A damaged or edited file cannot be restored.
Cloud Backups says "No cloud backups yet." — click Backup to Cloud (S3) to make the first one.

More in Data & Tools

Users and permissionsGive your staff their own login, reset a forgotten password, switch a user off, and choose exactly which screens each staff member may use.Import data from Vyapar, myBillBook or ExcelBring customers, suppliers, items with opening stock, ledgers, invoices, expenses and bank entries into Arthlekha from an Excel or CSV file.Import from Tally and Tally SyncBring your Tally groups, ledgers, parties and stock items into Arthlekha from a Tally XML file, or link Arthlekha to Tally on the Tally computer.Check the audit logSee who added, changed or deleted records in your books, and when, from the audit log.Delete transactions in bulkRemove many invoices, notes, challans, vouchers, stock journals or opening balances at once, for example after a wrong import.