The strongest promise a bookkeeping product can make is that your data is yours, provably, at any moment. TaDa Books is built around that promise.
The one-click backup
From your plan page, one click produces a complete backup of a company:
- Your ledger as spreadsheets (CSV) anyone can open, with your lists beside it: accounts, customers, vendors, classes and items.
- QuickBooks files that can stand up your books elsewhere, lists included.
- A full structured copy (JSON) a developer or another system can read.
- Every document in the vault.
It downloads as a single zip to keep wherever you like. Take one whenever it makes you comfortable; it is your data and there is no limit or fee.
The account owner's backup holds every company on the account. Someone with admin access gets the companies their access opens, and only those. To back up one company, pick it in the list beside Download my books.
The backup is a plain zip unless you protect it: anyone who has a plain file can open it, so keep it somewhere private.
Protect with a password
Switch on Protect with a password under the two download buttons, type a password twice (or press Suggest one), and both downloads come as an AES-256 zip that opens only with that password.
- TaDa Books keeps no copy of the password. If it is lost, nobody can open the file, TaDa Books included; keep it in your password manager.
- A strong password matters: at least 12 characters, varied, and not your company's name or your email. The suggested one is 24 random characters.
- To open the files yourself, use a free app that opens AES-protected zips, such as 7-Zip on Windows or Keka on a Mac. The opener built into Windows cannot open protected zips.
- Inside, the companies and files are numbered so their names stay private too; the files inside (MANIFEST, documents.csv) name each one. A short note saying how to open the file stays readable.
- Restore a copy reads protected copies: it asks for the password, uses it to read the file, and keeps no record of it.
Restoring from a backup
Every books download made from 13 October 2026 on can be read back by TaDa Books. On your plan page, Restore a copy: choose the zip, and TaDa Books shows the companies in it, the day the copy was made and how many entries each holds. Restore into a new company brings the one you pick back exactly as it was that day, as a NEW company beside the ones you have (its code ends in -R, and you can rename it). Nothing you have now is changed or overwritten.
- Before anything is kept, the restored books are checked against the copy's own trial balance, to the cent. If anything does not match, nothing is kept.
- Repeating invoices and memorized entries come back paused, and payment reminders off, so nothing posts or emails by itself. Turn them back on when you are ready.
- Bank connections, online payment links and the customer portal are set up again in the restored company.
- Only the account owner can restore, since it adds a company. The uploaded copy stays private to your account and is deleted once the restore is done.
- A protected copy asks for its password first. A wrong password is refused and the copy stays uploaded, so you only type it again.
Bringing the documents back
The papers travel in the other download, Download my documents. Once the books are back, the Restore card lists the new company under Documents waiting: Bring back the documents and choose that zip (the one from the same account, made around the same day as the books copy).
- TaDa Books reads it a batch at a time and shows the files as they come back; keep the page open. Each file is checked against the fingerprint of the paper it belongs to before it is kept, so a wrong file is never filed.
- Each paper comes back under its own category and sub-category, with its history, and attached to the same entries as before. Tax folder files come back too.
- One copy of a file per account: a paper whose file is already in this account (restoring beside the company you copied) is not copied twice, and the restored entries are not linked to it, so the two companies stay separate. Papers that were in the trash when the copy was made are not in a documents download and do not come back.
- A protected documents download asks for its own password; the books copy's is remembered from the restore while the page is open.
- If some papers are not in the zip you chose, TaDa Books says which, and you can choose another documents download or finish without them.
- Your plan's storage and document count apply; if the papers do not fit, TaDa Books stops with the reason and keeps what is already back.
- A company waits here for 7 days; Skip the documents ends the wait at any time.
- A copy made before 13 October 2026 holds your books as spreadsheets and a QuickBooks file, but not what restoring needs; make a new download if the company still exists.
Leaving whole
The same exports mean leaving TaDa Books is a real option, not a threat. The books you built here can travel to your next system, and that fact is deliberate.
Security, in plain terms
- Your session belongs to you alone; accounts enforce one live sign-in at a time by default, and every sign-in is listed under Recent sign-ins.
- Access to each company is explicit and per person, at the level you granted. See People and access.
- Bank connections are read only: TaDa Books can see activity to do your bookkeeping, and cannot move money. How bank data is handled has its own published page under /legal/bank-data.
- The full security statement lives at /legal/security, written to be read, not skimmed past.
Is it just me, or is it down?
The status page at /status is public and lives apart from your sign-in, so it answers precisely when you cannot get in. It shows the product's health as measured from outside, with recent history.