Yesterday, was a bit of wakeup call for lots of firms and their clients who rely on Xero for their accounting system. I am a big fan of Xero and use it in my own business its uptime is usually fantastic but yesterday it was off for most of the day. This raised a couple of important questions for me:
1. What would happen if it didn’t come back on?
2. What compensation could I claim for my lost time and data?
Surprising to some the answer to the question lies in the Terms of Use on the Xero Website here https://www.xero.com/uk/about/legal/terms/
“35. Data loss: Data loss is an unavoidable risk when using any technology. You’re responsible for maintaining copies of your data entered into our services. For information on how to do that, check out this article on Xero Central.
36. No compensation: Whatever the cause of any downtime, access issues or data loss, your only recourse is to discontinue using our services.”
So Xero are not responsible for avoiding data loss and if it happens and you suffer a loss because of it there is no compensation at all. I understand why Xero might have these terms, but how many firms who have setup Xero for their clients have the same terms for their clients, not many I would guess. This leaves you exposed to significant claims from clients not to mention the damage to relationships. This would probably be a terminal event for most client relationships.
So how can you protect yourself from this problem:
1. Mirror Xeros terms in your engagement with your clients. This at least offers your firm the same protection that Xero affords themselves.
2. Better still avoid the problem backup your Xero data using an independent third-party backup product
Third Party Backup for Xero
There are a number of ways of protecting your clients data, you could manually export the data out and save them locally, which although effective is a bit hit and miss and cumbersome. A better solution would be an automated backup like those provided by Redstor https://www.redstor.com/solutions/xero-backup/ or Control C https://www.control-c.com At least then if the worse happens you can at least tell your clients that that data is backed up.
If you would like any more information about how to protect your cloud data please get in touch.
Comments