Backups & moving to a new PC

Your shop's data lives on your own computer, not on our servers. That is the point of the system, and it means backing up is your job, and it is worth five minutes a week.

Take a backup

1. Sign in as the Owner.
2. Open Settings → Backup.
3. Press Download backup. You get a single file.
4. Put it somewhere that is not this computer: a USB stick, another PC, a cloud drive, an email

to yourself. A backup sitting on the machine that dies is not a backup.

A backup contains everything that matters: products, stock and its full history, customers and what they owe, suppliers, sales, expenses, shifts, your settings and your staff accounts. It does not contain your recovery PIN, and it never contains anyone's password in a readable form.

Do this weekly, and always before anything unusual: a Windows reinstall, a new PC, or moving the shop.

Restore onto the same computer

Settings → Backup also has Restore. Use it to undo a bad import or get back to a known good state on the machine you are already on. It replaces the shop's data with the file's contents, so be sure the file is the one you want.

Restoring on the same PC deliberately leaves your own login and your shop settings alone, so you cannot lock yourself out with an old file.

Move to a new computer

This is a different flow, and it is the one to use when the old PC is being replaced, has died, or has been reinstalled.

1. Take a backup from the old PC if you still can. If it is dead, use your most recent one.
2. Install the app on the new PC.
3. On the first screen choose Restore an existing shop rather than setting a new one up.
4. Give it your backup file and your licence key.

This needs the internet, on purpose: we check the licence before restoring, so a copied backup file alone can never bring a second shop to life.

"This licence is already in use on another computer"

This is expected: the licence is still tied to the old PC. The app offers to email a one-time code to the address the licence is registered to. Enter the code and the licence releases, then continue. The code only goes to the registered address, so nobody else can move your shop.

If you no longer have access to that mailbox, contact us and we will release it for you.

If you cannot sign in at all

There is a way out that does not need a working login, and it exists exactly for the bad days: an expired licence, a version that has stopped being supported, a PC whose clock is so wrong the app will not accept your session.

On the sign-in screen and on every one of those blocked screens there is an emergency export. It asks for an Owner's email and password and hands you the whole shop as a file. It does not need a valid licence and it does not need the app to be otherwise usable.

We would rather you never need it. It is there so that no billing or version problem can ever hold your own records hostage.

Why you cannot open the database file directly

The shop's data file on disk is encrypted, and the key is sealed to that Windows account on that machine. Opening it in a database tool will not work, and copying it to another PC will not work either. That is what stops someone walking off with the file.

Move a shop with a backup, never by copying files. A backup is the supported route and the only one that survives new hardware.

What next

• Install & set up your shop
• Updates & staying supported
• Common questions