File Extension Guide📖 What is a BUSY Data File?
A BUSY data file is one of the files in which the accounting software stores a company. The settings sit in one file. Every financial year gets its own file. A company with five years of books holds six data files.
The vendor's help pages call the folder that holds the companies the data directory. Each company is a numbered folder such as COMP0001. Leena Taylor Paul checked three BUSY 21 companies that cover the financial years 2022-23 to 2026-27. She read 6,411 vouchers from these files. Every voucher balanced to zero, which confirms that the layout was read correctly.
The vendor's download page lists the Express, Basic, Standard and Enterprise editions and the Blue, Saffron and Emerald plans. The price page shows a SQL option next to the regular one. This guide covers the .bds and .mdb files.
The one rule to remember
Close the software. Copy the whole COMP folder before you move or open the data anywhere else. The vendor advises the same habit for old data. Restore the backup to a new location and work on that copy. The original stays unchanged.
🔎 Which BUSY File Do I Have?
The file name and its folder tell you which file it is. Match your file to one of the cards below.
.bds files
BUSY 21 company data. Each file is a Microsoft Access Jet 4 database that carries the .bds extension.
COMP0001\db.bds, db12022.bds, db12023.bds.mdb files
Older BUSY versions used the plain Access extension. The settings file is then db.mdb. Univik's sample set held one older .mdb company.
COMP0001\db.mdbdb.bds
The company configuration: name, GSTIN, PAN, financial year start, users and their rights. No vouchers.
COMP0001\db.bdsdb1YYYY.bds
One file per financial year with the vouchers, balances and stock. YYYY is the calendar year in which that year starts.
db12022.bds = 2022-23COMPINFO.BDS
Sits next to the company folders. In the sample checked it holds licence and installation details, not the list of companies.
DATA\COMPINFO.BDSlocks.ldb and locks.sys
Small lock files that sit in the company folder. They hold no accounting data.
COMP0001\locks.ldb, locks.sys🗂️ What is Inside a BUSY Company Folder?
This is the layout of a BUSY 21 data directory that Univik checked. The first company had two financial years, so its folder holds three data files.
DATA
├── COMP0001 # first company
│ ├── db.bds # settings and users
│ ├── db12022.bds # financial year 2022-23
│ ├── db12023.bds # financial year 2023-24
│ ├── locks.ldb
│ └── locks.sys
├── COMP0002 # second company
├── COMP0003 # third company
└── COMPINFO.BDS
The vendor's backup and restore FAQ tells users to select the data path "till data folder name only not the company code". In this layout that means the DATA folder, not COMP0001.
“Across three BUSY 21 companies, the pattern held every time: db.bds keeps the settings and users, and each financial year sits in its own file. A single year file is not a company. Copy the whole COMP folder first, then open the copy.”
📅 What Do BUSY Year File Names Mean?
A year file is named db1 plus the calendar year in which the financial year starts. The companies Univik checked use Indian financial years such as 2022-23.
| File name | Financial year |
|---|---|
db12022.bds | 2022-23 |
db12023.bds | 2023-24 |
db12026.bds | 2026-27 |
BUSY copies the masters, such as accounts and items, into every year file. A year file therefore shows the same account names on its own. Univik compared the year files of one company. Names and opening balances differed between the files, so read each year from its own file.
🧱 Which Tables Sit Inside a BUSY .bds File?
A .bds file is a database, so the data sits in tables. These names come from Univik's own reading of BUSY 21 files.
| Table | What it stores |
|---|---|
Master1 | All masters in one table: accounts, items, units, bill sundries and voucher series |
Folio1 | Opening balance and month-wise debit and credit totals for each master |
Tran1 | Voucher header: type, date, number, party and amount |
Tran2 | Voucher lines: account entries, item lines and bill sundries such as taxes |
Tran3 | Bill-by-bill references with due dates |
Tran4 | Opening stock of items |
VchOtherInfo | Extra voucher fields such as bill number, bill date and narration |
DailySum | Daily debit and credit totals for each master |
DeletedMasters | Names of masters that were deleted |
EventLog | Logins, logouts and financial year changes with user, computer name and BUSY version |
One detail helps when you read the lines yourself. Voucher lines store a debit as a negative number and a credit as a positive number. The software also keeps an audit trail of added, edited and deleted vouchers. Its audit trail page describes it.
💾 How Does BUSY Back Up and Restore Data?
The software makes its own backup from the Company menu. The steps below come from the vendor's backup and restore FAQ, which names no file extension for the backup.
| Task | Where in BUSY |
|---|---|
| Manual backup | Company > Backup Data. Pick the company, enter the super user name and password, then choose All F.Y. or Selected F.Y. |
| Scheduled backup | Administration > Configuration > Backup Configuration. Set a folder path, with a different path for each weekday if needed |
| Restore a backup | Company > Restore Data. With Overwrite set to No, BUSY creates a new company and leaves the existing one |
| Open a copied company folder | Company > Set Data Directory, then select the data folder |
The vendor also offers the BUSY Agent. This small program sits in the BUSYwin folder. It runs scheduled backups to a local folder or to Google Drive. Its steps are on BUSY's data retrieval page.
⚠️ Why is BUSY Data Not Showing?
Each row below comes from BUSY's own help pages. Most cases come down to the data directory or a missing backup.
| What you see | Cause and fix given by BUSY |
|---|---|
| Another company's data, or a company missing from the list | The data directory points to the wrong folder. Set it to the folder that holds the company folders (company access FAQ) |
| Vouchers or entries missing | Use Company > Restore Data, select the backup folder and choose whether to override the existing data (data corruption FAQ) |
| Company file damaged | Restore a recent backup. Without one, BUSY support repairs the file and says repair is a paid service |
Working on a copy is safe in all three cases. Copy the company folder first, then try the fix on the copy.
📂 How Do You Open a BUSY Data File?
Pick the method that matches the files you hold and the software on your PC.
- With BUSY installed. Open the Company menu and choose Set Data Directory. Select the data folder, then open the company with Open Company.
- With a BUSY backup. Use Company > Restore Data and keep Overwrite set to No. The restored company is created beside the existing one.
- Without the software. Univik BUSY Data Viewer is part of Univik BUSY Data Recovery Toolkit. The viewer reads company folders on a Windows PC with no BUSY installed. The reader never writes to the source, so the originals stay as they were.
Microsoft's tools do not read these files as ordinary Access databases. A Power BI community thread reports that Power BI has no connector for .bds files. The Access connector fails on them too.
Univik BUSY Data Converter moves the data into other programs. It saves a company as Excel, CSV, JSON or PDF. Univik BUSY Data Forensic Analyzer suits audits and investigations. The analyzer reads the same folders read-only and lists edited and deleted vouchers.
The software's own export has a different job. It saves one report at a time to Excel with Alt+E, as its export FAQ explains. Its XML export sits under Administration > Data Export Import. This vendor page describes it as useful only for moving data from BUSY to BUSY.
⚔️ How Do BUSY Files Compare?
| File | What it holds | Made by | Opens in |
|---|---|---|---|
| .bds | Company settings and one database per financial year | BUSY 21 (checked by Univik) | The software or a data reader |
| .mdb | The same data in the older file name | Older versions | The software or a data reader |
| BUSY backup | A copy of one company, all years or selected years | Company > Backup Data | Company > Restore Data |
| XML export | Masters or transactions | Administration > Data Export Import | BUSY only, per the vendor |
| Excel export | One report | Alt+E in a report | Excel |
The XML and Excel rows follow the vendor's own documentation.
❓ BUSY Data File Questions
A .bds file is a data file of BUSY Accounting Software. In the version 21 company folders that Univik checked, each .bds file is a Microsoft Access Jet 4 database with a renamed extension. One file holds the company settings and one file holds each financial year.
db.bds is the company configuration file inside a BUSY company folder such as COMP0001. It stores the company name, GSTIN, PAN, the financial year start, the user list and the user logs. The vouchers are not in this file. They sit in the year files.
The BUSY file db12022.bds is the financial year file for 2022-23. The number after db1 is the calendar year in which the financial year starts, so db12023.bds holds 2023-24. Each year file also carries a copy of the masters.
A BUSY .bds file starts with the Microsoft Access Jet 4 signature, so the layout is an Access one. It does not open like a normal Access file. A Power BI community thread reports that Power BI has no connector for .bds files. The Access connector fails on them too.
BUSY stores its data in the data directory set inside the software. Each company sits in its own folder, such as COMP0001, inside that directory. To point the software at another folder, use Company > Set Data Directory and select the data folder, not the company folder.
Not directly. Excel does not read the file as a workbook or as an Access database. The software exports one report at a time to Excel with Alt+E. Univik BUSY Data Recovery Toolkit saves a whole company to Excel, CSV, JSON or PDF.
Use a reader that understands the layout. Univik BUSY Data Recovery Toolkit opens company folders on a Windows PC with no BUSY installed. It reads the files without changing them.
In BUSY, open the Company menu and choose Backup Data. Pick the company, enter the user name and password if asked, then choose All F.Y. or Selected F.Y. and click OK. To restore, use Company > Restore Data and keep Overwrite set to No to leave an existing company untouched.
📝 BUSY Data Files in Summary
- .bds files are Access Jet 4 databases with a BUSY extension
- .mdb files come from older BUSY versions
- db.bds holds settings and users
- db12022.bds holds the financial year 2022-23
- Each company sits in a COMPxxxx folder
- Set the data directory to the data folder, not the company folder
- Restore with Overwrite set to No to keep the existing company
- Copy the whole folder before you move it
Open a BUSY company folder without BUSY: Univik BUSY Data Viewer →
Page review: Nick Rogers Univik founder
Checked 11 Oct 2026
Nick Rogers read this page and approved it on 11 October 2026. File layout facts come from the checks Leena Taylor Paul ran on version 21 company folders. Menu steps and error causes come from the vendor's own help pages, linked where they first appear.