Reducing IT Downtime for an Accounting Firm

“We were paying for IT support by the hour, but every time something broke it cost us half a day of billable time across the whole office.”

The Challenge

A 22-person accounting firm in Mississauga had been running on a break-fix model for seven years. They called an IT contractor when something broke, paid an hourly rate, and hoped for the best. During tax season — their highest-revenue period — IT failures were costing the firm thousands of dollars in lost billable hours and staff overtime.

In the 12 months before engaging ADDER, the firm experienced:

• 3 server-related outages lasting more than 2 hours each
• 1 ransomware attempt (caught by antivirus, but it triggered a full-day lockdown)
• Recurring issues with a network printer that consumed 40+ hours of staff time to work around

Their file server was running Windows Server 2012 R2, past end of extended support. Backups were running to a single external drive that had not been tested for recovery in over two years.

What We Did

ADDER onboarded the firm under our Managed IT — Professional tier. In the first 30 days we:

• Migrated the file server to a current Windows Server environment on updated hardware
• Deployed automated cloud backup with weekly recovery testing
• Rolled out endpoint detection and response (EDR) across all 22 workstations
• Standardized patch management — OS and application updates now run on a scheduled cycle, not ad hoc

We also replaced the problem network printer with a supported model and reconfigured the print server, resolving the recurring issue permanently in under two hours.

Monthly reporting gives the managing partner a clear view of ticket volume, response times, and system health — replacing the previous model where the firm had no visibility until something broke.

The Outcome

In the 8 months since onboarding, the firm has experienced zero unplanned outages lasting more than 20 minutes. The ransomware risk that concerned them is now addressed by layered protection rather than luck. Their first tax season under managed IT was, in the managing partner's words, "the smoothest in a decade."

The cost of managed IT is less than what two of their previous break-fix incidents cost in a single year.