7 Signs Your Business Has Outgrown Break-Fix IT

Each sign below has a test you can check against invoices, your calendar or your Microsoft 365 admin centre. The thresholds are our working rules of thumb from support work, not industry standards. Adjust them to your business, but write down the answer to each test before you talk to any provider, including us.

If you fail three or more, read the break-fix vs managed comparison and run the 12-month calculation there.

Test: list the last 12 monthly IT invoices. If the highest month is more than three times the median month, your spending is driven by emergencies rather than plans.

Next step: tag each large invoice with its cause. If the same cause appears twice (a server, the firewall, one person's laptop), that is a maintenance gap, not bad luck.

Test: count every event last quarter where more than one person could not work for more than an hour. Multiply people by hours. Above about 20 lost staff-hours a quarter in a small office, the downtime probably costs more than the IT invoices.

Next step: for each event, write down how long it took before anyone started working on it. Waiting time is the part break-fix does nothing about.

Test: ask whoever handles IT for the date of the last successful test restore and how long it took. If the answer is 'never' or 'I think it works', you do not know whether you have a backup.

Next step: restore one folder and one full mailbox this week. Our cloud backup guide explains what Microsoft 365 keeps on its own and what it does not.

See how our managed IT plans are structured and our managed IT support practice, or go straight to IT support across the GTA.

Test: open the Microsoft 365 admin centre, go to Roles, and count the Global Administrators. Microsoft recommends fewer than five. If former staff or a past contractor are on the list, or you cannot sign in to look, this is a fail.

Next step: see privileged admin accounts and fix it this week whatever model you choose.

Test: pick three computers and check the date of the last installed update and whether a restart is pending. Check the firewall and any on-premise server too. Anything older than 45 days fails.

Next step: decide who is responsible for patches and how they will report it. Under break-fix the answer is usually 'no one'.

Test: compare your staff list against active accounts in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, your accounting software and any shared passwords. One active account for someone who has left is a fail.

Next step: use the offboarding checklist. In our Microsoft 365 clean-up for a fire and security company, former employees were still receiving company mail through distribution groups years after leaving. It is common and easy to miss.

Test: find your last cyber insurance application or any client security questionnaire. If you ticked 'yes' to MFA, backups or patching without evidence, or left questions blank, you fail.

Next step: the cyber insurance readiness checklist lists what underwriters usually ask for. A wrong 'yes' on an application can matter later if you make a claim.

Zero to two fails: break-fix plus a short annual check-up is probably enough. Three to four: you need someone accountable for maintenance, which can be a managed provider, a part-time internal person or a co-managed arrangement. Five or more: the gaps are already costing you; fix tests 3, 4 and 6 first because they cause the worst incidents.