IT for Anchorage accounting firms.

Tax season is not the time to discover your file server is dying

Accounting firms have a particular IT problem. For most of the year, the systems work fine and nobody pays attention to them. Then somewhere between mid-January and April 15th, you suddenly need every workstation, every printer, every internet connection, and every shared file to work flawlessly under load. The file server that has been quietly losing a disk since November becomes a five-alarm fire. The QuickBooks file that has been gradually corrupting suddenly will not open. The remote-access setup nobody used since last April does not work for the new staff person you onboarded in February. We do the work that prevents this in October, not in April.

Software and systems we already support

• QuickBooks Desktop on Windows Server — multi-user file sharing, database server mode, hosted on a properly-spec'd Windows Server with shadow copies and tested backups.
• QuickBooks Online — for firms moving to the cloud. Secure access, MFA enforcement, audit logging.
• Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace — both, with the security hardening that the IRS Publication 4557 expects of small accounting firms holding taxpayer data.
• Secure document portals — for client document exchange that does not involve unencrypted email attachments.
• Encrypted email and email security — Microsoft 365 sensitivity labels, Google Workspace S/MIME, anti-phishing rules tuned for the kind of attacks accounting firms get during tax season.
• Endpoint encryption — BitLocker on every workstation that touches a tax return. Required by IRS Publication 4557, and a basic professional standard either way.
• Multi-factor authentication everywhere — on email, file shares, QuickBooks Online, and remote access. The IRS-recommended baseline.
• Audit logging — who accessed what, when. Both for IRS-style oversight and for any internal investigation that might come up.

What we do for accounting firm clients

• QuickBooks Desktop server administration and tested backups
• Pre-tax-season load testing and capacity planning every October
• Secure remote access for staff working from home or client sites
• Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace security hardening to IRS Pub 4557 expectations
• Endpoint encryption and MFA enforcement on every device that touches taxpayer data
• Email security tuned for the phishing and impersonation attacks that target accounting firms
• Secure document portal setup for client file exchange
• Daily helpdesk so partners and staff are not troubleshooting their own printer at 9pm in March