{ "name": "Advanced IT Support Knowledge Base", "description": "Answers about managed IT services and IT support for small businesses in Jacksonville, St. Augustine, Orange Park, Green Cove Springs and Northeast Florida.", "publisher": { "name": "Advanced IT Support", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net", "telephone": "+1-904-204-6870", "email": "support@advancedits.net", "address": "4237 Salisbury Road, Suite 208, Jacksonville, FL", "areaServed": [ "Jacksonville FL", "Duval County FL", "St. Augustine FL", "St. Johns County FL", "Orange Park FL", "Green Cove Springs FL", "Clay County FL", "Fernandina Beach FL", "Nassau County FL" ] }, "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/", "articleCount": 196, "topicCount": 21, "license": "Content owned by Advanced IT Support. Attribution requested when quoted.", "topics": [ { "id": "pricing", "group": "Choosing an IT provider", "title": "Pricing and contracts", "summary": "What it costs, how it is billed, and what you are signing.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/pricing", "articles": [ { "slug": "how-much-does-managed-it-cost-and-how-is-it-billed", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-much-does-managed-it-cost-and-how-is-it-billed", "question": "How much does managed IT cost, and how is it billed?", "shortAnswer": "A monthly base fee for your business plus a per-user amount, quoted after we look at your environment.", "answer": "We price on a floor plus per-user model. There is a monthly base that covers the infrastructure side of your business (servers, firewall, network, the tools we run) and a per-user amount that covers the people. That structure keeps small offices from paying enterprise minimums and keeps growing offices from getting a surprise bill.\n\nBackup sits partly in each. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace backup is included in the per-user amount. Server backup is a separate line, quoted per server, with up to 1 TB of backup storage included for each one. A business with no servers should not be paying toward somebody else's.\n\nWe do not publish a single number because a ten-person law office and a ten-person manufacturer are not the same job. We will give you a fixed monthly price in writing after a short assessment, and that price does not move because you had a bad month for tickets.", "related": [ "what-is-included-in-the-monthly-fee-and-what-gets-billed-separately", "how-is-backup-priced", "do-you-handle-backups-and-how-do-you-know-they-work", "is-your-pricing-flat-rate-or-are-there-hidden-costs" ] }, { "slug": "what-is-included-in-the-monthly-fee-and-what-gets-billed-separately", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-is-included-in-the-monthly-fee-and-what-gets-billed-separately", "question": "What is included in the monthly fee, and what gets billed separately?", "shortAnswer": "All day to day support and management is included, along with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace backup. Server backup, projects, and hardware are quoted separately.", "answer": "Included in every managed agreement:\n\n- Unlimited remote help desk for your users\n\n- Proactive monitoring and patch management on workstations and servers\n\n- Next generation antivirus and endpoint protection\n\n- Firewall management\n\n- Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace administration\n\n- Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace backup, with monthly test restores\n\n- Network management and documentation\n\nBilled separately: server backup, which is quoted per server and includes up to 1 TB of backup storage each; hardware and software you buy; one time projects such as a server replacement, an office move, or a migration; and third party subscriptions we pass through. All of those get a quote up front, not a surprise invoice.\n\nServer backup is the one people are most often surprised by, so we say it plainly during the quote rather than leaving it in the fine print. It is a real cost with real storage behind it, and pretending otherwise just means the number changes later.", "related": [ "is-your-pricing-flat-rate-or-are-there-hidden-costs", "do-you-handle-backups-and-how-do-you-know-they-work", "is-security-included-or-is-it-an-add-on", "how-much-does-managed-it-cost-and-how-is-it-billed" ] }, { "slug": "is-there-a-long-term-contract-and-how-do-i-get-out-of-it", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/is-there-a-long-term-contract-and-how-do-i-get-out-of-it", "question": "Is there a long term contract, and how do I get out of it?", "shortAnswer": "Every agreement is month to month with 30 days notice. No term commitment, no early termination fee.", "answer": "We do not use three year agreements. If we are doing our job you will not want to leave, and if we are not, a contract should not be what keeps you here. Give us 30 days notice and we will hand off cleanly.\n\nAsk every provider you talk to what their term is and what the early termination penalty looks like. It is the single most common thing buyers regret not reading.", "related": [ "if-we-are-not-satisfied-in-the-first-90-days-are-we-locked-in", "what-were-your-actual-response-times-last-month", "if-we-stay-hourly-do-we-go-to-the-back-of-the-line", "what-happens-if-you-miss-your-response-commitments" ] }, { "slug": "are-there-onboarding-or-setup-fees", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/are-there-onboarding-or-setup-fees", "question": "Are there onboarding or setup fees?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Onboarding is quoted as a one time project fee.", "answer": "Onboarding is real work: deploying our tools to every machine, documenting your environment, standing up backups, reviewing security settings, and cleaning up whatever was left behind. We charge for it as a fixed fee project rather than burying it in the first few months of your monthly rate.\n\nYou will see that number before you sign anything. Be careful with providers who advertise free onboarding, because it is usually recovered somewhere less visible.", "related": [ "is-your-pricing-flat-rate-or-are-there-hidden-costs", "how-is-project-work-priced-for-managed-clients", "can-we-start-hourly-and-move-to-managed-later", "how-does-onboarding-work-for-a-multi-office-company" ] }, { "slug": "what-happens-to-my-price-if-i-add-or-lose-employees", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-happens-to-my-price-if-i-add-or-lose-employees", "question": "What happens to my price if I add or lose employees?", "shortAnswer": "The per-user portion adjusts. The base stays put.", "answer": "Add three people and you pay for three more users. Lose three and it comes back off. We true up rather than holding you to a headcount you no longer have. Seasonal businesses should tell us about the swing during the quote so we structure it correctly from day one.", "related": [ "do-you-support-seasonal-businesses-whose-headcount-changes", "how-much-does-managed-it-cost-and-how-is-it-billed", "we-hire-seasonal-help-how-easily-can-we-scale-licenses-up-and-down", "is-security-included-or-is-it-an-add-on" ] }, { "slug": "is-after-hours-or-emergency-work-extra", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/is-after-hours-or-emergency-work-extra", "question": "Is after hours or emergency work extra?", "shortAnswer": "Emergencies for managed clients are covered. Scheduled after hours project work is quoted.", "answer": "If your business is down at 9pm, we are not starting a billing conversation. That is what the agreement is for.\n\nPlanned work that happens outside business hours because you asked for it to (a cutover on a Saturday so nobody loses a workday) is scheduled project work and is quoted in advance.", "related": [ "can-you-support-us-outside-normal-business-hours-since-we-see-emergenc", "how-is-project-work-priced-for-managed-clients", "do-you-charge-extra-to-come-to-st-augustine", "is-your-pricing-flat-rate-or-are-there-hidden-costs" ] }, { "slug": "how-is-project-work-priced-for-managed-clients", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-is-project-work-priced-for-managed-clients", "question": "How is project work priced for managed clients?", "shortAnswer": "Managed clients get a lower project rate than our standard hourly rate, and both are stated in your proposal.", "answer": "We publish both rates to our clients so nothing is ambiguous when a project comes up. Managed clients get the reduced project rate on planned work, and most projects are quoted as a fixed price anyway so you are approving a number, not an estimate.", "related": [ "is-your-pricing-flat-rate-or-are-there-hidden-costs", "what-is-your-hourly-rate-if-we-just-want-occasional-help", "is-after-hours-or-emergency-work-extra", "how-is-backup-priced" ] }, { "slug": "is-your-pricing-flat-rate-or-are-there-hidden-costs", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/is-your-pricing-flat-rate-or-are-there-hidden-costs", "question": "Is your pricing a flat rate, or are there costs that show up later?", "shortAnswer": "Flat monthly for support and management. Server backup, hardware, and projects are quoted separately, and we tell you which is which before the work starts.", "answer": "Covered by the monthly fee, with no per incident charge: unlimited remote help desk, monitoring, patch management, endpoint protection, firewall management, Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace administration, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace backup with monthly test restores, network management, new employee setup, and after hours emergencies. Onsite labor is covered for managed clients, with a flat trip charge per visit and no trip charge at our top tier.\n\nQuoted separately and never buried: server backup, which is priced per server and includes up to 1 TB of backup storage each; hardware; software you purchase; third party subscriptions we pass through; and one time projects such as a server replacement, an office move, or a migration. Those are priced before work begins, usually as a fixed amount. Managed clients also get a lower project rate than our standard hourly rate, and both numbers appear in your proposal.\n\nWhen you compare providers, the exclusions are where the difference hides. Look specifically for per incident onsite charges, new user setup fees, after hours surcharges, and language like \"included up to a set number of hours per month.\" A cheaper base rate with those attached usually costs more by March.", "related": [ "what-is-included-in-the-monthly-fee-and-what-gets-billed-separately", "how-is-project-work-priced-for-managed-clients", "is-support-remote-only-or-will-someone-come-onsite", "do-you-handle-backups-and-how-do-you-know-they-work" ] }, { "slug": "if-we-are-not-satisfied-in-the-first-90-days-are-we-locked-in", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/if-we-are-not-satisfied-in-the-first-90-days-are-we-locked-in", "question": "If onboarding goes badly or we are not satisfied early on, are we locked in?", "shortAnswer": "There is nothing to be locked into. Every agreement is month to month with 30 days notice, from day one.", "answer": "We do not ask for a multi year term, so we do not need to offer a 90 day escape clause from one. If you are unhappy in month two, give us 30 days notice. We transfer your documentation, credentials, and administrative ownership on the way out, and there is no early termination fee.\n\nWe think that is a stronger commitment than a satisfaction guarantee bolted onto a three year contract, because it still applies in month fourteen and month thirty. A provider who has to keep earning the relationship every month behaves differently from one who has you signed for three years.\n\nThe one thing that is not refundable is the onboarding project fee. That work is real, and the results stay with you: documentation you own, security gaps closed, and a cleaned up environment that goes with you wherever you land.\n\nWhen you evaluate other providers, read the termination clause before the pricing page. It tells you more about how they operate than the marketing does.", "related": [ "is-there-a-long-term-contract-and-how-do-i-get-out-of-it", "if-we-part-ways-what-do-we-get-back-and-how-hard-is-it", "what-were-your-actual-response-times-last-month", "can-we-still-administer-our-own-systems" ] }, { "slug": "where-do-small-businesses-waste-money-on-it", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/where-do-small-businesses-waste-money-on-it", "question": "Where do businesses like ours waste money on IT?", "shortAnswer": "Licenses nobody audits, hardware bought in emergencies, overlapping tools, and cheap equipment bought three times.", "answer": "The same handful of things, at almost every business we take over:\n\n- Licenses for people who left. Seats accumulate because nobody audits them. We have found businesses paying for a third more users than they employ.\n\n- Overlapping tools. Backup running in three places, two antivirus products fighting each other, a security product that duplicates something already included in your Microsoft licensing and switched off.\n\n- Reactive hardware. Emergency replacements cost more than planned ones and always land in your worst week.\n\n- Consumer gear in a business. A cheap switch or access point gets bought three times and eats labor every time.\n\n- A plan sized for a bigger company. Paying for capability that does not apply at your scale.\n\nWe look for all of it during the assessment, and the savings sometimes cover a real portion of the monthly fee. Every provider claims they will save you money. Ask them to name exactly where.", "related": [ "tell-us-what-you-could-sell-us-that-we-do-not-need", "we-hire-seasonal-help-how-easily-can-we-scale-licenses-up-and-down", "will-you-help-us-plan-and-budget-for-hardware-and-upgrades", "what-is-included-in-the-monthly-fee-and-what-gets-billed-separately" ] }, { "slug": "have-you-ever-underquoted-a-job-and-what-happened", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/have-you-ever-underquoted-a-job-and-what-happened", "question": "Have you ever underquoted a job? What happened?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. When we got the scope wrong we absorb it, and you hear about it as soon as we know.", "answer": "Anybody who has done this for years and says no is either new or not being straight with you. It happens on projects where something surfaces that could not be seen from outside: undocumented cabling, a system that turns out to be load bearing, a vendor dependency nobody mentioned.\n\nOur rule is simple. If we misjudged the scope, that is ours to eat. If the scope genuinely changed or we found something new, we stop, tell you what we found, and give you a revised number before continuing. You do not get a surprise on the final invoice.\n\nAsk any provider this question. How a company handles being wrong is something you will eventually need to know, and it is better to hear the answer before you hire them.", "related": [ "what-happens-when-you-break-something", "what-do-you-do-when-you-do-not-know-the-answer", "how-do-you-handle-projects-versus-day-to-day-support", "are-you-going-to-be-difficult-about-the-mess-you-find" ] }, { "slug": "how-is-backup-priced", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-is-backup-priced", "question": "How is backup priced?", "shortAnswer": "Cloud data is in the per-user fee. Servers are a separate line each, including up to 1 TB of backup storage per server.", "answer": "Backup is priced in two parts, because it protects two different things that cost very different amounts to protect.\n\n- Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace data: included in the per-user fee for managed clients. Mail, files, SharePoint, OneDrive or Drive, and Teams data for every user on your agreement.\n\n- Servers: quoted separately, per server, with up to 1 TB of backup storage included for each one. No servers means nothing on this line. Four servers means four lines.\n\nWe price it this way on purpose. Rolling server backup into a per-user rate means clients with no servers quietly subsidize the ones with several, and it buries what becomes a real cost the day you add a server. You should be able to see what you are paying for.\n\nIf a server outgrows its included terabyte, additional storage is quoted. You will hear about it at a review while there is still room, not after.\n\nHourly and monitoring-only clients do not get backup by default. It is available as a separate purchase and we recommend it, because the businesses that call us hourly are usually the ones with the least protection already in place.", "related": [ "do-you-handle-backups-and-how-do-you-know-they-work", "how-much-does-managed-it-cost-and-how-is-it-billed", "what-is-included-in-the-monthly-fee-and-what-gets-billed-separately", "is-your-pricing-flat-rate-or-are-there-hidden-costs" ] } ] }, { "id": "breakfix", "group": "Choosing an IT provider", "title": "Break-fix or monthly agreement", "summary": "Whether you need an agreement at all, and how to tell using your own numbers.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/breakfix", "articles": [ { "slug": "do-you-do-hourly-break-fix-work-or-only-monthly-agreements", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-do-hourly-break-fix-work-or-only-monthly-agreements", "question": "Do you do hourly break-fix work, or only monthly agreements?", "shortAnswer": "Both, and we will tell you honestly which one fits your situation.", "answer": "Some businesses genuinely do not need a monthly agreement yet. A two or three person office running entirely in the cloud, with nothing that stops the business if it breaks for a day, is fine on an hourly basis. We work with clients like that and it is not a lesser relationship.\n\nWhere hourly stops making sense is the point where downtime costs real money, or where nobody at all is handling security. We would rather tell you that up front than sell you a plan you do not need and lose your trust three months later.\n\nOne thing to be clear about: backup is not included with hourly or monitoring-only arrangements. It can be purchased separately and we will quote it, but by default nobody is backing you up under those arrangements, and you should know that rather than assume otherwise.", "related": [ "if-we-stay-hourly-do-we-go-to-the-back-of-the-line", "do-you-handle-backups-and-how-do-you-know-they-work", "what-is-the-difference-between-managed-it-services-and-break-fix-it-su", "talk-me-out-of-just-calling-you-when-something-breaks" ] }, { "slug": "talk-me-out-of-just-calling-you-when-something-breaks", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/talk-me-out-of-just-calling-you-when-something-breaks", "question": "Talk me out of just calling you when something breaks.", "shortAnswer": "Two reasons: nobody is watching security between the calls, and the bills arrive in lumps exactly when you can least afford them.", "answer": "Break-fix has an incentive problem built into it. Your provider earns only when something is wrong, which means nobody is patching, monitoring, verifying backups, or watching for a compromised mailbox in between. Those are precisely the tasks that prevent expensive events, and in an hourly relationship nobody is paying anyone to do them.\n\nThe second reason is financial shape rather than total. Hourly costs arrive in lumps and they arrive at bad times, because equipment fails when it is working hardest. A server dying in your busiest week is a large invoice on your worst possible week. A monthly fee is a smaller, predictable number you can plan around.\n\nThe honest counterargument: if your business can lose a day without much harm, and you already have tested backups and multi factor authentication in place, hourly is defensible. If that describes you, we will say so.\n\nNote the condition in that sentence. Backup is not included in an hourly arrangement, so unless you have bought it separately or set it up yourself, that counterargument does not apply to you.", "related": [ "what-is-the-difference-between-managed-it-services-and-break-fix-it-su", "do-you-do-hourly-break-fix-work-or-only-monthly-agreements", "do-i-need-a-managed-it-provider-or-just-someone-to-call-when-things-br", "where-do-small-businesses-waste-money-on-it" ] }, { "slug": "what-is-your-hourly-rate-if-we-just-want-occasional-help", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-is-your-hourly-rate-if-we-just-want-occasional-help", "question": "What is your hourly rate if we just want occasional help?", "shortAnswer": "We will give you the number on the phone. There is an hour minimum, a longer minimum for locations farther out, and a higher rate for after hours emergencies.", "answer": "We quote hourly rates openly, including to people who are not going to sign an agreement. Before you compare providers on the rate alone, understand what surrounds it: nearly every hourly rate has a minimum attached, and travel is handled differently at every company. Ours carries a one hour minimum, a longer minimum for locations well outside Jacksonville, and a higher emergency rate for after hours work that is not covered by an agreement.\n\nFor comparison, managed clients pay no hourly labor for onsite support at all, and get a reduced rate on project work. For a business that calls more than a few times a year, that gap is usually what decides it.", "related": [ "do-you-charge-extra-to-come-to-st-augustine", "how-is-project-work-priced-for-managed-clients", "is-your-pricing-flat-rate-or-are-there-hidden-costs", "can-you-support-us-outside-normal-business-hours-since-we-see-emergenc" ] }, { "slug": "if-we-stay-hourly-do-we-go-to-the-back-of-the-line", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/if-we-stay-hourly-do-we-go-to-the-back-of-the-line", "question": "If we stay hourly, do we go to the back of the line behind your contract clients?", "shortAnswer": "Honestly, yes. Managed clients have a contractual response commitment and hourly clients do not.", "answer": "We would rather say this plainly now than have you discover it during an outage. Clients with agreements have response times we are contractually obligated to meet, and their monitoring alerts reach us automatically whether or not anyone has called. Hourly work is scheduled around those commitments.\n\nIn practice that usually means same day or next day rather than within the hour, and after hours emergency coverage is not guaranteed at all without an agreement.\n\nAny provider who tells you their hourly clients receive identical priority to their contract clients is either not being straight with you, or is not honoring the agreements they have signed. Neither is reassuring.", "related": [ "do-you-do-hourly-break-fix-work-or-only-monthly-agreements", "is-there-a-long-term-contract-and-how-do-i-get-out-of-it", "what-happens-if-our-server-goes-down-during-appointments", "can-you-support-us-outside-normal-business-hours-since-we-see-emergenc" ] }, { "slug": "can-we-start-hourly-and-move-to-managed-later", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-we-start-hourly-and-move-to-managed-later", "question": "Can we start hourly and move to an agreement later without paying setup twice?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Discovery and documentation we have already done gets credited against onboarding.", "answer": "Plenty of relationships start with one project or a handful of service calls. If you move to an agreement later, we do not charge you again for discovery and documentation already completed. The onboarding fee is adjusted for whatever is already in place.\n\nStarting hourly is a reasonable way to see how we actually work before committing to anything. Since our agreements are month to month regardless, the commitment is modest in either direction.", "related": [ "do-you-do-hourly-break-fix-work-or-only-monthly-agreements", "are-there-onboarding-or-setup-fees", "if-we-stay-hourly-do-we-go-to-the-back-of-the-line", "is-your-pricing-flat-rate-or-are-there-hidden-costs" ] }, { "slug": "how-do-we-know-a-monthly-agreement-is-worth-it-for-us", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-do-we-know-a-monthly-agreement-is-worth-it-for-us", "question": "How do we know a monthly agreement is worth it for us specifically?", "shortAnswer": "Add up what last year actually cost you, including the hours you and your staff spent on it.", "answer": "Do this before you talk to any provider, including us. Pull last year's IT invoices, then add:\n\n- Hours you personally spent on computer problems, valued at what your time is actually worth\n\n- Hours your staff spent, especially whoever has quietly become the unofficial IT person\n\n- Any time the business could not operate, at what an hour of downtime costs you\n\n- Anything you have been putting off because you did not know who to call\n\nMost owners are surprised by the result, because the invoices turn out to be the smallest line. The time is the expensive part and it never shows up on a bill.\n\nThen ask what an agreement would cost. If the numbers do not justify it, we will tell you so. We would rather have an hourly client who trusts us than a managed client who resents the invoice every month.", "related": [ "do-you-do-hourly-break-fix-work-or-only-monthly-agreements", "when-should-we-stop-relying-on-the-owner-or-office-manager-for-it", "is-security-included-or-is-it-an-add-on", "what-is-your-hourly-rate-if-we-just-want-occasional-help" ] } ] }, { "id": "support", "group": "Choosing an IT provider", "title": "Support and response times", "summary": "What actually happens when something breaks.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/support", "articles": [ { "slug": "how-fast-will-someone-respond-when-something-breaks", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-fast-will-someone-respond-when-something-breaks", "question": "How fast will someone respond when something breaks?", "shortAnswer": "One hour for business down issues, four business hours for standard issues, next business day for low priority requests.", "answer": "Response targets are tiered by how badly it hurts:\n\n- Critical, business down: one hour. Server offline, no internet, email down company wide, suspected security incident.\n\n- Standard: four business hours. One user cannot work, a printer is down, an application is misbehaving.\n\n- Low priority: next business day. New user setup, software requests, questions.\n\nThose targets are in the agreement, not just on a website.", "related": [ "what-counts-as-a-critical-outage-for-a-field-service-business", "what-happens-if-our-server-goes-down-during-appointments", "how-fast-can-you-get-a-new-employee-set-up", "we-operate-24-7-what-does-your-after-hours-support-actually-look-like" ] }, { "slug": "do-i-get-a-dedicated-technician-or-whoever-answers", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-i-get-a-dedicated-technician-or-whoever-answers", "question": "Do I get a dedicated technician, or whoever answers?", "shortAnswer": "You get a small team that knows your environment, not a rotating queue of strangers.", "answer": "We are small enough that the person who picks up your call has probably been in your building. Day to day tickets are handled by our help desk, and your account has a primary technician who knows your setup and sits in on your reviews.\n\nThe tradeoff of a very large provider is depth of bench. The tradeoff of a very small one is coverage. We staff so that at least two people know your environment well, which is the answer to the next question.", "related": [ "how-many-clients-does-one-of-your-technicians-carry", "can-i-meet-the-person-who-would-work-on-our-account", "what-happens-if-my-main-technician-quits-or-is-on-vacation", "we-have-someone-on-staff-who-handles-the-small-stuff" ] }, { "slug": "what-happens-if-my-main-technician-quits-or-is-on-vacation", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-happens-if-my-main-technician-quits-or-is-on-vacation", "question": "What happens if my main technician quits or is on vacation?", "shortAnswer": "Your environment is documented so anyone on our team can pick it up.", "answer": "Everything we manage for you lives in our documentation system: network layout, credentials, vendor contacts, how your line of business application is configured, what we did last time. That is deliberate. Knowledge that only lives in one technician's head is a risk to you, not just to us.", "related": [ "do-i-get-a-dedicated-technician-or-whoever-answers", "do-you-support-the-specific-software-my-business-runs-on", "our-office-manager-will-be-your-main-contact", "what-happens-to-our-it-if-our-one-tech-savvy-employee-leaves" ] }, { "slug": "are-you-available-nights-and-weekends", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/are-you-available-nights-and-weekends", "question": "Are you available nights and weekends?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, for emergencies, through our after hours line.", "answer": "Our phone system routes after hours calls to on call staff, and monitoring alerts reach us around the clock whether or not anyone at your office noticed the problem. A failed backup at 2am gets seen at 2am.", "related": [ "we-operate-24-7-what-does-your-after-hours-support-actually-look-like", "can-you-support-us-outside-normal-business-hours-since-we-see-emergenc", "do-you-offer-a-co-managed-option-if-we-hire-our-own-it-person", "if-we-stay-hourly-do-we-go-to-the-back-of-the-line" ] }, { "slug": "is-support-remote-only-or-will-someone-come-onsite", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/is-support-remote-only-or-will-someone-come-onsite", "question": "Is support remote only, or will someone come onsite?", "shortAnswer": "Both. We are local, and onsite labor is covered by your agreement.", "answer": "Most issues get resolved remotely because that is faster for you. When something needs hands, we drive. Managed clients do not pay hourly labor for onsite visits under their agreement, only a flat trip charge per visit, and our top tier includes onsite coverage without the trip charge.\n\nWe are based in Jacksonville and cover the surrounding area including St. Augustine, Green Cove Springs, Orange Park, and southeast Georgia.", "related": [ "do-you-charge-extra-to-come-to-st-augustine", "how-do-you-handle-onsite-support-that-far-north", "what-it-company-covers-clay-county-fl", "is-your-pricing-flat-rate-or-are-there-hidden-costs" ] }, { "slug": "how-do-i-submit-a-ticket-and-who-answers-the-phone", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-do-i-submit-a-ticket-and-who-answers-the-phone", "question": "How do I submit a ticket, and who answers the phone?", "shortAnswer": "Phone, email, or a support agent on your desktop. A real person answers.", "answer": "Your staff can call, send an email that opens a ticket automatically, or click the support icon we install on their machines. There is no portal login to remember, and there is no phone tree designed to make you give up.", "related": [ "how-do-you-measure-whether-clients-are-happy", "do-i-get-a-dedicated-technician-or-whoever-answers", "we-email-records-to-labs-and-specialists", "what-do-the-first-30-days-of-onboarding-look-like-for-a-contractor" ] }, { "slug": "what-happens-when-your-help-desk-cannot-fix-it", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-happens-when-your-help-desk-cannot-fix-it", "question": "What happens when your help desk cannot fix it?", "shortAnswer": "It escalates on a clock, not on whether a technician decides to give up.", "answer": "Most issues are resolved by the help desk. When something exceeds that, it moves to a senior technician, and the handoff is triggered by the ticket's age and severity rather than by someone eventually admitting they are stuck. That distinction matters, because the failure mode at a lot of providers is a junior tech quietly holding a ticket for four days.\n\nYou can also escalate it yourself. Say so and it moves. You should not have to be diplomatic about something that has been open too long.\n\nWorth asking any provider: what is the longest a ticket can sit before somebody senior looks at it, and who makes that call.", "related": [ "we-operate-24-7-what-does-your-after-hours-support-actually-look-like", "do-you-offer-someone-onsite-five-days-a-week", "what-do-you-do-when-you-do-not-know-the-answer", "the-server-goes-down-at-815-on-a-monday" ] }, { "slug": "how-fast-can-you-get-a-new-employee-set-up", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-fast-can-you-get-a-new-employee-set-up", "question": "How fast can you get a new employee set up, and is there a charge?", "shortAnswer": "Same day or next business day with notice, and it is included rather than billed per setup.", "answer": "Send us the name, the start date, what they need access to, and who they are similar to. \"Same as Dave\" is genuinely the fastest way to describe a permission set. The account, mailbox, permissions, and machine will be ready.\n\nHardware is the long pole. If the new hire needs a computer we do not have on hand, that is ordering and configuration time, so a week of notice helps. For clients who hire in bursts we keep a spare machine or two staged.\n\nNew user setup is covered by your agreement. Some providers bill per setup, which gets expensive fast if you hire seasonally, so ask specifically.", "related": [ "is-your-pricing-flat-rate-or-are-there-hidden-costs", "how-fast-will-someone-respond-when-something-breaks", "what-is-included-in-the-monthly-fee-and-what-gets-billed-separately", "can-you-set-up-a-new-computer-and-move-everything-over" ] }, { "slug": "who-do-we-call-if-the-problem-is-with-you", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/who-do-we-call-if-the-problem-is-with-you", "question": "Who do we call if the problem is with you rather than with our systems?", "shortAnswer": "The owner, directly, and it will not be awkward afterward.", "answer": "If your technician is unresponsive, something was handled badly, or you simply feel you are not getting what you pay for, that conversation goes to the owner rather than to the person you are unhappy with.\n\nWe are small enough that this is a real answer rather than a suggestion box. You will have the owner's direct contact from the first week, and using it does not make things weird afterward.\n\nWith larger providers, ask who specifically owns your relationship and whether that person has the authority to change anything. An account manager who can only apologize is not an escalation path.", "related": [ "will-you-treat-our-office-manager-the-way-you-treat-the-owner", "our-office-manager-will-be-your-main-contact", "can-our-field-techs-call-the-help-desk-directly", "do-i-get-a-dedicated-technician-or-whoever-answers" ] }, { "slug": "what-happens-if-you-miss-your-response-commitments", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-happens-if-you-miss-your-response-commitments", "question": "What happens if you miss your response commitments?", "shortAnswer": "You get told, not just apologized to, and repeated misses are a credit conversation rather than a scheduling excuse.", "answer": "Response performance is measured and reported to you, which means a miss shows up in your numbers whether or not anybody mentions it. That is the first and most important part, because at most providers you would never know.\n\nA single miss gets an explanation. A pattern is a service credit conversation and a staffing conversation, and we would rather have both than have you quietly start shopping.\n\nThe structural protection is stronger than a credit anyway. Your agreement is month to month with 30 days notice, so you are never stuck waiting out a term while performance slides. A credit on a contract you cannot leave is not much of a remedy.\n\nAsk other providers two things: how they define a response, and whether they will show you their misses or only their averages.", "related": [ "is-there-a-long-term-contract-and-how-do-i-get-out-of-it", "what-were-your-actual-response-times-last-month", "the-server-goes-down-at-815-on-a-monday", "if-we-stay-hourly-do-we-go-to-the-back-of-the-line" ] }, { "slug": "how-fast-is-access-removed-when-someone-leaves", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-fast-is-access-removed-when-someone-leaves", "question": "When somebody leaves, how fast is their access actually gone?", "shortAnswer": "Within minutes of you telling us, including active sessions. The delay is almost always in being told.", "answer": "Offboarding is the part of the process most businesses handle badly, and it is usually not a technical failure. It is that nobody told IT for a week.\n\nWhen you tell us, we disable the account, revoke active sessions and tokens rather than only changing the password, remove access to cloud services, wipe or remove company data from any enrolled mobile device, deal with the mailbox according to what you need retained, and free the license so you are not paying for someone who left in March. That is minutes of work, not a project.\n\nFor a planned departure, tell us the date and time in advance and we schedule it to the minute so access ends exactly when employment does. For a difficult departure, tell us before the conversation happens rather than after, and we will be ready to act while it is taking place.\n\nBuild the habit of telling us as part of the same routine that handles their final paycheck. The accounts we find still active at takeover belong to people who left years ago, and every one of them started with a good process that nobody triggered.", "related": [ "how-do-you-secure-tablets-and-phones-that-live-in-trucks", "can-you-remove-a-virus-or-do-i-need-a-new-computer", "can-you-support-an-organization-with-a-lot-of-volunteer-turnover", "what-do-you-always-find-in-the-first-two-weeks" ] } ] }, { "id": "fit", "group": "Choosing an IT provider", "title": "Fit and experience", "summary": "Whether we are the right size and the right shape for your business.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/fit", "articles": [ { "slug": "have-you-worked-with-businesses-my-size", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/have-you-worked-with-businesses-my-size", "question": "Have you worked with businesses my size?", "shortAnswer": "Small business is what we do, not a segment we tolerate.", "answer": "Our clients are mostly Northeast Florida businesses between roughly 5 and 100 employees: professional services, medical and dental practices, construction and trades, manufacturing, nonprofits, and local government adjacent organizations.\n\nIf you are a 500 seat enterprise with an internal IT department, we will tell you honestly that you want a different kind of partner.", "related": [ "do-you-work-with-dental-practices", "do-we-need-an-it-provider-if-we-only-have-eight-employees", "are-we-too-big-for-you", "do-you-support-orange-park-businesses" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-support-the-specific-software-my-business-runs-on", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-support-the-specific-software-my-business-runs-on", "question": "Do you support the specific software my business runs on?", "shortAnswer": "We support the environment it runs in and manage the vendor relationship for the application itself.", "answer": "Every industry has that one application everything depends on: the practice management system, the estimating software, the case management platform. We do not pretend to be the developer of it. What we do is keep the server, workstations, network, and backups underneath it healthy, and deal with that vendor's support on your behalf so your office manager is not the one sitting on hold.", "related": [ "do-you-support-veterinary-practice-management-software", "do-you-support-dentrix-eaglesoft-and-open-dental", "are-you-experienced-with-our-field-service-management-software", "who-owns-the-relationships-with-our-title-production-vendors" ] }, { "slug": "can-i-talk-to-some-of-your-current-clients", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-i-talk-to-some-of-your-current-clients", "question": "Can I talk to some of your current clients?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Ask, and we will connect you with clients in a similar situation to yours.", "answer": "We will try to give you references that look like you: similar size, similar industry, ideally someone who switched to us from another provider so you can hear what the transition was actually like.", "related": [ "can-you-take-over-from-our-current-jacksonville-it-provider", "what-is-the-first-step-if-we-want-to-talk", "how-do-you-handle-the-handoff-from-our-current-provider", "how-many-clients-does-one-of-your-technicians-carry" ] }, { "slug": "are-you-locally-owned", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/are-you-locally-owned", "question": "Are you locally owned?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Locally owned and operated in Jacksonville, not a branch of a national roll up.", "answer": "A lot of the IT providers in this market have been bought by private equity backed groups over the last few years. What usually follows is the local team getting thinner, support moving to a call center somewhere else, and prices being adjusted to hit someone else's targets.\n\nWe are independent. The owner answers the phone and is reachable by clients directly.", "related": [ "are-you-a-local-jacksonville-it-company-or-part-of-a-national-chain", "are-you-planning-to-sell-the-company", "who-provides-managed-it-services-in-jacksonville-fl", "who-do-we-call-if-the-problem-is-with-you" ] }, { "slug": "what-kinds-of-businesses-usually-come-to-you-and-why", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-kinds-of-businesses-usually-come-to-you-and-why", "question": "What kinds of businesses usually come to you, and why?", "shortAnswer": "Usually one of three situations.", "answer": "- Nobody in house is really an IT person. An office manager or the owner has been holding things together until something stopped working.\n\n- Something broke expensively. Extended downtime, a ransomware event, or a compromised email account that cost real money.\n\n- They outgrew what they had. The setup that worked at eight people does not work at twenty five.\n\nIf one of those sounds like you, the conversation is usually short and productive.", "related": [ "is-a-small-business-really-a-target-for-hackers", "do-we-need-an-it-provider-if-we-only-have-eight-employees", "have-you-worked-with-businesses-my-size", "do-you-offer-someone-onsite-five-days-a-week" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-offer-a-co-managed-option-if-we-hire-our-own-it-person", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-offer-a-co-managed-option-if-we-hire-our-own-it-person", "question": "If we hire our own IT person, do you offer a co-managed option?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Your person handles the day to day, we handle security, servers, escalation, and coverage when they are out.", "answer": "This comes up when a business is big enough to justify someone in house but not a whole department. A typical split: your person handles new hire setup, tablets and truck inventory, password resets, and the small daily requests. We handle security monitoring, patching, backups, the server and network, vendor escalation, projects, and coverage for nights, weekends, and vacations.\n\nIt works when the boundaries are written down and both sides have the same information. Your person gets access to our documentation and the tools we run, so they are not working blind, and we agree on exactly what gets handed to us and when. Without that, co-managed quietly becomes two parties each assuming the other handled it.\n\nIt also protects you from the single point of failure problem. Your IT person can take a vacation, and if they leave, the documentation and the tooling stay.", "related": [ "are-you-available-nights-and-weekends", "we-have-someone-on-staff-who-handles-the-small-stuff", "how-do-you-handle-projects-versus-day-to-day-support", "is-outsourced-it-cheaper-than-hiring-someone-in-house" ] }, { "slug": "our-office-manager-will-be-your-main-contact", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/our-office-manager-will-be-your-main-contact", "question": "Our office manager will be your main contact, not me. How does that work?", "shortAnswer": "We treat them as the day to day decision maker, with whatever spending authority you set, and we do not go around them.", "answer": "In most of the businesses we work with, the office manager is the person who actually deals with us. Often that is the owner's spouse. They open tickets, approve routine work, and get direct answers without relaying everything through the owner, which is the whole point of handing it off.\n\nYou set the boundary. The usual arrangement is that the office manager approves anything routine, and anything above an agreed dollar amount comes to the owner. We follow whatever you tell us, and we will not quietly route around your office manager to get a faster yes.\n\nWe also do not steamroll how they work. If someone's process is unusual but functioning, it stays unless there is a security or reliability reason to change it, and then we explain the reason to them rather than over their head.", "related": [ "will-you-treat-our-office-manager-the-way-you-treat-the-owner", "when-should-we-stop-relying-on-the-owner-or-office-manager-for-it", "who-do-we-call-if-the-problem-is-with-you", "what-can-you-spend-on-our-behalf-without-asking" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-actually-have-someone-who-understands-networking", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-actually-have-someone-who-understands-networking", "question": "Do you actually have someone who understands networking, or does everything become “reboot it”?", "shortAnswer": "Networking and security are in-house work for us, not something we escalate away.", "answer": "Rebooting is a legitimate first step and a terrible ceiling. Firewalls, VLANs, routing, wireless design, and VPNs are routine work here rather than a rare event we outsource.\n\nIt shows up in specific places: separating payment or camera traffic from your office network, designing wireless coverage for a shop or warehouse instead of adding another access point and hoping, and chasing an intermittent circuit problem with the ISP so you are not the one sitting on that call with a ticket number.\n\nTest this rather than take our word for it. Describe a networking problem you have actually had and see whether the response is specific or generic. That one question separates providers faster than anything else on this page.", "related": [ "can-you-support-a-business-with-a-warehouse-or-shop-floor-not-just-an", "what-certifications-does-your-team-hold", "can-you-help-a-restaurant-or-retail-shop-with-point-of-sale-and-guest", "what-will-still-be-on-our-plate" ] }, { "slug": "are-we-too-big-for-you", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/are-we-too-big-for-you", "question": "We have eighty people across four offices. Are we too big for you?", "shortAnswer": "No, and we would tell you if you were. Ask any provider for their largest client by headcount and by number of locations.", "answer": "We work with businesses from a handful of people up through multi-office organizations with internal IT staff. Somewhere above that there is a size where a dedicated internal department genuinely serves you better, and we will say so rather than take the engagement and struggle.\n\nThe questions that actually tell you whether a provider can carry you: what is their largest client by headcount, what is their largest by number of locations, how many technical staff do they employ as opposed to total staff, and what happens when two of your sites have problems simultaneously.\n\nAsk for a reference at your size specifically. A provider whose entire client base is ten-person offices will learn on you, and you will pay for that education.", "related": [ "how-does-onboarding-work-for-a-multi-office-company", "how-many-clients-does-one-of-your-technicians-carry", "do-you-support-businesses-with-multiple-locations", "do-you-support-seasonal-businesses-whose-headcount-changes" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-offer-someone-onsite-five-days-a-week", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-offer-someone-onsite-five-days-a-week", "question": "Can we have someone onsite five days a week?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. For organizations at that scale we can place a person onsite with our team behind them.", "answer": "Some businesses want a face in the building. Staff walk up to a person rather than opening a ticket, and for a multi-office organization with a busy front office that is worth real money in productivity even when the underlying work could be done remotely.\n\nWe can staff that: a technician onsite on a set schedule, up to full time, backed by our help desk, our security monitoring, and our senior engineers. You get the presence of an internal hire plus a team behind them, which is the combination a single internal employee cannot give you.\n\nIt costs more than a fully remote arrangement, and it should. What it replaces is a salary plus benefits plus the coverage gap when that person is sick, on vacation, or asleep.\n\nThe other direction works too. If your staff are comfortable with remote support, we deliver it that way and come onsite on a schedule instead, which is less expensive and for many organizations just as effective.", "related": [ "is-outsourced-it-cheaper-than-hiring-someone-in-house", "is-support-remote-only-or-will-someone-come-onsite", "can-you-support-a-fully-remote-or-hybrid-business", "what-happens-when-your-help-desk-cannot-fix-it" ] }, { "slug": "our-internal-it-person-is-not-keeping-up", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/our-internal-it-person-is-not-keeping-up", "question": "Our internal IT person is not keeping up. Do we replace them or add to them?", "shortAnswer": "It depends on whether the problem is capacity or capability, and those look identical from the outside.", "answer": "The person who was the right hire at twenty employees is often underwater at eighty, through no fault of their own. One person cannot cover a help desk, security, servers, network, vendor management, projects, and multiple locations. What that looks like from your chair is someone who has stopped being responsive, and it is genuinely hard to tell apart from someone who has checked out.\n\nIf it is capacity, co-managed usually works well. Your person keeps the things that benefit from being in the building and knowing your business, and we take the specialized and after hours load off them. Most people in that position are relieved rather than threatened, because they have been drowning quietly.\n\nIf it is capability or engagement, that is a management decision, not a technology one. We can take over fully, and we can do it in a way that does not depend on that person's cooperation.\n\nWhat usually settles it is the assessment: whether the undone work is the specialized kind nobody could reasonably cover alone, or the basic kind that should have been happening all along.", "related": [ "are-we-too-big-for-you", "is-outsourced-it-cheaper-than-hiring-someone-in-house", "what-if-our-internal-it-person-does-not-cooperate", "do-you-offer-a-co-managed-option-if-we-hire-our-own-it-person" ] } ] }, { "id": "security", "group": "Choosing an IT provider", "title": "Security and compliance", "summary": "The part most providers answer vaguely. Push for specifics, here and everywhere else.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/security", "articles": [ { "slug": "what-do-you-do-to-protect-us-from-ransomware-and-phishing", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-do-you-do-to-protect-us-from-ransomware-and-phishing", "question": "What do you do to protect us from ransomware and phishing?", "shortAnswer": "Layers, with multi factor authentication and tested backups as non negotiable minimums.", "answer": "There is no single product that stops ransomware. What works is layers that each catch what the previous one missed:\n\n- Multi factor authentication on email and remote access, no exceptions\n\n- Next generation endpoint protection that watches behavior, not just known signatures\n\n- Email filtering and protection against lookalike domains and forwarding rule abuse\n\n- Patching on a schedule, because most successful attacks use known holes\n\n- Least privilege on accounts so one compromised user is not the whole network\n\n- Backups that are isolated and actually restore\n\n- Log monitoring so a compromise gets noticed in hours, not months\n\nWe will not take on a client who refuses multi factor authentication and working backups. Those two are the floor.", "related": [ "what-do-you-do-about-wire-fraud-and-business-email-compromise", "what-do-you-always-find-in-the-first-two-weeks", "how-long-does-onboarding-take", "dental-practices-have-been-hit-through-their-it-vendors" ] }, { "slug": "is-security-included-or-is-it-an-add-on", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/is-security-included-or-is-it-an-add-on", "question": "Is security included, or is it an add on?", "shortAnswer": "Core security is in the base agreement. Server backup is a separate line, though not an optional one in practice.", "answer": "Endpoint protection, patching, firewall management, multi factor enforcement, and Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace backup are in the base package for every managed client. We do not sell those as an upgrade, because a client without them is a client we cannot defend.\n\nServer backup is quoted separately, per server, with up to 1 TB of storage included for each. Separately billed does not mean optional in any way that matters: we will not take on a managed client whose servers have no working backup. If the budget is not there yet, we will say so during the quote rather than after an incident.\n\nHigher tiers add depth: log monitoring and alerting, tighter identity controls, vendor management, and quarterly risk and compliance reviews.", "related": [ "what-is-included-in-the-monthly-fee-and-what-gets-billed-separately", "how-is-backup-priced", "how-much-does-managed-it-cost-and-how-is-it-billed", "do-you-handle-backups-and-how-do-you-know-they-work" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-handle-backups-and-how-do-you-know-they-work", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-handle-backups-and-how-do-you-know-they-work", "question": "Do you handle backups, and how do you know they work?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace backup is included in the per-user fee. Server backup is quoted separately per server. Everything we back up gets test restored monthly.", "answer": "Two different things get called backup and they are priced differently, so it is worth being exact about which is which.\n\nMicrosoft 365 and Google Workspace backup is included in the per-user fee for managed clients. That covers mail, calendars, contacts, OneDrive or Drive files, SharePoint, and Teams data. This matters more than most businesses realize, because Microsoft and Google do not back your data up the way people assume. Their retention and recycle bin windows are not a backup, and a deletion or a ransomware event that syncs to the cloud will happily take your files with it.\n\nServer backup is quoted separately, per server, and each server includes up to 1 TB of backup storage. It is its own line on your agreement rather than being folded into the per-user number, because a business with three servers and a business with none should not be paying the same.\n\nWhatever we back up, we test. Managed clients get monthly test restores and the results appear in your reporting. A backup that has never been restored is a guess, and the gap between a job reporting success and the data actually being usable is where businesses get destroyed.\n\nFor hourly and monitoring-only clients, backup is not included by default. It can be purchased separately, and we would much rather sell it to you now than explain later that there was nothing to restore from.", "related": [ "how-is-backup-priced", "what-is-included-in-the-monthly-fee-and-what-gets-billed-separately", "is-your-pricing-flat-rate-or-are-there-hidden-costs", "how-much-does-managed-it-cost-and-how-is-it-billed" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-monitor-for-security-events-or-just-for-outages", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-monitor-for-security-events-or-just-for-outages", "question": "Do you monitor for security events, or just for outages?", "shortAnswer": "Both. We run our own security monitoring platform in house.", "answer": "Most small businesses find out about a breach weeks or months after it happened. We collect and correlate security logs from workstations, servers, firewalls, and Microsoft 365, and alert on the things that actually indicate a compromise: mailbox forwarding rules being created quietly, multi factor settings being changed, shadow copies being deleted, suspicious administrative activity, impossible travel logins.\n\nWe built and operate that platform ourselves rather than reselling someone else's dashboard, which means we can write detections for your specific environment.", "related": [ "do-you-monitor-for-mailbox-rules-and-impossible-travel", "what-do-you-do-about-wire-fraud-and-business-email-compromise", "can-you-tell-who-accessed-what", "dental-practices-have-been-hit-through-their-it-vendors" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-help-us-meet-hipaa-ftc-safeguards-cmmc-or-cyber-insurance-requ", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-help-us-meet-hipaa-ftc-safeguards-cmmc-or-cyber-insurance-requ", "question": "Can you help us meet HIPAA, FTC Safeguards, CMMC, or cyber insurance requirements?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Compliance is a defined service, not a checkbox we wave at.", "answer": "Our compliance service is framework agnostic with framework specific deliverables. The underlying work is the same in every case: risk assessments, written policies, evidence collection, training tracking, and audit ready reporting. What changes is which control set we map it to.\n\nCommon ones for our clients: HIPAA for medical and dental practices, FTC Safeguards for auto dealers, tax preparers, and other financial adjacent businesses, and CMMC Level 1 for companies handling federal contract information.\n\nCyber insurance questionnaires deserve a specific warning: answering yes to controls you do not actually have is how claims get denied. We help clients answer those truthfully and then close the gaps.", "related": [ "do-veterinary-clinics-have-compliance-requirements-like-medical-office", "do-you-carry-insurance", "can-you-help-with-grant-requirements-around-data-security", "what-happens-if-we-get-breached-what-is-your-role" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-provide-security-awareness-training-for-staff", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-provide-security-awareness-training-for-staff", "question": "Do you provide security awareness training for staff?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, including simulated phishing, with tracking for compliance purposes.", "answer": "Your people are the most targeted part of your business. Training is short, recurring, and paired with simulated phishing so you can see who is actually at risk rather than assuming everyone read the email.", "related": [ "do-you-carry-insurance", "do-you-provide-managed-it-services-in-st-augustine", "what-do-you-do-to-protect-us-from-ransomware-and-phishing", "can-you-help-us-meet-hipaa-ftc-safeguards-cmmc-or-cyber-insurance-requ" ] }, { "slug": "what-happens-if-we-get-breached-what-is-your-role", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-happens-if-we-get-breached-what-is-your-role", "question": "What happens if we get breached? What is your role?", "shortAnswer": "We contain it, coordinate the response, and help you meet your notification obligations.", "answer": "We isolate affected systems, preserve what is needed for investigation, work with your cyber insurance carrier and their incident response team if you have coverage, restore from backup, and document the timeline. For regulated clients we help assemble what your reporting obligations require.\n\nThe conversation to have before an incident is who makes decisions, who calls the insurer, and how fast we are authorized to take systems offline. We set that up during onboarding rather than improvising it at 2am.", "related": [ "what-happens-in-the-first-four-hours-of-a-wire-fraud", "can-you-help-us-meet-hipaa-ftc-safeguards-cmmc-or-cyber-insurance-requ", "do-you-carry-insurance", "can-i-meet-the-person-who-would-work-on-our-account" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-carry-insurance", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-carry-insurance", "question": "Do you carry insurance?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, including cyber liability. We will provide a certificate on request.", "answer": "Ask every provider for a certificate of insurance showing general liability, errors and omissions, and cyber liability. A provider with access to your entire network and no cyber coverage is a risk you are absorbing on their behalf.", "related": [ "can-you-help-us-meet-hipaa-ftc-safeguards-cmmc-or-cyber-insurance-requ", "do-you-provide-security-awareness-training-for-staff", "what-happens-if-we-get-breached-what-is-your-role", "do-you-provide-managed-it-services-in-st-augustine" ] }, { "slug": "have-you-actually-tested-disaster-recovery", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/have-you-actually-tested-disaster-recovery", "question": "Have you actually tested disaster recovery, or just written a plan?", "shortAnswer": "Tested. Monthly restores of everything we back up, and full scenario tests for clients where downtime carries real cost.", "answer": "A disaster recovery plan that has never been executed is a document, not a capability. The gap between the two is measured during the event, which is the worst possible time to find out.\n\nEvery managed client gets monthly test restores as standard, covering Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace data and any server on a backup line. For clients where a day of downtime carries serious cost, we go further and run scenario tests: bringing a critical system up from backup in an isolated environment and timing it, so the recovery time you have been quoted is a measured number rather than an estimate.\n\nThat testing routinely surfaces things no plan would have caught. A dependency nobody documented, a licensing activation that fails when the hardware changes, a database that restores but needs a step nobody wrote down, credentials that only existed on the machine that is gone.\n\nAsk any provider when they last restored a client's critical system outside of an actual emergency, and what the measured recovery time was. The specificity of the answer tells you whether the testing is real.", "related": [ "can-you-show-us-a-restore-instead-of-a-backup-report", "do-you-handle-backups-and-how-do-you-know-they-work", "how-do-we-make-sure-patient-records-are-backed-up-and-recoverable", "what-is-included-in-the-monthly-fee-and-what-gets-billed-separately" ] }, { "slug": "what-happens-to-old-computers-and-hard-drives", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-happens-to-old-computers-and-hard-drives", "question": "What happens to old computers and hard drives when we replace them?", "shortAnswer": "Wiped to a recognized standard or physically destroyed, with a certificate. Not stacked in a storage room.", "answer": "Almost every business we take over has a pile of retired equipment somewhere, and almost nobody knows what is on it. Those drives usually hold customer records, financial data, saved passwords, and in a medical or dental practice, patient information. A storage room is not a control, and disposal is an obligation under most of the frameworks our clients fall under.\n\nWhat we do: drives are wiped to a recognized sanitization standard when they are reusable, and physically destroyed when they are not, with documentation of what was destroyed and when. That certificate is what an auditor or an examiner wants to see, and it is also what turns a lost laptop into a non-event if the drive was encrypted.\n\nThe stack you already have gets dealt with during onboarding. It is one of the quickest risks to eliminate and one of the most commonly ignored, because nothing about it feels urgent until a drive walks out of the building.", "related": [ "can-you-recover-files-from-a-computer-that-will-not-turn-on", "what-computers-do-you-put-in-operatories", "where-does-non-public-personal-information-live-in-our-environment", "how-is-backup-priced" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-tell-who-accessed-what", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-tell-who-accessed-what", "question": "Can you tell us who accessed what, if it ever came to that?", "shortAnswer": "At the system level, yes. Inside your application it depends on its own audit log, and shared logins defeat both.", "answer": "Two different layers, and it is worth understanding which is which.\n\nAt the system level we log authentication, administrative actions, file access on monitored systems, and access to cloud services, and those logs feed our security monitoring. That tells you which account did what and from where.\n\nInside your practice management, case management, or line of business application, the audit trail belongs to that software. Most business-critical applications have one. What we do is make sure it is switched on, because it frequently is not by default, and that its records are retained long enough to be useful rather than rolling over in thirty days.\n\nBoth layers are defeated by the same thing: shared logins. If four people at your front desk use one account, every log you own says that account did it, and you cannot answer the question that matters. That is a common finding and a genuinely awkward one to fix after the fact, because the answer is individual accounts and some staff will initially find it inconvenient. It is worth the friction, and in a regulated environment it is not really optional.", "related": [ "what-do-you-always-find-in-the-first-two-weeks", "can-we-limit-what-each-staff-member-can-see", "do-you-support-the-specific-software-my-business-runs-on", "is-security-included-or-is-it-an-add-on" ] }, { "slug": "can-we-limit-what-each-staff-member-can-see", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-we-limit-what-each-staff-member-can-see", "question": "Can we limit what each staff member can see and do?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, and you should. Most small businesses give everyone everything because it was simpler on day one.", "answer": "Access should follow the job. The front desk needs scheduling and billing functions and usually does not need clinical records, financial reporting, or the ability to change system settings. Clinical staff need patient records and usually do not need payroll or banking. Whoever handles money needs the accounting system and usually does not need administrative control of the network.\n\nWe map roles to what each group actually does during onboarding and then apply it at both layers: in your systems and files, and inside your line of business application where it supports roles. It is rarely as disruptive as owners fear, because most people only use what their job requires anyway. The objections come from a handful of long-tenured staff who have accumulated access over the years.\n\nThe reason it matters is not that you distrust your team. It is that one compromised account should not expose everything you hold. Attackers rely on the account they get into being able to reach far more than that person's job required, and that is almost always true in a business that never did this exercise.", "related": [ "can-you-tell-who-accessed-what", "we-have-someone-on-staff-who-handles-the-small-stuff", "do-you-touch-escrow-accounting-and-reconciliation", "do-you-work-with-dental-practices" ] } ] }, { "id": "onboarding", "group": "Choosing an IT provider", "title": "Onboarding and switching", "summary": "Changing IT providers is the part everyone dreads. It should not be dramatic.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/onboarding", "articles": [ { "slug": "how-long-does-onboarding-take", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-long-does-onboarding-take", "question": "How long does onboarding take?", "shortAnswer": "Two to four weeks for a typical small business, with the essentials in place in the first week.", "answer": "Week one is the security floor: our tools deployed, monitoring live, endpoint protection installed, backups verified, multi factor confirmed, and your staff able to reach us. The remaining weeks are documentation, cleanup, and the list of things your previous setup left undone.", "related": [ "what-do-the-first-30-days-of-onboarding-look-like-for-a-contractor", "how-does-onboarding-work-for-a-multi-office-company", "what-do-you-always-find-in-the-first-two-weeks", "how-long-does-it-take-you-to-get-to-a-st-augustine-office" ] }, { "slug": "will-there-be-downtime-during-the-switch", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/will-there-be-downtime-during-the-switch", "question": "Will there be downtime during the switch?", "shortAnswer": "Normally none. Our tools install quietly in the background.", "answer": "Onboarding is mostly additive, so it does not interrupt work. If something does require a restart or a short outage (removing a previous provider's software, a firewall change), it is scheduled with you in advance, usually after hours.", "related": [ "what-can-you-spend-on-our-behalf-without-asking", "how-long-does-onboarding-take", "is-after-hours-or-emergency-work-extra", "do-you-offer-strategic-it-planning-and-budgeting" ] }, { "slug": "how-do-you-handle-the-handoff-from-our-current-provider", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-do-you-handle-the-handoff-from-our-current-provider", "question": "How do you handle the handoff from our current provider?", "shortAnswer": "We manage it, and we do not need them to cooperate.", "answer": "Ideally the outgoing provider hands over documentation, credentials, and licensing cleanly. Sometimes they do not. We plan for both. We can rebuild access to your own systems, take over domain and licensing ownership, and remove their tooling without depending on their goodwill.\n\nWe also recommend you hold off on giving notice until we have talked through the timing, so you are not without support in the gap.", "related": [ "can-you-take-over-from-our-current-jacksonville-it-provider", "what-if-our-internal-it-person-does-not-cooperate", "can-you-manage-just-our-microsoft-365-without-managing-everything-else", "do-we-own-our-licenses-domains-and-data-or-do-you" ] }, { "slug": "what-do-you-need-from-us-to-get-started", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-do-you-need-from-us-to-get-started", "question": "What do you need from us to get started?", "shortAnswer": "An hour or two of one person's time, and administrative access.", "answer": "We need a walkthrough of your office, administrative credentials for your systems, a point of contact who can approve decisions, and a short conversation with whoever has been handling IT informally. That person usually knows things no documentation captured.", "related": [ "how-would-we-know-if-you-started-coasting", "what-if-our-internal-it-person-does-not-cooperate", "do-i-get-a-dedicated-technician-or-whoever-answers", "can-we-still-administer-our-own-systems" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-document-our-environment-and-do-we-get-a-copy", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-document-our-environment-and-do-we-get-a-copy", "question": "Do you document our environment, and do we get a copy?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, and yes. It is your documentation.", "answer": "We document your network, systems, credentials, vendors, and configurations as part of onboarding and keep it current. If you leave, that documentation goes with you. Documentation held hostage is one of the oldest bad practices in this industry.", "related": [ "how-do-we-make-sure-patient-records-are-backed-up-and-recoverable", "how-do-you-handle-the-handoff-from-our-current-provider", "if-we-are-not-satisfied-in-the-first-90-days-are-we-locked-in", "what-do-you-need-from-us-to-get-started" ] }, { "slug": "how-does-onboarding-work-for-a-multi-office-company", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-does-onboarding-work-for-a-multi-office-company", "question": "How does onboarding work for a company with eighty people and multiple offices?", "shortAnswer": "Six to ten weeks, office by office, with the security floor established everywhere in the first two weeks.", "answer": "Larger and multi-site onboarding runs differently from a single small office. The sequence we use:\n\n- Weeks 1 to 2, security floor everywhere. Management tools, monitoring, and endpoint protection deployed across all sites, multi factor authentication verified, backups validated, and your staff given support access. This happens simultaneously at every office, because leaving a location unprotected while you work through a queue is not acceptable.\n\n- Weeks 2 to 6, office by office. Full audit and documentation of each site: network, servers, line of business systems, vendor connections, and the local quirks. We generally start with the office that has the most problems rather than the easiest one.\n\n- Weeks 5 to 8, identity and access. Accounts, permissions, group structure, and access review across the organization. This is where a company your size finds the most surprises.\n\n- Weeks 8 to 10, handover. Documentation delivered, training for staff and any internal IT personnel, and a prioritized remediation plan with costs.\n\nTime from your people: a few hours from a designated coordinator per week, walkthroughs at each site, and a short session for staff. We work around closings, month end, and whatever your busy period is.\n\nThe onboarding fee scales with size and number of sites and is quoted in advance as a fixed project.", "related": [ "how-long-does-onboarding-take", "are-we-too-big-for-you", "what-do-the-first-30-days-of-onboarding-look-like-for-a-contractor", "do-you-support-multi-doctor-or-multi-location-veterinary-practices" ] }, { "slug": "what-if-our-internal-it-person-does-not-cooperate", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-if-our-internal-it-person-does-not-cooperate", "question": "What if our internal IT person has all the passwords and does not cooperate?", "shortAnswer": "We plan for it. Administrative control of your own systems can be rebuilt without their help, and we sequence it so nothing depends on goodwill.", "answer": "This comes up more than people expect, and not always with bad intent. Sometimes it is simple reluctance, sometimes it is someone who knows the documentation does not exist and is embarrassed, occasionally it is worse.\n\nEither way we do not build a transition that depends on cooperation. Administrative access to systems your business owns can be recovered through the vendors and through ownership verification. Domains, Microsoft or Google tenants, licensing, and hosted services all have ownership recovery processes, and we run them regularly.\n\nWhere there is real concern about conduct rather than just attitude, sequencing matters. Credential rotation and access review happen before any conversation about their departure, not after, and we coordinate that quietly with you. That is a normal precaution in any transition, and it protects the employee too, because a clean cutover means nothing that happens afterward can be attributed to them.\n\nWhatever the situation, the outcome is the same: your business ends up holding administrative ownership of its own systems, documented, which is where it should have been all along.", "related": [ "how-do-you-handle-the-handoff-from-our-current-provider", "what-do-you-need-from-us-to-get-started", "do-we-own-our-licenses-domains-and-data-or-do-you", "our-internal-it-person-is-not-keeping-up" ] }, { "slug": "what-do-you-always-find-in-the-first-two-weeks", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-do-you-always-find-in-the-first-two-weeks", "question": "What are you going to find in the first two weeks that we do not know about?", "shortAnswer": "Accounts for people who left, backups that have not been tested, and at least one system nobody realized the business depends on.", "answer": "Not hypothetically. These are what we find at nearly every company of size when we take over:\n\n- Active accounts for former employees, usually including at least one with elevated access, and often licenses still being paid for\n\n- Backups that run but have never been restored, and frequently a system that was never included at all\n\n- A load bearing machine nobody knew about. An old workstation under a desk running a service the business depends on, no backup, no support\n\n- Shared credentials for systems that should have individual accounts, which breaks accountability and any audit trail\n\n- Multi factor authentication with exceptions. Usually a service account or an executive who asked to be excluded, which is precisely the account an attacker wants\n\n- Licensing that does not match reality, in both directions\n\n- Unsupported software still in production because a vendor said it could not be upgraded and nobody revisited it\n\nNone of this indicates anybody did anything wrong. It is what accumulates in a business that grew faster than its documentation. You get the list with dates and severity, and you decide what gets fixed and in what order.", "related": [ "are-you-going-to-be-difficult-about-the-mess-you-find", "can-you-tell-who-accessed-what", "what-do-you-do-when-you-do-not-know-the-answer", "how-long-does-onboarding-take" ] } ] }, { "id": "ownership", "group": "Choosing an IT provider", "title": "Ownership and control", "summary": "What is yours, what happens if you leave, and how hard we make it.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/ownership", "articles": [ { "slug": "do-we-own-our-licenses-domains-and-data-or-do-you", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-we-own-our-licenses-domains-and-data-or-do-you", "question": "Do we own our licenses, domains, and data, or do you?", "shortAnswer": "You do. All of it.", "answer": "Your Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace tenant, your domain names, and your data belong to your business. We hold administrative access to manage them on your behalf, which is not the same as owning them.\n\nLicensing can go either way depending on what you prefer. Some clients buy licenses through us so it is one invoice and one place to call. Others buy direct and give us admin access. Both are fine and we will explain the tradeoffs.", "related": [ "do-you-resell-hardware-or-do-we-buy-our-own", "how-do-you-handle-the-handoff-from-our-current-provider", "we-hire-seasonal-help-how-easily-can-we-scale-licenses-up-and-down", "what-if-our-internal-it-person-does-not-cooperate" ] }, { "slug": "if-we-part-ways-what-do-we-get-back-and-how-hard-is-it", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/if-we-part-ways-what-do-we-get-back-and-how-hard-is-it", "question": "If we part ways, what do we get back and how hard is it?", "shortAnswer": "Documentation, credentials, and administrative ownership, handed over on the way out.", "answer": "Thirty days notice, and we transfer ownership of everything that is yours, remove our tooling, and brief the incoming provider if you want us to. We would rather leave on good terms and get the referral than make an exit painful.", "related": [ "can-we-still-administer-our-own-systems", "if-we-are-not-satisfied-in-the-first-90-days-are-we-locked-in", "how-do-you-handle-the-handoff-from-our-current-provider", "will-you-lock-us-into-your-tools" ] }, { "slug": "will-you-lock-us-into-your-tools", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/will-you-lock-us-into-your-tools", "question": "Will you lock us into your tools?", "shortAnswer": "Our management tools come off when we leave. Your business systems are yours and stay.", "answer": "There is a difference between the tools we use to do our job (monitoring agents, remote access, documentation) and the systems your business runs on (email, files, line of business applications). The first category is ours and gets removed cleanly. The second is yours and is never structured so that only we can operate it.", "related": [ "how-do-you-secure-tablets-and-phones-that-live-in-trucks", "if-we-part-ways-what-do-we-get-back-and-how-hard-is-it", "what-will-still-be-on-our-plate", "do-you-offer-a-co-managed-option-if-we-hire-our-own-it-person" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-resell-hardware-or-do-we-buy-our-own", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-resell-hardware-or-do-we-buy-our-own", "question": "Do you resell hardware, or do we buy our own?", "shortAnswer": "Either way. We will tell you when buying direct is cheaper.", "answer": "We can quote and supply hardware, which usually means better business class equipment than a retail purchase and a warranty we handle for you. If you would rather buy it yourself, we will give you exact specifications and make sure you are not buying a consumer machine that will be unsupportable in two years.", "related": [ "do-we-own-our-licenses-domains-and-data-or-do-you", "is-outsourced-it-cheaper-than-hiring-someone-in-house", "what-is-included-in-the-monthly-fee-and-what-gets-billed-separately", "if-we-part-ways-what-do-we-get-back-and-how-hard-is-it" ] }, { "slug": "can-we-still-administer-our-own-systems", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-we-still-administer-our-own-systems", "question": "Can we still administer our own systems, or does everything go through you?", "shortAnswer": "You keep administrative access to your own systems. Just tell us what you changed.", "answer": "They are your systems. You get administrative credentials, and if you want to change something yourself on a Saturday night, you can. We are not going to pretend otherwise or make you ask permission to get into your own network.\n\nThe one thing we ask is that you tell us what you changed. Not for approval, for documentation. Most of the genuinely painful troubleshooting we do at technically capable clients traces back to an undocumented change, where something starts behaving oddly three weeks later and we are chasing a ghost nobody remembers creating.\n\nWe would much rather work with an owner who does things themselves and tells us than one who feels locked out of their own business.", "related": [ "if-we-part-ways-what-do-we-get-back-and-how-hard-is-it", "what-happens-when-you-break-something", "if-we-are-not-satisfied-in-the-first-90-days-are-we-locked-in", "what-do-you-need-from-us-to-get-started" ] }, { "slug": "will-you-maintain-the-scripts-and-automation-we-wrote", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/will-you-maintain-the-scripts-and-automation-we-wrote", "question": "We wrote our own scripts and automation. Will you maintain them?", "shortAnswer": "Usually yes, once documented. Where we cannot support something well, we will say so instead of pretending.", "answer": "Owner-written automation is common and frequently better than what it replaced, because the person who wrote it understood the business. We will take it on, document it properly, and maintain it, provided it is built in something we work in and we can read it.\n\nWhat we will not do is pretend. If something is written in a language or platform we are not strong in, you will hear that up front, along with the options: leave it with you and we work around it, rebuild it in something we can support, or bring in someone who specializes.\n\nEither way it gets documented. Right now it probably exists only in your head, which is fine until the week you are unreachable.", "related": [ "are-you-going-to-be-difficult-about-the-mess-you-find", "can-you-produce-the-evidence-our-underwriters-ask-for", "i-set-a-lot-of-this-up-myself-are-you-going-to-rip-it-out", "do-we-need-an-it-provider-if-we-only-have-eight-employees" ] } ] }, { "id": "value", "group": "Choosing an IT provider", "title": "Beyond break-fix", "summary": "What you get in the months where nothing breaks.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/value", "articles": [ { "slug": "what-do-you-do-besides-fix-things-when-they-break", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-do-you-do-besides-fix-things-when-they-break", "question": "What do you do besides fix things when they break?", "shortAnswer": "The work that keeps the ticket count low in the first place.", "answer": "Patching, monitoring, backup verification, security review, license cleanup, documentation, hardware lifecycle planning, and vendor coordination. Most of it you will never see, which is the point. A quiet month is not a month you overpaid for, it is the product working.", "related": [ "what-is-the-difference-between-managed-it-services-and-break-fix-it-su", "do-we-get-reporting-how-often-and-what-is-in-it", "how-long-does-onboarding-take", "do-you-do-hourly-break-fix-work-or-only-monthly-agreements" ] }, { "slug": "do-we-get-reporting-how-often-and-what-is-in-it", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-we-get-reporting-how-often-and-what-is-in-it", "question": "Do we get reporting? How often, and what is in it?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, with a scheduled review that goes over it with you.", "answer": "Reporting covers ticket volume and response performance, patch compliance, backup and test restore results, security alerts and what was done about them, and asset age. Higher tiers include quarterly risk and compliance assessments.\n\nReports nobody explains are just PDFs. The review conversation is the part that matters.", "related": [ "how-do-we-know-the-work-we-cannot-see-is-happening", "how-would-we-know-if-you-started-coasting", "how-do-you-keep-us-informed-without-adding-to-our-workload", "do-you-handle-backups-and-how-do-you-know-they-work" ] }, { "slug": "will-you-help-us-plan-and-budget-for-hardware-and-upgrades", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/will-you-help-us-plan-and-budget-for-hardware-and-upgrades", "question": "Will you help us plan and budget for hardware and upgrades?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. We track asset age and tell you what is coming before it fails.", "answer": "You should know in October what you are likely to spend next year. We keep a refresh plan for workstations, servers, firewalls, and switches so replacements land as planned purchases instead of emergencies. Emergency replacements always cost more and always happen at the worst time.", "related": [ "do-you-offer-strategic-it-planning-and-budgeting", "where-do-small-businesses-waste-money-on-it", "can-you-work-around-our-busy-season", "have-you-actually-tested-disaster-recovery" ] }, { "slug": "how-do-you-handle-projects-versus-day-to-day-support", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-do-you-handle-projects-versus-day-to-day-support", "question": "How do you handle projects versus day to day support?", "shortAnswer": "Projects are scoped, quoted, and scheduled separately so they do not eat your support.", "answer": "Migrations, office moves, server replacements, and new deployments are project work with a defined scope, a fixed price where possible, and a schedule. Keeping them separate is what prevents a big project from quietly consuming the attention your day to day support is supposed to get.", "related": [ "what-is-included-in-the-monthly-fee-and-what-gets-billed-separately", "do-you-handle-cloud-email-and-file-migrations", "is-your-pricing-flat-rate-or-are-there-hidden-costs", "is-after-hours-or-emergency-work-extra" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-handle-cloud-email-and-file-migrations", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-handle-cloud-email-and-file-migrations", "question": "Do you handle cloud, email, and file migrations?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, in both directions, including getting off an aging on premise file server.", "answer": "We handle Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace setup, licensing, and administration, email migrations into and out of both platforms, moving file shares to SharePoint or OneDrive, Azure and hosted servers, and hosted desktops. Moving off a file server sitting in a closet is one of the most common first year projects we do.", "related": [ "can-you-help-us-get-off-an-old-server", "can-you-help-us-move-our-practice-software-to-the-cloud", "how-do-you-handle-projects-versus-day-to-day-support", "what-it-does-a-brand-new-business-need-on-day-one" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-offer-strategic-it-planning-and-budgeting", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-offer-strategic-it-planning-and-budgeting", "question": "Do you offer strategic IT planning, or do you only react to problems?", "shortAnswer": "Scheduled reviews, a written refresh plan, and next year's numbers before you need them.", "answer": "We track the age and condition of every workstation, server, firewall, switch, and field device, and keep a replacement plan against it. That means you know in October roughly what next year costs instead of discovering it when something dies.\n\nReviews cover ticket trends and what is causing them, security posture and what changed, what is aging out and when, and what is coming for your business: a second crew, a new location, a software change, a compliance requirement. The output is a plan you can hand to your bookkeeper, not a stack of charts.\n\nFor contractors specifically, the fleet is the part that sneaks up on people. A tablet lives a much harder life in a work truck than a laptop does on a desk, and replacing them reactively one at a time always costs more than replacing them on a schedule.", "related": [ "will-you-help-us-plan-and-budget-for-hardware-and-upgrades", "what-do-the-first-30-days-of-onboarding-look-like-for-a-contractor", "how-do-we-know-a-monthly-agreement-is-worth-it-for-us", "can-you-help-us-get-off-an-old-server" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-manage-cameras-door-access-and-yard-security", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-manage-cameras-door-access-and-yard-security", "question": "Can you manage our cameras, door access, and yard security, or just computers?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Cameras, door access, and gates are network devices now, and we install and manage them on the same properly separated network.", "answer": "We handle camera systems for shops, warehouses, and yards, badge or code based door access, and gate controls, and we keep them on a separated part of your network so they are not sitting alongside your office computers and payment traffic.\n\nTwo problems we find almost every time we take over an existing setup. First, cameras that stopped recording weeks or months ago because a drive failed and nobody was watching the alerts, discovered only when someone needs the footage. Second, access systems still listing employees who left, sometimes years ago, with working badges or codes.\n\nBoth get fixed during onboarding and then monitored the same way we monitor everything else, so a camera that stops recording generates an alert on our end instead of a bad surprise on yours.\n\nKeeping these on one provider also means there is no argument about whether a problem belongs to the camera company or the IT company.", "related": [ "do-we-need-an-it-provider-if-we-only-have-eight-employees", "can-you-manage-just-our-microsoft-365-without-managing-everything-else", "can-you-help-a-restaurant-or-retail-shop-with-point-of-sale-and-guest", "do-you-actually-have-someone-who-understands-networking" ] }, { "slug": "how-do-you-actually-use-ai", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-do-you-actually-use-ai", "question": "How do you actually use AI, practically speaking?", "shortAnswer": "Mostly inside our security tooling, where it sorts real threats out of noise faster. We are deliberately conservative about pointing it at client systems.", "answer": "Where it genuinely earns its place today, in our hands: triaging security alerts so the real ones surface quickly out of a large volume of routine noise, spotting account behavior that does not fit the pattern, and speeding up our own documentation and research. That runs in the background of the tools we operate. It makes our response faster rather than changing anything about how your staff works.\n\nWe also run our own AI infrastructure in house rather than sending everything to third party services, which matters for anything that touches client data.\n\nWhere we are careful: we do not let AI make changes to client systems on its own, and a person reviews anything consequential. We would rather tell you plainly what it does than market it as something it is not.\n\nAs for making your dispatchers faster, the honest answer is that the AI features most likely to help you are the ones built into your field management software, such as call scoring and scheduling suggestions. We will help you evaluate whether they actually earn the subscription increase, which is a different question from whether they demo well.", "related": [ "how-long-does-it-take-you-to-get-to-a-st-augustine-office", "can-you-tell-who-accessed-what", "dental-practices-have-been-hit-through-their-it-vendors", "why-do-clients-leave-you" ] }, { "slug": "how-do-you-keep-us-informed-without-adding-to-our-workload", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-do-you-keep-us-informed-without-adding-to-our-workload", "question": "How do you keep us informed without adding to our workload?", "shortAnswer": "A scheduled review, contact only when something needs a decision, money, or your awareness, and everything else handled quietly.", "answer": "The point of hiring us is that you think about this less, so we do not forward every alert to prove we are working. A provider who copies you on everything has moved the workload rather than taken it.\n\nYou get a scheduled review covering tickets and what caused them, security, backup and restore results, and what is aging out. Between reviews, you hear from us for three reasons: something needs a decision, something needs money, or something happened that you would want to know about even though it is already handled.\n\nSecurity incidents and anything touching your data reach you immediately, whether or not we have finished cleaning it up. That is the one category we never batch into a report.", "related": [ "do-we-get-reporting-how-often-and-what-is-in-it", "our-office-manager-will-be-your-main-contact", "can-you-show-us-a-restore-instead-of-a-backup-report", "what-happens-when-you-break-something" ] }, { "slug": "what-can-you-spend-on-our-behalf-without-asking", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-can-you-spend-on-our-behalf-without-asking", "question": "What can you approve and spend on our behalf without asking us?", "shortAnswer": "Whatever threshold we agree on during onboarding. Below it we act, above it we ask.", "answer": "During onboarding we agree on an amount we can spend without checking first, so a failed drive or a dead switch gets replaced while your staff are still working instead of waiting for a signature. Above that number, we call.\n\nWe also agree who can approve, and a backup approver, so nothing stalls because the owner is on a roof or out of town for the week.\n\nThe exception is a genuine emergency. If the choice is between spending your money and leaving you down, we will act and tell you immediately rather than the other way round. That is a rule we set with you in advance, not one we invent during the outage.", "related": [ "our-office-manager-will-be-your-main-contact", "what-happens-if-our-server-goes-down-during-appointments", "will-there-be-downtime-during-the-switch", "will-you-train-our-staff-or-talk-down-to-them" ] }, { "slug": "our-offices-are-not-standardized-can-you-fix-that", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/our-offices-are-not-standardized-can-you-fix-that", "question": "Our offices are not standardized, and some came from acquisitions. Can you fix that?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, in stages, and the order matters more than the speed.", "answer": "Acquired offices almost always arrive with their own equipment, their own way of doing things, and often their own vendors. Trying to unify everything at once is how you turn an annoyance into an outage.\n\nWe work in this order: first identity and security, so everyone authenticates the same way and is protected the same way regardless of which office they sit in. Then backup and monitoring coverage everywhere. Then network and equipment standardization as hardware comes up for replacement anyway, which spreads the cost across your normal refresh cycle rather than creating a project. Workflow and application differences come last, because those are usually management decisions wearing a technology costume.\n\nThat final point is worth sitting with. Some of what looks like an IT inconsistency between offices is actually two managers who do things differently. We will tell you which of your differences are technical and which are not, and we cannot fix the second kind for you.", "related": [ "if-we-acquire-another-office-how-fast-can-you-absorb-it", "can-you-tell-who-accessed-what", "how-does-onboarding-work-for-a-multi-office-company", "what-do-you-do-besides-fix-things-when-they-break" ] }, { "slug": "if-we-acquire-another-office-how-fast-can-you-absorb-it", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/if-we-acquire-another-office-how-fast-can-you-absorb-it", "question": "If we acquire another office, how fast can you absorb it?", "shortAnswer": "Security and support coverage within days of closing, full integration in three to six weeks, quoted as a project before you close.", "answer": "Acquisitions have a specific risk window: the period between the deal closing and the acquired environment being brought under your controls. That is when you own the liability for a network nobody has examined. We compress that deliberately.\n\nWithin the first days after closing, their machines get our monitoring and endpoint protection, multi factor authentication gets enforced, and their staff can reach our help desk. Even before we understand their environment, it is no longer unwatched.\n\nFull integration, meaning identity consolidation, network standardization, file and email migration, and documentation, typically runs three to six weeks depending on what they were running and how cooperative their outgoing provider is.\n\nBring us in during diligence if you can. An hour looking at what you are buying tells you whether there are surprises in the technology, and we have seen deals where that changed the number.", "related": [ "how-does-onboarding-work-for-a-multi-office-company", "our-offices-are-not-standardized-can-you-fix-that", "what-do-the-first-30-days-of-onboarding-look-like-for-a-contractor", "if-we-are-encrypted-monday-morning-how-long-until-we-see-patients" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-consolidate-the-technology-vendors-we-pay", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-consolidate-the-technology-vendors-we-pay", "question": "We pay a lot of different technology vendors. Can you consolidate any of it?", "shortAnswer": "Often yes, and where we cannot, at least you will know what each one is for.", "answer": "A business your size is frequently paying eight to twelve technology vendors, and in most cases nobody has ever listed them on one page. We build that list during onboarding: what each one is, what it costs annually, who owns the relationship, when it renews, and whether anything else you pay for already does the same job.\n\nWhat usually consolidates: overlapping backup, duplicate security products, standalone tools that duplicate capability already included in your Microsoft or Google licensing and simply never enabled, and multiple vendors doing adjacent pieces of the same function.\n\nWhat usually should not: your line of business software, and specialist systems where the best option is genuinely a separate vendor. We are not going to push you onto something worse to reduce a list.\n\nEven where nothing consolidates, the list itself is valuable. It surfaces auto-renewals nobody remembers agreeing to, subscriptions for a former employee's tool, and services still billing for something you stopped using. That review pays for itself more often than not.", "related": [ "what-do-you-always-find-in-the-first-two-weeks", "how-is-backup-priced", "where-do-small-businesses-waste-money-on-it", "do-you-offer-nonprofit-pricing-for-it-support" ] } ] }, { "id": "trust", "group": "Choosing an IT provider", "title": "Trust and credentials", "summary": "The questions people are slightly uncomfortable asking. Ask them anyway.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/trust", "articles": [ { "slug": "what-certifications-does-your-team-hold", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-certifications-does-your-team-hold", "question": "What certifications does your team hold?", "shortAnswer": "Industry certifications across Microsoft, networking, and security, plus vendor partner status for the platforms we manage.", "answer": "We are happy to walk through specific certifications for the people who would be working on your account. A word of caution though: certifications tell you someone passed a test, not that they return your calls. Weigh references and response commitments at least as heavily.", "related": [ "do-you-support-the-specific-software-my-business-runs-on", "do-you-actually-have-someone-who-understands-networking", "do-you-offer-someone-onsite-five-days-a-week", "can-i-meet-the-person-who-would-work-on-our-account" ] }, { "slug": "how-do-you-measure-whether-clients-are-happy", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-do-you-measure-whether-clients-are-happy", "question": "How do you measure whether clients are happy?", "shortAnswer": "Every closed ticket asks, and the owner sees the answers.", "answer": "Each resolved ticket sends a short satisfaction survey. Negative responses are reviewed directly rather than averaged into a number nobody looks at. We also ask in the scheduled review, where people tend to say the thing they would not put in a survey.", "related": [ "how-do-i-submit-a-ticket-and-who-answers-the-phone", "what-happens-when-your-help-desk-cannot-fix-it", "do-we-get-reporting-how-often-and-what-is-in-it", "who-do-we-call-if-the-problem-is-with-you" ] }, { "slug": "why-do-clients-leave-you", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/why-do-clients-leave-you", "question": "Why do clients leave you?", "shortAnswer": "Mostly acquisition, closure, or bringing IT in house. Occasionally price.", "answer": "The honest version: businesses get bought and absorbed into the parent company's IT, they close, or they grow to the point where a full time internal IT person makes sense. Once in a while someone finds a cheaper provider. Sometimes they come back.\n\nAny provider who tells you they have never lost a client is either very new or not being straight with you.", "related": [ "is-outsourced-it-cheaper-than-hiring-someone-in-house", "have-you-actually-tested-disaster-recovery", "what-do-you-not-do", "are-you-a-local-jacksonville-it-company-or-part-of-a-national-chain" ] }, { "slug": "what-do-you-not-do", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-do-you-not-do", "question": "What do you not do?", "shortAnswer": "Custom software development, and environments that need a full time internal team.", "answer": "We do not write custom applications, and we are not the right fit for large enterprises with their own IT departments. We also will not take on a client who refuses basic security controls, because we would be signing up to be blamed for a breach we were not allowed to prevent.\n\nWhen something is outside what we do, we say so and point you at someone who does it well.", "related": [ "our-internal-it-person-is-not-keeping-up", "do-you-offer-someone-onsite-five-days-a-week", "why-do-clients-leave-you", "what-do-you-do-when-you-do-not-know-the-answer" ] }, { "slug": "what-is-the-first-step-if-we-want-to-talk", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-is-the-first-step-if-we-want-to-talk", "question": "What is the first step if we want to talk?", "shortAnswer": "A short conversation, then a free assessment of what you have.", "answer": "We start with a conversation about what is not working. If it looks like a fit, we do a free IT assessment: a look at your network, systems, security posture, and backups, and a written summary of what we found. You get that summary whether or not you hire us.", "related": [ "can-i-talk-to-some-of-your-current-clients", "will-you-train-our-staff-or-talk-down-to-them", "what-do-the-first-30-days-of-onboarding-look-like-for-a-contractor", "our-internal-it-person-is-not-keeping-up" ] }, { "slug": "how-would-we-know-if-you-started-coasting", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-would-we-know-if-you-started-coasting", "question": "How would we know if you started coasting?", "shortAnswer": "Watch the work you cannot see: patch compliance, restore tests, access reviews, and whether anyone raises anything you did not ask about.", "answer": "Fair question, and usually asked by someone who has been let down before. Ticket response is the easy part to fake because it is visible. The work that quietly stops is the preventive work, and the warning signs are specific:\n\n- Patch compliance drifting downward month over month\n\n- Restore tests that stop appearing in your reporting, or appear with no detail\n\n- Access reviews that stop happening\n\n- Documentation that has not been updated since onboarding\n\n- Recommendations drying up, because a provider paying attention always has something to raise\n\n- Only ever hearing from us when you initiate\n\nThose are the numbers to watch in your reporting, and you are entitled to ask about any of them at any time. A provider who cannot produce patch compliance and restore test results on request is not doing the work.\n\nThe most useful signal is the last one. If nobody has brought you a problem you did not already know about in six months, either your environment is perfect or nobody is looking.", "related": [ "how-do-we-know-the-work-we-cannot-see-is-happening", "do-we-get-reporting-how-often-and-what-is-in-it", "what-do-you-need-from-us-to-get-started", "can-you-show-us-a-restore-instead-of-a-backup-report" ] }, { "slug": "how-do-we-know-the-work-we-cannot-see-is-happening", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-do-we-know-the-work-we-cannot-see-is-happening", "question": "How do we know the maintenance we cannot see is actually happening?", "shortAnswer": "Because you get the evidence, not the assurance: patch status by machine, restore results, and alert history with what was done about each.", "answer": "Most of what you pay for is invisible by design, which is exactly why it needs to be evidenced rather than asserted.\n\nYour reporting shows patch compliance by machine rather than a percentage that hides the three servers nobody touched, backup and restore test results with dates, security alerts raised and what was done about each one, and asset age against the replacement plan.\n\nYou can also ask at any time for a specific answer: when was this server last patched, when did this backup last restore successfully, who has administrative access to this system today. If a provider needs a week to answer those, they are reconstructing rather than reporting.\n\nUse this in the sales process too. Ask a prospective provider to show you a sanitized version of what a client actually receives each month. What comes back tells you a great deal.", "related": [ "how-would-we-know-if-you-started-coasting", "do-we-get-reporting-how-often-and-what-is-in-it", "can-you-show-us-a-restore-instead-of-a-backup-report", "do-you-handle-backups-and-how-do-you-know-they-work" ] } ] }, { "id": "hesitate", "group": "Choosing an IT provider", "title": "The questions people hesitate to ask", "summary": "Judgment, control, your staff, and whether you are being sold. Asked plainly, answered the same way.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/hesitate", "articles": [ { "slug": "are-you-going-to-be-difficult-about-the-mess-you-find", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/are-you-going-to-be-difficult-about-the-mess-you-find", "question": "You are going to find a mess when you look at our setup. Are you going to be difficult about it?", "shortAnswer": "No. Every environment we take over has something wrong with it, including the ones another provider was being paid to maintain.", "answer": "We have never walked into a small business and found everything correct. Not once. What we usually find is a mix of decisions that made sense at the time, work a previous provider left half finished, and things added in a hurry because you were busy running the business. That is normal, and it is not a character flaw.\n\nWhat you get from us is a written list of what we found, sorted by how much it actually matters, without commentary about how it got that way. If a technician of ours is condescending to you or your staff, tell the owner directly and it stops.\n\nIn our experience, providers who make you feel stupid about your setup are usually doing it to justify the size of the quote.", "related": [ "what-do-you-always-find-in-the-first-two-weeks", "what-do-you-do-when-you-do-not-know-the-answer", "what-is-the-difference-between-managed-it-services-and-break-fix-it-su", "will-you-train-our-staff-or-talk-down-to-them" ] }, { "slug": "i-set-a-lot-of-this-up-myself-are-you-going-to-rip-it-out", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/i-set-a-lot-of-this-up-myself-are-you-going-to-rip-it-out", "question": "I set a lot of this up myself. Are you going to rip it out and start over?", "shortAnswer": "No. We keep what works, and when something does have to change you get the reason and the cost first.", "answer": "Owner-built setups are often more sensible than people expect, because the person who built it actually understood the business. What they usually lack is documentation, patching discipline, and a backup somebody has tested. All three are fixable without replacing anything.\n\nWe do replace things that cannot be secured, cannot be supported, or are visibly heading for failure. When that happens you get the reason in plain language and the cost before anything moves. \"We are more comfortable with our own brand\" is not a reason, and we will not present it as one.\n\nThe one thing we do insist on is our monitoring and management tools on the machines, because we cannot be accountable for equipment we cannot see.", "related": [ "what-do-you-do-when-you-do-not-know-the-answer", "our-office-manager-will-be-your-main-contact", "what-happens-when-you-break-something", "we-have-someone-on-staff-who-handles-the-small-stuff" ] }, { "slug": "which-of-your-recommendations-are-actually-urgent", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/which-of-your-recommendations-are-actually-urgent", "question": "Which of your recommendations are actually urgent, and which can wait?", "shortAnswer": "We sort them into three buckets for you, and we do not quietly move things up a bucket to accelerate a sale.", "answer": "After the assessment you get a list in three groups:\n\n- Fix now. Things that will take you down or get you breached. Failing drives, no working backup, no multi factor authentication on email, an unsupported system exposed to the internet.\n\n- Budget this year. Aging equipment, gaps that are not on fire yet, projects with a real payback.\n\n- When you get to it. Convenience, performance, and improvements that are genuinely optional.\n\nAlmost nobody can do all of it at once and we do not pretend otherwise. If you decide to leave something in the first group unaddressed, we will say so once more in writing, and after that it is your business and your call. We are not going to nag you into a purchase.", "related": [ "how-do-we-handle-it-on-a-nonprofit-budget", "what-do-the-first-30-days-of-onboarding-look-like-for-a-contractor", "what-do-you-do-when-you-do-not-know-the-answer", "what-will-still-be-on-our-plate" ] }, { "slug": "we-have-someone-on-staff-who-handles-the-small-stuff", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/we-have-someone-on-staff-who-handles-the-small-stuff", "question": "We have someone on staff who handles the small stuff. Do you take that away from them?", "shortAnswer": "Only if you want us to. More often we work alongside that person rather than replacing them.", "answer": "Nearly every small business has one: the front desk person who knows how to clear a print queue, the office manager who resets passwords. They did not ask for the job, but they are usually good at it and they know your business better than any outsider will.\n\nIt can go either way. Some owners want everything off that person's plate so they can do the job they were actually hired for. Others want them keeping the quick things because walking ten feet is faster than calling anyone. We will set it up whichever way you want, give them access to our documentation so they are not guessing, and be clear about where their part stops and ours starts.\n\nThe one thing we will not do is leave them as the only person who knows how something works. That is a risk to you if they are out sick or move on, and documenting it is not a move against them.", "related": [ "when-should-we-stop-relying-on-the-owner-or-office-manager-for-it", "do-you-offer-a-co-managed-option-if-we-hire-our-own-it-person", "what-will-still-be-on-our-plate", "can-we-limit-what-each-staff-member-can-see" ] }, { "slug": "will-you-train-our-staff-or-talk-down-to-them", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/will-you-train-our-staff-or-talk-down-to-them", "question": "Will you train our staff, or talk down to them?", "shortAnswer": "Train. Short sessions, plain language, and nobody gets made to feel slow for asking.", "answer": "Onboarding includes a short session for your staff covering how to reach us, what counts as an emergency, and the handful of security habits that actually matter. It runs fifteen or twenty minutes, not a seminar, and we repeat it for new hires.\n\nYour people are experts at their job, not at ours. A technician who cannot explain something without condescension is not doing their job well, and that is a conversation we have internally, not something you should have to manage.\n\nOne more thing worth saying: if someone on your team keeps running into the same problem, that is usually a sign the setup is wrong, not that they are.", "related": [ "are-you-going-to-be-difficult-about-the-mess-you-find", "what-is-the-first-step-if-we-want-to-talk", "what-happens-when-you-break-something", "why-does-our-practice-software-slow-down-during-the-day" ] }, { "slug": "can-i-meet-the-person-who-would-work-on-our-account", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-i-meet-the-person-who-would-work-on-our-account", "question": "Can I meet the person who would actually be working on our account?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, before you sign anything.", "answer": "You should not choose a provider based on whoever sold it to you. Ask to meet the person who would handle your day to day work and the person who would show up onsite, and ask them something specific about your setup.\n\nWe will arrange that, and it costs you nothing. It is a reasonable request, and a provider who deflects it is telling you something about how their delivery team compares to their sales team.", "related": [ "do-i-get-a-dedicated-technician-or-whoever-answers", "what-will-still-be-on-our-plate", "what-happens-if-we-get-breached-what-is-your-role", "do-you-offer-someone-onsite-five-days-a-week" ] }, { "slug": "how-many-clients-does-one-of-your-technicians-carry", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-many-clients-does-one-of-your-technicians-carry", "question": "How many clients does one of your technicians carry?", "shortAnswer": "Ask and we will tell you the current number. A technician spread across too many clients cannot know any of them well.", "answer": "Very few prospects ask this, and it is one of the more revealing questions available to you. The number tells you whether the person who answers your call recognizes your business or has to open a file and start reading.\n\nWe keep accounts per technician low enough that your environment is familiar, and we staff so at least two people know your setup rather than one. There is a genuine tradeoff in provider size here: a one or two person shop gives you intimacy with no coverage when somebody is sick, and a very large provider gives you coverage from people who have never seen your office.\n\nAsk every provider for the number, then ask how many of those clients that technician has physically visited in the last six months. The second answer is usually more informative than the first.", "related": [ "do-i-get-a-dedicated-technician-or-whoever-answers", "are-we-too-big-for-you", "what-do-you-do-when-you-do-not-know-the-answer", "will-you-treat-our-office-manager-the-way-you-treat-the-owner" ] }, { "slug": "what-if-we-do-not-get-along-with-the-technician-you-assign", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-if-we-do-not-get-along-with-the-technician-you-assign", "question": "What if we do not get along with the technician you assign?", "shortAnswer": "Tell us and we reassign. You do not need to justify it and it will not change how you are treated.", "answer": "Personality fit is real, and saying it is wrong is not an accusation of incompetence. Some clients want everything explained as it happens, others want it fixed quietly with no commentary. A mismatch there causes friction that has nothing to do with skill.\n\nIf the match is wrong, say so. We would far rather move somebody internally than lose a client over a mismatch nobody mentioned until the exit conversation.", "related": [ "are-you-going-to-be-difficult-about-the-mess-you-find", "will-you-train-our-staff-or-talk-down-to-them", "what-do-you-do-when-you-do-not-know-the-answer", "what-happens-when-your-help-desk-cannot-fix-it" ] }, { "slug": "are-you-planning-to-sell-the-company", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/are-you-planning-to-sell-the-company", "question": "Are you planning to sell the company?", "shortAnswer": "No. Independently owned, no outside investors, and not built to be flipped.", "answer": "This is a fair question in this market and more owners should ask it. A number of IT providers in Northeast Florida have been acquired by out of state groups over the last few years, and the pattern afterward is consistent: familiar technicians leave, support moves further away, and pricing shifts to hit somebody else's targets.\n\nWe are independent. No private equity, no parent company, no investors with an exit timeline. The owner works here and is reachable by clients directly.\n\nNobody can promise the future, which is exactly why the month to month agreement matters. If we were ever acquired, you would not be locked into a multi year contract with whoever bought us. That protection is there whether or not you ever need it.", "related": [ "are-you-a-local-jacksonville-it-company-or-part-of-a-national-chain", "are-you-locally-owned", "will-you-treat-our-office-manager-the-way-you-treat-the-owner", "what-were-your-actual-response-times-last-month" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-show-us-a-restore-instead-of-a-backup-report", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-show-us-a-restore-instead-of-a-backup-report", "question": "Can you show us a restore instead of a backup report?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. We run test restores monthly on everything we back up, and you are welcome to watch one.", "answer": "A backup report full of green checkmarks tells you a job ran. It does not tell you the data is usable. The distance between those two facts is where businesses get destroyed, and it is almost always measured at the worst possible moment.\n\nWe restore test data monthly for every managed client, covering your Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace data and any server on a backup line, and the result is part of your reporting. If you want to sit in on one, ask and we will schedule it.\n\nAsk your current provider the same thing. \"Show me a restore\" is the single most revealing question you can put to an IT company, and the hesitation in the answer tells you most of what you need to know.", "related": [ "do-you-handle-backups-and-how-do-you-know-they-work", "have-you-actually-tested-disaster-recovery", "how-do-we-make-sure-patient-records-are-backed-up-and-recoverable", "how-do-we-know-the-work-we-cannot-see-is-happening" ] }, { "slug": "what-were-your-actual-response-times-last-month", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-were-your-actual-response-times-last-month", "question": "Forget the guarantee in the contract. What were your actual response times last month?", "shortAnswer": "We will show you the real numbers from our ticketing system rather than the target from the agreement.", "answer": "Every provider publishes a response commitment. Considerably fewer can show you what actually happened. Our ticketing system records response and resolution times, and we are willing to show prospective clients real figures instead of the promise.\n\nAsk every provider you are considering for the report rather than the agreement, and then ask how they define response. Some count an automated email confirming your ticket was created. That is a receipt, not a response, and the difference matters at 7 AM when nothing works.", "related": [ "is-there-a-long-term-contract-and-how-do-i-get-out-of-it", "what-happens-if-you-miss-your-response-commitments", "if-we-stay-hourly-do-we-go-to-the-back-of-the-line", "if-we-are-not-satisfied-in-the-first-90-days-are-we-locked-in" ] }, { "slug": "tell-us-what-you-could-sell-us-that-we-do-not-need", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/tell-us-what-you-could-sell-us-that-we-do-not-need", "question": "Tell us what you could sell us that we do not actually need.", "shortAnswer": "Plenty. We would rather name it than have you assume all of it is padding.", "answer": "Things commonly sold to businesses your size that frequently are not worth the money:\n\n- A second backup product when the first is configured correctly and actually tested\n\n- Security tools layered on top of capability you already own and have not turned on, which is extremely common with Microsoft licensing\n\n- A server for a business that could run entirely on cloud services\n\n- Enterprise grade equipment at a scale where the business grade version will serve you for years\n\n- Compliance packages for frameworks that do not apply to you\n\nWe will tell you when something falls in this category. If you want it anyway for reasons of your own, that is your call and we will do it, but you will know which bucket it is in.\n\nAsk every provider this question and watch what happens. The ones who cannot name a single thing are the ones to be careful with.", "related": [ "where-do-small-businesses-waste-money-on-it", "do-you-do-hourly-break-fix-work-or-only-monthly-agreements", "can-you-show-us-a-restore-instead-of-a-backup-report", "do-you-handle-backups-and-how-do-you-know-they-work" ] }, { "slug": "what-happens-when-you-break-something", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-happens-when-you-break-something", "question": "What happens when you break something?", "shortAnswer": "You hear about it immediately, from the person involved, and we fix it at our cost.", "answer": "It happens. A patch with an unexpected consequence, a change nobody predicted the effect of, an honest mistake. Anyone who has been doing this for years and tells you otherwise is not being straight with you.\n\nWhat we do: tell you as soon as we know. Not after it is quietly fixed, and certainly not after you noticed. The person who made the mistake is part of that conversation rather than a manager running damage control. We fix it on our time, and we tell you what changed in how we work so it does not repeat.\n\nThe thing that ends relationships is not the mistake. It is finding out about it later, from somebody else.", "related": [ "what-do-you-do-when-you-do-not-know-the-answer", "have-you-ever-underquoted-a-job-and-what-happened", "what-happens-if-our-server-goes-down-during-appointments", "do-you-do-hourly-break-fix-work-or-only-monthly-agreements" ] }, { "slug": "what-do-you-do-when-you-do-not-know-the-answer", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-do-you-do-when-you-do-not-know-the-answer", "question": "What do you do when you do not know the answer?", "shortAnswer": "Say so, tell you how we are going to find out, and give you a time you will hear back.", "answer": "Nobody knows everything across the range of systems a small business runs. The failure is not in not knowing. It is guessing confidently, or going silent for three days while quietly trying to work it out.\n\nWhat you should get is \"I do not know, here is how I am going to find out, and I will have something for you by Thursday.\" Then we research it, escalate it internally, or go to the vendor, and you hear back when we said you would.\n\nIf it turns out to be outside what we do at all, we will tell you that too and point you toward someone who does it well. That happens a few times a year and it has never cost us a client.", "related": [ "are-you-going-to-be-difficult-about-the-mess-you-find", "how-many-clients-does-one-of-your-technicians-carry", "what-do-you-always-find-in-the-first-two-weeks", "what-happens-when-you-break-something" ] }, { "slug": "what-will-still-be-on-our-plate", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-will-still-be-on-our-plate", "question": "What will still be on our plate that we are hoping will not be?", "shortAnswer": "Decisions, budget, and telling us when the business changes. Everything else should genuinely leave your plate.", "answer": "Worth answering honestly up front, because the alternative is you discovering it in month three.\n\nStill yours:\n\n- Decisions about money and priorities. We recommend and sequence, but it is your business.\n\n- Telling us when something changes: a new hire, a new location, a new software vendor, another crew.\n\n- Approving access. We are not granting someone permissions because they asked us nicely.\n\n- Choices about your own line of business software: which platform, which modules, which version.\n\nShould leave your plate completely: patching, monitoring, backups and whether they actually work, security, sitting on hold with vendors, new hire setup, hardware planning, and being the person your staff comes to when something breaks.\n\nIf you are still doing anything in that second list six months in, we have not done our job, and you should say so out loud.", "related": [ "we-have-someone-on-staff-who-handles-the-small-stuff", "can-i-meet-the-person-who-would-work-on-our-account", "how-fast-can-you-get-a-new-employee-set-up", "are-you-going-to-be-difficult-about-the-mess-you-find" ] }, { "slug": "will-you-treat-our-office-manager-the-way-you-treat-the-owner", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/will-you-treat-our-office-manager-the-way-you-treat-the-owner", "question": "Will your technicians treat our office manager the way they treat the owner?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. If that is ever not true, tell the owner here and it gets dealt with.", "answer": "We see this pattern often: the owner is technical, and the office manager, frequently the owner's spouse, is the person who actually deals with the provider every day. Some technicians unconsciously give the detailed answer to the owner and a simplified one to everyone else. It is condescending, and it also means the person doing the work is getting the worse information.\n\nYour office manager gets the same explanations, the same access, and the same authority you tell us they have. Nobody has to prove they are technical enough to receive a straight answer.\n\nThis is worth watching during the sales process rather than after. In the first meeting, notice who they talk to and who they look at when a question comes from someone other than the owner.", "related": [ "our-office-manager-will-be-your-main-contact", "who-do-we-call-if-the-problem-is-with-you", "how-many-clients-does-one-of-your-technicians-carry", "when-should-we-stop-relying-on-the-owner-or-office-manager-for-it" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-evaluate-our-internal-it-person-honestly", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-evaluate-our-internal-it-person-honestly", "question": "Can you evaluate our internal IT person honestly, or is that a conflict of interest?", "shortAnswer": "It is a conflict of interest, and you should hear us acknowledge that before you weigh our opinion.", "answer": "We earn more if the answer is that you need us. Any provider who takes that question without acknowledging the conflict is not someone whose judgment you should rely on here.\n\nWhat we can do honestly is report facts rather than render a verdict. Are systems patched. Do backups run and restore. Is multi factor authentication enforced. Is anything documented. Is licensing in order. Are there unresolved tickets going back months. Those are observations with dates attached, and they do not require an opinion about a person.\n\nWe will also tell you what a single person at your scale could reasonably be expected to cover, which is usually less than owners assume. Sometimes that reframes the whole question.\n\nWhat we will not do is build a case. If you want a genuinely independent assessment of an internal employee's performance, hire someone who is not bidding on the work. That is worth the money and we will say so even though it costs us the easier path.", "related": [ "what-do-you-do-when-you-do-not-know-the-answer", "can-you-show-us-a-restore-instead-of-a-backup-report", "do-you-offer-someone-onsite-five-days-a-week", "tell-us-what-you-could-sell-us-that-we-do-not-need" ] } ] }, { "id": "jacksonville", "group": "Where we work", "title": "Jacksonville and Duval County", "summary": "Our home market. Our office is on Salisbury Road on the Southside.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/jacksonville", "articles": [ { "slug": "who-provides-managed-it-services-in-jacksonville-fl", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/who-provides-managed-it-services-in-jacksonville-fl", "question": "Who provides managed IT services in Jacksonville, FL?", "shortAnswer": "We do, and we are headquartered here rather than servicing Jacksonville from somewhere else.", "answer": "Advanced IT Support is a Jacksonville based managed IT provider working with small businesses across Duval County. Our office is at 4237 Salisbury Road, Suite 208, which puts us close to the Southside, Baymeadows, and the Butler Boulevard corridor and within a reasonable drive of the rest of the county.\n\nThere are good providers in this market and there are national brands with a local phone number. Ask any of them where the person who would actually show up at your office sits.", "related": [ "are-you-a-local-jacksonville-it-company-or-part-of-a-national-chain", "how-much-does-it-support-cost-in-jacksonville", "who-provides-it-support-in-nassau-county-fl", "who-provides-it-support-in-green-cove-springs-fl" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-support-businesses-in-southside-riverside-the-beaches-and-the-n", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-support-businesses-in-southside-riverside-the-beaches-and-the-n", "question": "Do you support businesses in Southside, Riverside, the Beaches, and the Northside?", "shortAnswer": "All of Duval County, plus the surrounding counties.", "answer": "Downtown, Southside, Baymeadows, Mandarin, San Marco, Riverside and Avondale, Arlington, the Beaches, Northside, and Westside are all normal service territory for us. We also regularly work in Clay, St. Johns, and Nassau counties.", "related": [ "do-you-support-businesses-with-multiple-locations", "who-provides-managed-it-services-in-jacksonville-fl", "who-provides-it-support-in-nassau-county-fl", "do-you-provide-managed-it-services-in-st-augustine" ] }, { "slug": "how-much-does-it-support-cost-in-jacksonville", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-much-does-it-support-cost-in-jacksonville", "question": "How much does IT support cost in Jacksonville?", "shortAnswer": "Most small businesses here land in a predictable monthly range based on headcount and what infrastructure they run.", "answer": "Local pricing varies more by what is in your server closet than by your zip code. A twelve person office running everything in Microsoft 365 costs less to support than a twelve person office with an on premise server, a line of business application, and three locations on a VPN.\n\nWe quote a fixed monthly number after a short assessment. If a provider gives you a price before looking at your environment, they are either guessing or planning to adjust it later.", "related": [ "how-much-does-managed-it-cost-and-how-is-it-billed", "how-much-should-a-small-business-spend-on-it-each-month", "who-provides-managed-it-services-in-jacksonville-fl", "do-you-support-seasonal-businesses-whose-headcount-changes" ] }, { "slug": "what-is-the-difference-between-managed-it-services-and-break-fix-it-su", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-is-the-difference-between-managed-it-services-and-break-fix-it-su", "question": "What is the difference between managed IT services and break-fix IT support?", "shortAnswer": "Break-fix bills you when something goes wrong. Managed IT is paid to keep it from going wrong.", "answer": "Under break-fix, your provider makes money when your systems fail. That is a bad incentive structure for both of you, and it means nobody is patching, monitoring, or testing backups between emergencies.\n\nManaged IT is a flat monthly fee covering support and proactive maintenance. Your costs become predictable and your provider is financially motivated to keep things quiet. We still do hourly work for clients who genuinely only need occasional help, but we are direct about which model fits.", "related": [ "talk-me-out-of-just-calling-you-when-something-breaks", "do-you-do-hourly-break-fix-work-or-only-monthly-agreements", "do-i-need-a-managed-it-provider-or-just-someone-to-call-when-things-br", "what-is-your-hourly-rate-if-we-just-want-occasional-help" ] }, { "slug": "do-i-need-a-managed-it-provider-or-just-someone-to-call-when-things-br", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-i-need-a-managed-it-provider-or-just-someone-to-call-when-things-br", "question": "Do I need a managed IT provider, or just someone to call when things break?", "shortAnswer": "If a day of downtime would hurt, you need managed. If it would just be annoying, hourly may be fine.", "answer": "The honest test is what happens if your systems are unavailable tomorrow morning. If your staff cannot work, you cannot bill, or patients and customers are affected, then reactive support is a gamble you are taking every day.\n\nAlso consider whether anyone is handling security. Under an hourly arrangement, nobody is watching for a compromised mailbox. That gap is where most expensive incidents start.", "related": [ "do-you-do-hourly-break-fix-work-or-only-monthly-agreements", "what-is-the-difference-between-managed-it-services-and-break-fix-it-su", "talk-me-out-of-just-calling-you-when-something-breaks", "if-we-stay-hourly-do-we-go-to-the-back-of-the-line" ] }, { "slug": "are-you-a-local-jacksonville-it-company-or-part-of-a-national-chain", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/are-you-a-local-jacksonville-it-company-or-part-of-a-national-chain", "question": "Are you a local Jacksonville IT company or part of a national chain?", "shortAnswer": "Independent and locally owned. No parent company, no outside investors.", "answer": "Several IT providers in this market have been acquired by out of state groups over the last few years. Clients usually notice the same pattern afterward: familiar technicians leave, support moves to a call center, and pricing changes to hit someone else's targets.\n\nWe are not on that path. Decisions about your account get made in Jacksonville by the people who answer your calls.", "related": [ "are-you-locally-owned", "are-you-planning-to-sell-the-company", "who-provides-managed-it-services-in-jacksonville-fl", "can-you-take-over-from-our-current-jacksonville-it-provider" ] }, { "slug": "how-do-you-handle-hurricane-and-storm-season-for-our-systems", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-do-you-handle-hurricane-and-storm-season-for-our-systems", "question": "How do you handle hurricane and storm season for our systems?", "shortAnswer": "Offsite backups, battery protection, and a plan for working from somewhere else.", "answer": "Living here means planning for a week where the office is not reachable. We make sure your backups exist somewhere other than your building, that servers and network gear are on battery protection with clean shutdown, that your staff can work remotely if they evacuate, and that your phones and email keep functioning while the office is dark.\n\nWe go over this with clients before the season, not during a watch.", "related": [ "who-provides-managed-it-services-in-jacksonville-fl", "how-do-we-make-sure-patient-records-are-backed-up-and-recoverable", "can-you-work-around-our-busy-season", "do-you-support-other-hvac-plumbing-and-home-services-contractors" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-take-over-from-our-current-jacksonville-it-provider", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-take-over-from-our-current-jacksonville-it-provider", "question": "Can you take over from our current Jacksonville IT provider?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, and it is a large share of the work we do.", "answer": "Most new clients are not new to IT support, they are unhappy with the support they have. We handle the transition, including the situations where the outgoing provider is not helpful about it. Talk to us before you give notice so there is no gap in coverage.", "related": [ "can-i-talk-to-some-of-your-current-clients", "how-do-you-handle-the-handoff-from-our-current-provider", "who-provides-managed-it-services-in-jacksonville-fl", "how-many-clients-does-one-of-your-technicians-carry" ] } ] }, { "id": "st-augustine", "group": "Where we work", "title": "St. Augustine and St. Johns County", "summary": "Regular service territory, not an occasional exception.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/st-augustine", "articles": [ { "slug": "do-you-provide-managed-it-services-in-st-augustine", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-provide-managed-it-services-in-st-augustine", "question": "Do you provide managed IT services in St. Augustine?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, St. Augustine and St. Johns County are part of our normal coverage area.", "answer": "St. Johns County businesses have a real problem finding IT support. The local options are often one or two person shops, and the Jacksonville firms frequently treat anything south of the county line as a favor. We treat it as territory, which means the same response commitments apply.", "related": [ "how-long-does-it-take-you-to-get-to-a-st-augustine-office", "do-you-charge-extra-to-come-to-st-augustine", "who-provides-it-support-in-nassau-county-fl", "do-you-cover-ponte-vedra-nocatee-and-world-golf-village" ] }, { "slug": "how-long-does-it-take-you-to-get-to-a-st-augustine-office", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-long-does-it-take-you-to-get-to-a-st-augustine-office", "question": "How long does it take you to get to a St. Augustine office?", "shortAnswer": "Roughly 40 to 50 minutes from our Jacksonville office, and most issues never need a drive.", "answer": "The majority of support happens remotely and starts within minutes, which matters more than mileage. When something needs hands on it, we schedule the visit and come down. Practically speaking, a St. Augustine client and a Southside client have similar experiences most weeks.", "related": [ "is-support-remote-only-or-will-someone-come-onsite", "do-you-provide-managed-it-services-in-st-augustine", "how-do-you-handle-onsite-support-that-far-north", "do-you-charge-extra-to-come-to-st-augustine" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-charge-extra-to-come-to-st-augustine", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-charge-extra-to-come-to-st-augustine", "question": "Do you charge extra to come to St. Augustine?", "shortAnswer": "No hourly labor charge for managed clients, just the standard flat trip charge.", "answer": "Managed clients do not pay hourly onsite labor under their agreement regardless of where they are, and our top tier includes onsite coverage. Non-managed hourly work does carry a longer minimum for locations farther out, which is one of the practical reasons a managed agreement makes more sense the farther you are from Jacksonville.", "related": [ "is-support-remote-only-or-will-someone-come-onsite", "what-is-your-hourly-rate-if-we-just-want-occasional-help", "is-your-pricing-flat-rate-or-are-there-hidden-costs", "do-you-provide-managed-it-services-in-st-augustine" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-cover-ponte-vedra-nocatee-and-world-golf-village", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-cover-ponte-vedra-nocatee-and-world-golf-village", "question": "Do you cover Ponte Vedra, Nocatee, and World Golf Village?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, along with the rest of St. Johns County.", "answer": "Ponte Vedra Beach, Nocatee, World Golf Village, Julington Creek, St. Augustine Beach, and Hastings are all within our service area. The growth corridor along 9B and County Road 210 is one of the fastest changing parts of our territory.", "related": [ "do-you-provide-managed-it-services-in-st-augustine", "who-provides-it-support-in-nassau-county-fl", "how-long-does-it-take-you-to-get-to-a-st-augustine-office", "who-provides-managed-it-services-in-jacksonville-fl" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-work-around-the-wiring-and-internet-limits-in-older-downtown-b", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-work-around-the-wiring-and-internet-limits-in-older-downtown-b", "question": "Can you work around the wiring and internet limits in older downtown buildings?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Historic buildings are a specific problem we plan for rather than fight.", "answer": "Downtown St. Augustine has buildings that predate the concept of a network cable, with plaster walls, historic district restrictions on exterior work, and limited fiber availability on some streets. Running new cable is sometimes not an option at any price.\n\nWe design around it: properly placed wireless access points instead of drops in every room, cloud services so less depends on a local server, and backup internet over cellular where the wired options are thin. Get the design right and a 120 year old building works fine.", "related": [ "can-you-support-a-business-with-a-warehouse-or-shop-floor-not-just-an", "how-do-you-handle-offices-with-limited-broadband-in-rural-clay-county", "do-you-provide-managed-it-services-in-st-augustine", "can-you-help-us-get-off-an-old-server" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-help-a-restaurant-or-retail-shop-with-point-of-sale-and-guest", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-help-a-restaurant-or-retail-shop-with-point-of-sale-and-guest", "question": "Can you help a restaurant or retail shop with point of sale and guest Wi-Fi?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, with the payment network kept separate from guest traffic.", "answer": "The mistake we see most often in tourist area businesses is one flat network carrying the point of sale system, the office computer, the security cameras, and the public Wi-Fi. That arrangement puts your card processing one compromised guest device away from trouble.\n\nWe separate those networks, keep the guest side usable without exposing anything else, and make sure a busy Saturday does not take the registers down.", "related": [ "can-you-support-hospitality-and-tourism-businesses-on-amelia-island", "how-do-we-stay-pci-compliant-when-techs-take-payments-in-the-field", "do-you-provide-managed-it-services-in-st-augustine", "do-you-actually-have-someone-who-understands-networking" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-support-seasonal-businesses-whose-headcount-changes", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-support-seasonal-businesses-whose-headcount-changes", "question": "Do you support seasonal businesses whose headcount changes?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Tell us about the swing during the quote and we structure for it.", "answer": "Tourism driven businesses staff very differently in March than in September. Because our pricing has a per-user component, your cost tracks your actual headcount instead of holding you to a peak season number all year.", "related": [ "we-hire-seasonal-help-how-easily-can-we-scale-licenses-up-and-down", "what-happens-to-my-price-if-i-add-or-lose-employees", "how-much-does-it-support-cost-in-jacksonville", "are-we-too-big-for-you" ] } ] }, { "id": "clay", "group": "Where we work", "title": "Orange Park, Green Cove Springs, and Clay County", "summary": "Close enough for frequent onsite work, often underserved by Jacksonville firms.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/clay", "articles": [ { "slug": "who-provides-it-support-in-green-cove-springs-fl", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/who-provides-it-support-in-green-cove-springs-fl", "question": "Who provides IT support in Green Cove Springs, FL?", "shortAnswer": "We do. Green Cove Springs is part of our regular Clay County coverage.", "answer": "Green Cove Springs has grown considerably and the IT options have not kept pace. Businesses there often end up choosing between a one person operation and a Jacksonville provider who does not really want to make the drive. We cover it as standard territory.", "related": [ "what-it-company-covers-clay-county-fl", "do-you-support-orange-park-businesses", "do-you-support-businesses-with-multiple-locations", "who-provides-it-support-in-nassau-county-fl" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-support-orange-park-businesses", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-support-orange-park-businesses", "question": "Do you support Orange Park businesses?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Orange Park is about twenty minutes from our office.", "answer": "Orange Park is one of our closest markets outside Duval County, which makes onsite work straightforward. Medical and dental practices, professional offices, and trades businesses along Blanding and Wells Road are typical of the work we do there.", "related": [ "what-it-company-covers-clay-county-fl", "do-you-support-businesses-with-multiple-locations", "who-provides-it-support-in-green-cove-springs-fl", "is-support-remote-only-or-will-someone-come-onsite" ] }, { "slug": "what-it-company-covers-clay-county-fl", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-it-company-covers-clay-county-fl", "question": "What IT company covers Clay County, FL?", "shortAnswer": "We cover the whole county: Orange Park, Fleming Island, Middleburg, Green Cove Springs, and Keystone Heights.", "answer": "Clay County businesses are frequently told they are outside someone's service area or quoted a trip charge that makes routine onsite help impractical. It is a normal part of our territory, and managed clients get onsite work covered under their agreement.", "related": [ "who-provides-it-support-in-green-cove-springs-fl", "do-you-support-orange-park-businesses", "is-support-remote-only-or-will-someone-come-onsite", "how-do-you-handle-offices-with-limited-broadband-in-rural-clay-county" ] }, { "slug": "how-do-you-handle-offices-with-limited-broadband-in-rural-clay-county", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-do-you-handle-offices-with-limited-broadband-in-rural-clay-county", "question": "How do you handle offices with limited broadband in rural Clay County?", "shortAnswer": "We design for the connection you can actually get, and add a backup path.", "answer": "Parts of Middleburg, Keystone Heights, and the western county still have thin options. That changes the right design: keeping certain systems local instead of pushing everything to the cloud, managing bandwidth so a backup job does not take down your phones, and adding a cellular failover connection so a cut line does not stop the day.\n\nWe also track when fiber becomes available at your address, since it changes street by street and providers rarely tell you.", "related": [ "what-it-company-covers-clay-county-fl", "who-provides-it-support-in-green-cove-springs-fl", "do-you-support-orange-park-businesses", "can-you-work-around-the-wiring-and-internet-limits-in-older-downtown-b" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-support-a-business-with-a-warehouse-or-shop-floor-not-just-an", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-support-a-business-with-a-warehouse-or-shop-floor-not-just-an", "question": "Can you support a business with a warehouse or shop floor, not just an office?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, including wireless coverage in metal buildings and outdoor yards.", "answer": "Warehouses, shops, and yards are a different wireless problem than an office: metal racking, high ceilings, forklifts, dust, heat, and outdoor coverage. Consumer grade access points fail quickly in that environment. We use hardware built for it and design coverage around how the space is actually used.", "related": [ "who-provides-it-support-in-green-cove-springs-fl", "do-you-support-orange-park-businesses", "can-you-fix-wi-fi-dead-spots-in-exam-rooms-and-treatment-areas", "do-you-support-businesses-with-multiple-locations" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-work-with-contractors-trades-and-manufacturers", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-work-with-contractors-trades-and-manufacturers", "question": "Do you work with contractors, trades, and manufacturers?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, including crews who work from trucks and job sites.", "answer": "These businesses have a common shape: a small office, a shop, and a field crew who need access to plans, estimates, and photos from wherever they are. The usual work is getting files out of a single office computer, securing mobile access, and making the estimating or project software reliable for people who are never at a desk.", "related": [ "do-you-support-orange-park-businesses", "do-you-support-businesses-with-multiple-locations", "do-you-work-with-manufacturers-and-industrial-businesses-in-yulee-and", "who-provides-it-support-in-green-cove-springs-fl" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-help-us-get-off-an-old-server", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-help-us-get-off-an-old-server", "question": "Can you help us get off an old server?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, and it is one of the most common first year projects we do.", "answer": "A lot of small offices are running a server well past its supported life because replacing it never got scheduled. Sometimes the right move is a new server, sometimes the file shares belong in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace and the server goes away entirely. We look at what actually depends on it before recommending either.", "related": [ "do-you-handle-cloud-email-and-file-migrations", "who-provides-it-support-in-green-cove-springs-fl", "do-you-support-orange-park-businesses", "what-it-company-covers-clay-county-fl" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-support-businesses-with-multiple-locations", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-support-businesses-with-multiple-locations", "question": "Do you support businesses with multiple locations?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, including offices split across counties.", "answer": "An Orange Park office and a Jacksonville office should behave like one business: same logins, same file access, same phone system, one place to call for support. We connect and manage sites so your staff does not have to think about which building they are sitting in.", "related": [ "do-you-support-orange-park-businesses", "can-you-support-remote-staff-and-multiple-program-sites", "who-provides-it-support-in-green-cove-springs-fl", "what-it-company-covers-clay-county-fl" ] } ] }, { "id": "nassau", "group": "Where we work", "title": "Fernandina Beach and Nassau County", "summary": "North of the river, and genuinely covered.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/nassau", "articles": [ { "slug": "who-provides-it-support-in-nassau-county-fl", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/who-provides-it-support-in-nassau-county-fl", "question": "Who provides IT support in Nassau County, FL?", "shortAnswer": "We cover Fernandina Beach, Amelia Island, Yulee, Callahan, and Hilliard.", "answer": "Nassau County businesses face the same gap as St. Johns County on the other side: limited local options and Jacksonville providers who treat the drive as an inconvenience. We serve it as normal territory.", "related": [ "can-you-support-hospitality-and-tourism-businesses-on-amelia-island", "do-you-work-with-manufacturers-and-industrial-businesses-in-yulee-and", "who-provides-it-support-in-green-cove-springs-fl", "do-you-provide-managed-it-services-in-st-augustine" ] }, { "slug": "how-do-you-handle-onsite-support-that-far-north", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-do-you-handle-onsite-support-that-far-north", "question": "How do you handle onsite support that far north?", "shortAnswer": "Remote first, with scheduled onsite visits covered under managed agreements.", "answer": "Fernandina is roughly 45 minutes from our office. As with our other outlying markets, most issues are resolved remotely within minutes, and onsite visits are scheduled rather than improvised. Managed clients do not pay hourly labor for them.", "related": [ "is-support-remote-only-or-will-someone-come-onsite", "who-provides-it-support-in-nassau-county-fl", "how-long-does-it-take-you-to-get-to-a-st-augustine-office", "do-you-charge-extra-to-come-to-st-augustine" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-support-hospitality-and-tourism-businesses-on-amelia-island", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-support-hospitality-and-tourism-businesses-on-amelia-island", "question": "Can you support hospitality and tourism businesses on Amelia Island?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, including guest Wi-Fi, point of sale, and booking systems.", "answer": "Inns, restaurants, shops, and rental management companies share a set of problems: guest networks that must stay separate from business systems, payment processing that cannot go down during a busy weekend, and booking platforms that need to keep talking to everything else. Seasonal staffing turnover also makes account management and offboarding more important than most owners expect.", "related": [ "who-provides-it-support-in-nassau-county-fl", "can-you-help-a-restaurant-or-retail-shop-with-point-of-sale-and-guest", "do-you-support-seasonal-businesses-whose-headcount-changes", "how-do-we-stay-pci-compliant-when-techs-take-payments-in-the-field" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-work-with-manufacturers-and-industrial-businesses-in-yulee-and", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-work-with-manufacturers-and-industrial-businesses-in-yulee-and", "question": "Do you work with manufacturers and industrial businesses in Yulee and the port area?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, including sites with equipment that predates modern networking.", "answer": "Industrial sites usually have machinery with control systems that cannot be patched or replaced casually. The right approach is to isolate those systems on the network so they are not exposed, rather than pretending they can be treated like an office computer.", "related": [ "do-you-work-with-contractors-trades-and-manufacturers", "who-provides-it-support-in-nassau-county-fl", "can-you-support-remote-staff-and-multiple-program-sites", "do-you-support-businesses-with-multiple-locations" ] } ] }, { "id": "smallbiz", "group": "Who we work with", "title": "Small business IT basics", "summary": "For owners deciding whether they need outside IT at all.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/smallbiz", "articles": [ { "slug": "do-we-need-an-it-provider-if-we-only-have-eight-employees", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-we-need-an-it-provider-if-we-only-have-eight-employees", "question": "Do we need an IT provider if we only have eight employees?", "shortAnswer": "You need someone accountable for it. Whether that is a full agreement depends on what you run.", "answer": "Eight people still means eight email accounts to secure, backups that need to work, computers that need patching, and a network someone should be watching. The question is not whether the work exists, it is who is doing it. Right now it is probably your office manager, in between their real job.\n\nWe support businesses at that size regularly. We will also tell you honestly if a lighter arrangement makes more sense for where you are.", "related": [ "is-outsourced-it-cheaper-than-hiring-someone-in-house", "can-you-manage-just-our-microsoft-365-without-managing-everything-else", "what-do-you-always-find-in-the-first-two-weeks", "have-you-worked-with-businesses-my-size" ] }, { "slug": "how-much-should-a-small-business-spend-on-it-each-month", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-much-should-a-small-business-spend-on-it-each-month", "question": "How much should a small business spend on IT each month?", "shortAnswer": "Enough to cover support, security, and backup for every employee, budgeted as a fixed monthly cost.", "answer": "Percentage of revenue benchmarks are not much use to a ten person company, because the real driver is headcount and complexity. What matters more is that the number is predictable and that it includes security rather than treating it as an upgrade.\n\nCompare quotes carefully. A cheaper monthly price usually means fewer things included, and you will meet those exclusions at the worst possible moment.", "related": [ "how-much-does-it-support-cost-in-jacksonville", "how-much-does-managed-it-cost-and-how-is-it-billed", "is-your-pricing-flat-rate-or-are-there-hidden-costs", "what-is-included-in-the-monthly-fee-and-what-gets-billed-separately" ] }, { "slug": "is-outsourced-it-cheaper-than-hiring-someone-in-house", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/is-outsourced-it-cheaper-than-hiring-someone-in-house", "question": "Is outsourced IT cheaper than hiring someone in house?", "shortAnswer": "Usually, until you are somewhere around 30 to 50 employees.", "answer": "A competent full time IT person costs a salary plus benefits, and you still need tools, licensing, and coverage for when they are out or asleep. For most businesses under about 30 people, a managed agreement costs less than that and covers more hours.\n\nAbove that, an internal person plus a provider for after hours coverage, projects, and security often works better than either alone. We do that arrangement with several clients.", "related": [ "do-you-offer-someone-onsite-five-days-a-week", "do-we-need-an-it-provider-if-we-only-have-eight-employees", "why-do-clients-leave-you", "do-you-offer-a-co-managed-option-if-we-hire-our-own-it-person" ] }, { "slug": "when-should-we-stop-relying-on-the-owner-or-office-manager-for-it", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/when-should-we-stop-relying-on-the-owner-or-office-manager-for-it", "question": "When should we stop relying on the owner or office manager for IT?", "shortAnswer": "When the time it consumes is worth more than the agreement costs, which is earlier than most owners think.", "answer": "The usual signs: your office manager is spending hours a week on computer problems instead of their actual job, nobody knows whether backups are running, passwords live in a spreadsheet or on paper, and one person is the only one who knows how anything is set up.\n\nThis is the situation most of our clients were in before they called.", "related": [ "our-office-manager-will-be-your-main-contact", "will-you-treat-our-office-manager-the-way-you-treat-the-owner", "we-have-someone-on-staff-who-handles-the-small-stuff", "how-do-we-know-a-monthly-agreement-is-worth-it-for-us" ] }, { "slug": "is-a-small-business-really-a-target-for-hackers", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/is-a-small-business-really-a-target-for-hackers", "question": "Is a small business really a target for hackers?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, because almost none of it is targeted.", "answer": "Most attacks are automated and indiscriminate. Nobody chose your business. Scanners find an exposed service or a password that appeared in a breach, and the attack proceeds without a human deciding you were worth the effort.\n\nSmall businesses are attractive precisely because they are usually less defended and they have real money moving through them. The most common expensive event we see is not dramatic ransomware, it is a compromised email account used to redirect a payment.", "related": [ "what-kinds-of-businesses-usually-come-to-you-and-why", "what-were-your-actual-response-times-last-month", "what-do-you-always-find-in-the-first-two-weeks", "how-do-we-protect-donor-data-and-payment-information" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-support-a-fully-remote-or-hybrid-business", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-support-a-fully-remote-or-hybrid-business", "question": "Can you support a fully remote or hybrid business?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, and businesses with no office often need more structure, not less.", "answer": "Without a shared network, identity becomes the perimeter. That means multi factor authentication everywhere, managed devices, controlled file sharing, and a way to set up and shut off accounts quickly. We ship preconfigured computers to remote staff and manage them without ever touching them physically.", "related": [ "what-it-does-a-brand-new-business-need-on-day-one", "do-you-offer-someone-onsite-five-days-a-week", "how-does-onboarding-work-for-a-multi-office-company", "can-you-support-remote-staff-and-multiple-program-sites" ] }, { "slug": "what-it-does-a-brand-new-business-need-on-day-one", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-it-does-a-brand-new-business-need-on-day-one", "question": "What IT does a brand new business need on day one?", "shortAnswer": "A domain, business email, file storage, decent computers, multi factor authentication, and backup.", "answer": "Get the foundation right and you will not pay to untangle it in three years. That means a domain you own, Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace under your business name, cloud file storage instead of files scattered across laptops, business class computers, multi factor authentication from the start, and a backup of anything you cannot afford to lose.\n\nDoing this at the beginning costs a fraction of migrating out of a personal email account and a shared drive later.", "related": [ "can-you-support-a-fully-remote-or-hybrid-business", "do-you-handle-cloud-email-and-file-migrations", "can-you-set-up-a-new-computer-and-move-everything-over", "do-you-repair-home-computers-and-laptops" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-manage-just-our-microsoft-365-without-managing-everything-else", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-manage-just-our-microsoft-365-without-managing-everything-else", "question": "Can you manage just our Microsoft 365 without managing everything else?", "shortAnswer": "Sometimes, depending on the situation.", "answer": "For businesses that have almost nothing on premise, a cloud focused arrangement can make sense. Where it breaks down is security: if we secure your email but nobody is patching or protecting the computers people read that email on, the weak link is still wide open. We will tell you when a partial arrangement leaves a gap we are not comfortable with.", "related": [ "do-we-need-an-it-provider-if-we-only-have-eight-employees", "how-do-you-handle-the-handoff-from-our-current-provider", "do-you-do-hourly-break-fix-work-or-only-monthly-agreements", "can-you-manage-cameras-door-access-and-yard-security" ] }, { "slug": "what-happens-to-our-it-if-our-one-tech-savvy-employee-leaves", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-happens-to-our-it-if-our-one-tech-savvy-employee-leaves", "question": "What happens to our IT if our one tech-savvy employee leaves?", "shortAnswer": "That is a risk worth addressing before it happens, and it is fixable in a few weeks.", "answer": "Most small businesses have an informal IT person who never asked for the job. When they leave, they take the passwords, the vendor relationships, and the knowledge of how things were set up with them.\n\nWe document all of it during onboarding so the business owns that knowledge instead of an individual. If you are reading this because that person just gave notice, call before their last day.", "related": [ "what-happens-if-my-main-technician-quits-or-is-on-vacation", "we-have-someone-on-staff-who-handles-the-small-stuff", "how-long-does-onboarding-take", "how-much-should-a-small-business-spend-on-it-each-month" ] } ] }, { "id": "fieldservice", "group": "Who we work with", "title": "Field service and trades contractors", "summary": "HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and home services: dispatch, trucks, tablets, and payments in the field.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/fieldservice", "articles": [ { "slug": "are-you-experienced-with-our-field-service-management-software", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/are-you-experienced-with-our-field-service-management-software", "question": "Are you experienced with our field service management software?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, and more importantly we handle vendor escalation so your dispatcher is not the one on hold.", "answer": "Whether you run ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, FieldEdge, Jobber, ServiceFusion, or something else, we support everything the software depends on: the office workstations, the server if there is one, the network and internet, the tablets in the trucks, the accounts and permissions, and the connections to QuickBooks, your phone system, and your payment processor.\n\nWe are not the developer of your field software and we will not pretend otherwise. What we do own is the escalation. When the problem is inside the application, we open the ticket with their support, sit in their queue, and gather the logs and screenshots they ask for. Your dispatcher should be dispatching, not explaining a sync error to a tier one rep for forty minutes on a Monday morning.\n\nWe also handle the part that causes most of the pain: their version upgrades and integration changes, which routinely have workstation, browser, or network requirements that nobody mentions until something stops working.", "related": [ "do-you-support-dentrix-eaglesoft-and-open-dental", "do-you-support-the-specific-software-my-business-runs-on", "do-you-support-other-hvac-plumbing-and-home-services-contractors", "who-owns-the-relationships-with-our-title-production-vendors" ] }, { "slug": "how-do-you-support-field-technicians-with-spotty-connectivity", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-do-you-support-field-technicians-with-spotty-connectivity", "question": "How do you support field technicians working in areas with spotty connectivity?", "shortAnswer": "Devices are managed and updated remotely, apps are set up to work offline where they can, and we troubleshoot without making a tech drive back to the shop.", "answer": "Coverage in this part of Florida thins out fast once a crew is west of Middleburg, out past Callahan, or down in the rural parts of St. Johns County. We set field devices up so that matters less.\n\n- Field apps configured to work offline where the software supports it, so a tech keeps working and syncs when signal comes back\n\n- App and operating system updates pushed remotely on a schedule, instead of whenever a tech happens to notice a prompt\n\n- Remote support on the device itself, so we can see what the tech is seeing from our office\n\n- Cellular plans and hotspots reviewed against where your crews actually work, not where the coverage map says they do\n\nThe failure mode we watch for is the silent one. A tablet that has quietly stopped syncing for two days causes more damage than one that is obviously broken, because nobody finds out until the invoicing does not match the work. Monitoring is set up to surface that.\n\nA truck roll back to the office to fix a tablet costs you a service call. That is the thing we are trying to prevent.", "related": [ "do-you-work-with-contractors-trades-and-manufacturers", "the-server-goes-down-at-815-on-a-monday", "what-counts-as-a-critical-outage-for-a-field-service-business", "can-our-field-techs-call-the-help-desk-directly" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-support-other-hvac-plumbing-and-home-services-contractors", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-support-other-hvac-plumbing-and-home-services-contractors", "question": "Do you support other HVAC, plumbing, and home services contractors?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Trades and home services contractors are a core part of our client base.", "answer": "We understand what a dispatcher's computer going down on a 96 degree July afternoon actually costs. It is not an inconvenience. It is calls you cannot book and trucks you cannot route while the phone keeps ringing and your competitors answer theirs.\n\nThat is why we treat dispatch workstations, the phone system, and the internet connection as critical infrastructure in your agreement rather than lumping them in with everything else. It also shapes how we schedule work: we do not take your systems down for maintenance during your peak season, and we know when that season is for your trade.\n\nAsk us for references from contractors around your size and we will connect you with them.", "related": [ "can-you-work-around-our-busy-season", "we-operate-24-7-what-does-your-after-hours-support-actually-look-like", "are-you-experienced-with-our-field-service-management-software", "do-you-work-with-contractors-trades-and-manufacturers" ] }, { "slug": "we-operate-24-7-what-does-your-after-hours-support-actually-look-like", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/we-operate-24-7-what-does-your-after-hours-support-actually-look-like", "question": "We run emergency calls around the clock. What does your after-hours support actually look like?", "shortAnswer": "After hours calls reach our on-call staff, not an answering service that writes a ticket for the next morning.", "answer": "For managed clients, an after hours emergency gets a technician. Calls route through our phone system to on call staff, and monitoring alerts reach us regardless of the hour, so a dead internet circuit or a failed backup at 2 AM is seen at 2 AM rather than at 8 the next morning.\n\nWhat counts as an emergency is worth defining before you need it. Dispatch down, phones down, internet down, server down, or a suspected security incident are emergencies. A tech who needs a password reset at 11 PM is usually not, though we would rather you call and let us make that judgment than guess.\n\nPush every provider you are evaluating on this specific question. Ask whether the after hours number reaches their own employees or a third party answering service, and ask what happens next after the call is taken. There is a large difference between a technician logging in and a message sitting in a queue until morning.", "related": [ "can-you-support-us-outside-normal-business-hours-since-we-see-emergenc", "are-you-available-nights-and-weekends", "what-counts-as-a-critical-outage-for-a-field-service-business", "what-do-the-first-30-days-of-onboarding-look-like-for-a-contractor" ] }, { "slug": "what-counts-as-a-critical-outage-for-a-field-service-business", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-counts-as-a-critical-outage-for-a-field-service-business", "question": "What counts as a critical outage for a field service business, and how fast do you respond?", "shortAnswer": "One hour for critical, four business hours for standard, next business day for low priority, with critical defined in writing before you need it.", "answer": "For a contractor, critical means anything that stops you booking or dispatching work: dispatch workstations down, the phone system down, internet down at the office, the server hosting your field software down, or a suspected security incident. Those carry our one hour response commitment.\n\nStandard issues get four business hours. One tech's tablet acting up, a printer down, an application misbehaving for one user. Low priority requests such as new user setup or software questions get next business day.\n\nTwo honest notes on response times. First, response means a technician engaged and working, not an automated email confirming your ticket exists. Ask other providers which one they are promising. Second, for anything we monitor, we are frequently already working on it before you call, because the alert reaches us first.\n\nWe write your critical list into the agreement during onboarding, naming your specific systems. That prevents the argument at 7 AM about whether your situation qualifies.", "related": [ "how-fast-will-someone-respond-when-something-breaks", "what-happens-if-our-server-goes-down-during-appointments", "we-operate-24-7-what-does-your-after-hours-support-actually-look-like", "the-server-goes-down-at-815-on-a-monday" ] }, { "slug": "can-our-field-techs-call-the-help-desk-directly", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-our-field-techs-call-the-help-desk-directly", "question": "Can our field techs call the help desk directly, or does everything go through the office?", "shortAnswer": "Every one of your employees can call us directly. We do not require tickets to funnel through your office manager.", "answer": "A tech standing on a roof with a tablet that will not load the job should call us, not call the office so the office can call us. That relay costs fifteen minutes and garbles the description of the problem, and it turns your front desk into a bottleneck on the busiest days.\n\nDuring onboarding we set up your user list so we know who is authorized to call and what each person should have access to. Techs can also email or use the support icon on their device.\n\nOne boundary worth agreeing on up front: anything that spends money or changes access, such as a new user account, new hardware, or a permission change, gets confirmed with whoever you designate before we act on it. Your techs get help instantly. Your authority over purchases and access stays with you.", "related": [ "what-do-the-first-30-days-of-onboarding-look-like-for-a-contractor", "who-do-we-call-if-the-problem-is-with-you", "our-office-manager-will-be-your-main-contact", "how-do-we-stay-pci-compliant-when-techs-take-payments-in-the-field" ] }, { "slug": "how-do-you-secure-tablets-and-phones-that-live-in-trucks", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-do-you-secure-tablets-and-phones-that-live-in-trucks", "question": "How do you secure tablets and phones if one is left at a job site or stolen from a truck?", "shortAnswer": "Mobile device management with remote wipe, enforced screen locks, and encryption on every company device.", "answer": "Every company phone and tablet gets enrolled in mobile device management during onboarding. That gives you enforced PIN or biometric lock, device encryption, and the ability to remotely wipe a device that is lost or stolen, so saved passwords, customer records, and payment history do not walk off with it.\n\nIf you allow techs to use personal phones for work, we can separate company data from personal data on the device, which means we can remove your business information when someone leaves without touching their photos or their own accounts. That distinction matters for keeping the policy enforceable.\n\nThe realistic threat here is not a hacker. It is a tablet left on a roof, a phone that slides out of a truck at a job site, or a device that walks away from an unlocked cab. Enrollment takes a few minutes per device and it is the difference between a hardware replacement and a data problem.", "related": [ "our-techs-are-hard-on-equipment", "how-fast-is-access-removed-when-someone-leaves", "what-do-the-first-30-days-of-onboarding-look-like-for-a-contractor", "how-do-we-stay-pci-compliant-when-techs-take-payments-in-the-field" ] }, { "slug": "how-do-we-stay-pci-compliant-when-techs-take-payments-in-the-field", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-do-we-stay-pci-compliant-when-techs-take-payments-in-the-field", "question": "How do we stay PCI compliant when our techs take card payments in the field?", "shortAnswer": "Keep card data off your own systems entirely, then secure the devices and networks the payments pass through.", "answer": "The most effective step is not storing card numbers anywhere in your business. Use the payment processing built into your field software, or an encrypted card reader that sends the data straight to the processor. When card data never lands on your equipment, the scope of what you have to protect shrinks dramatically.\n\nThe common failure is not technical. It is a card number written on a work order, typed into a notes field, or left on a voicemail. No firewall fixes that, so part of this is training your office and field staff on how not to create the problem.\n\nAround the payment path we keep the network segmented so payment traffic is not sharing space with guest Wi-Fi or shop devices, enforce device management on the tablets that process payments, keep those devices patched, and help you complete the annual self assessment questionnaire your processor requires. Most contractors are handed that questionnaire, guess at the answers, and never look at it again. Wrong answers matter if a breach ever gets investigated.", "related": [ "how-do-we-protect-donor-data-and-payment-information", "can-you-help-a-restaurant-or-retail-shop-with-point-of-sale-and-guest", "do-veterinary-clinics-have-compliance-requirements-like-medical-office", "our-techs-are-hard-on-equipment" ] }, { "slug": "we-hire-seasonal-help-how-easily-can-we-scale-licenses-up-and-down", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/we-hire-seasonal-help-how-easily-can-we-scale-licenses-up-and-down", "question": "We hire seasonal help in peak months. How easily can we scale licenses up and down?", "shortAnswer": "Support scales with headcount automatically. Licensing depends on the term you are on, which is worth setting up correctly before your busy season.", "answer": "The per-user portion of your support fee tracks your actual headcount, so you are not paying for thirty people in February because you had thirty in July.\n\nLicensing is where contractors get stuck, and it is worth understanding before you sign anything. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace licenses purchased on an annual commitment cannot be reduced in the middle of the term, only at renewal. Licenses on a monthly term cost somewhat more per seat but can be dropped the month a seasonal employee leaves.\n\nFor a business with a real seasonal swing, the right structure is usually annual licenses for your year round core staff and monthly licenses for the seasonal seats. Set up that way from the start, you get the annual discount where it applies and the flexibility where you need it. Put everyone on the same plan and you pay for one or the other all year.\n\nThe same thinking applies to your field software seats, so we look at both together.", "related": [ "do-you-support-seasonal-businesses-whose-headcount-changes", "what-happens-to-my-price-if-i-add-or-lose-employees", "can-you-work-around-our-busy-season", "where-do-small-businesses-waste-money-on-it" ] }, { "slug": "what-do-the-first-30-days-of-onboarding-look-like-for-a-contractor", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-do-the-first-30-days-of-onboarding-look-like-for-a-contractor", "question": "What do the first 30 days of onboarding look like for a contractor?", "shortAnswer": "Week one secures the essentials, then the office network, then every truck, then documentation and training.", "answer": "Week 1, the security floor. Our tools deployed to every computer, monitoring and endpoint protection live, backups verified, multi factor authentication confirmed on email, and your staff given the support number and the icon on their machines. From here on you have a provider watching.\n\nWeek 2, the office. Full audit of the firewall, switches, wireless, internet circuits, phone system, server if you have one, and how your field software connects to all of it. We document what exists and flag what is failing or unsupported.\n\nWeek 3, the fleet. Every tablet and phone in every truck catalogued, enrolled in device management, updated, and checked for sync problems. Most providers skip this entirely, and it is where your crews' daily friction actually lives.\n\nWeek 4, handover. Documentation delivered to you, a short training session so office staff and techs know how to reach us and what counts as an emergency, and a written punch list of what we found with recommendations in priority order and cost.\n\nYou keep the documentation and the findings regardless of which recommendations you choose to act on.", "related": [ "how-long-does-onboarding-take", "how-does-onboarding-work-for-a-multi-office-company", "what-counts-as-a-critical-outage-for-a-field-service-business", "we-operate-24-7-what-does-your-after-hours-support-actually-look-like" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-work-around-our-busy-season", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-work-around-our-busy-season", "question": "Can you work around our busy season and leave everything alone during peak months?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Tell us your peak window and nothing optional gets touched inside it.", "answer": "For HVAC that is usually late spring through August, plus a stretch of deep winter. For other trades it falls elsewhere. Whatever yours is, it goes in your account notes, and maintenance, migrations, upgrades, and anything carrying risk gets scheduled outside it.\n\nWhat still happens during peak: security patching that genuinely cannot wait, emergency repairs, and monitoring. What does not: anything optional, anything requiring a reboot during business hours, and any project that could overrun.\n\nWe also front load deliberately. If July is untouchable, then spring is when hardware gets replaced and upgrades happen, not August, and we plan the year that way rather than reacting to it.\n\nAsk other providers how they handle change windows. A provider running one standard maintenance schedule across every client will eventually run it straight through your busiest morning.", "related": [ "do-you-support-other-hvac-plumbing-and-home-services-contractors", "we-hire-seasonal-help-how-easily-can-we-scale-licenses-up-and-down", "can-our-field-techs-call-the-help-desk-directly", "will-you-help-us-plan-and-budget-for-hardware-and-upgrades" ] }, { "slug": "our-techs-are-hard-on-equipment", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/our-techs-are-hard-on-equipment", "question": "Our techs are hard on equipment. How do you handle that?", "shortAnswer": "Plan for it: proper cases, devices enrolled so a swap takes minutes, and a spare on the shelf.", "answer": "Tablets in work trucks get dropped, cooked in a cab in August, and handled with dirty hands. Managing them like office laptops guarantees a bad outcome and a lot of pointless frustration for everyone.\n\nWhat actually works: rugged cases rather than the cheapest available, devices enrolled in management so a replacement can be handed over ready to work instead of consuming an afternoon, one or two spares staged so a broken tablet is a five minute swap at the shop, and choosing hardware for durability at purchase time rather than for price.\n\nWe also track failures by device and by technician. Not to get anyone in trouble, but because a pattern nearly always means the wrong hardware for the job rather than carelessness, and that is a purchasing decision, not a discipline problem.", "related": [ "how-do-you-secure-tablets-and-phones-that-live-in-trucks", "how-do-we-stay-pci-compliant-when-techs-take-payments-in-the-field", "can-our-field-techs-call-the-help-desk-directly", "if-we-part-ways-what-do-we-get-back-and-how-hard-is-it" ] } ] }, { "id": "veterinary", "group": "Who we work with", "title": "Veterinary clinics", "summary": "Practice software, imaging, and a network that cannot go down mid-appointment.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/veterinary", "articles": [ { "slug": "do-you-support-veterinary-practice-management-software", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-support-veterinary-practice-management-software", "question": "Do you support veterinary practice management software?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. We keep the environment it runs on healthy and deal with the vendor on your behalf.", "answer": "Whether you run Cornerstone, AVImark, ImproMed, ezyVet, or something else, we support the server, workstations, database, and network underneath it. We are not the software vendor, and we do not pretend to be. What we do is make sure their support and ours are not pointing fingers at each other while your front desk waits.\n\nThat includes handling their update requirements, which frequently have specific server and workstation prerequisites that get missed.", "related": [ "do-you-support-the-specific-software-my-business-runs-on", "do-you-support-dentrix-eaglesoft-and-open-dental", "how-do-we-make-sure-patient-records-are-backed-up-and-recoverable", "why-does-our-practice-software-slow-down-during-the-day" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-support-digital-x-ray-and-imaging-equipment-on-our-network", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-support-digital-x-ray-and-imaging-equipment-on-our-network", "question": "Can you support digital x-ray and imaging equipment on our network?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, including the network and storage side of imaging.", "answer": "Digital radiography, ultrasound, and dental imaging usually come with a dedicated workstation and a lot of assumptions about the network. Common problems: images taking forever to open, the imaging workstation running an operating system the vendor will not let you update, and image storage that nobody realized was excluded from backups.\n\nWe address all three, and we isolate equipment that cannot be patched so it is not a hole in your network.", "related": [ "who-owns-our-sensors-cbct-and-intraoral-scanners", "our-software-vendor-says-do-not-update-windows", "do-you-support-dentrix-eaglesoft-and-open-dental", "do-you-work-with-dental-practices" ] }, { "slug": "why-does-our-practice-software-slow-down-during-the-day", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/why-does-our-practice-software-slow-down-during-the-day", "question": "Why does our practice software slow down during the day?", "shortAnswer": "Usually the server, the database, or the network, and it is diagnosable rather than something you live with.", "answer": "Slowness that gets worse as the day goes on typically traces to an aging server, a database that has never been maintained, a backup or antivirus scan running during business hours, or a network bottleneck between exam rooms and the server. Sometimes it is an antivirus product scanning the practice database because nobody configured the exclusions the vendor recommends.\n\nEvery one of those is fixable. Most clinics have simply been told this is normal.", "related": [ "do-you-support-veterinary-practice-management-software", "what-happens-if-our-server-goes-down-during-appointments", "how-do-we-make-sure-patient-records-are-backed-up-and-recoverable", "do-you-support-dentrix-eaglesoft-and-open-dental" ] }, { "slug": "how-do-we-make-sure-patient-records-are-backed-up-and-recoverable", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-do-we-make-sure-patient-records-are-backed-up-and-recoverable", "question": "How do we make sure patient records are backed up and recoverable?", "shortAnswer": "Back up the database correctly, keep a copy offsite, and test restores monthly. Practice server backup is its own line on your agreement.", "answer": "Practice databases need to be backed up in a way that captures them consistently while in use. A file level copy of an open database can restore as something unusable, which clinics discover at the worst possible time.\n\nWe verify that the backup includes the database, the images, and anything else clinical, keep an isolated offsite copy, and test restores monthly rather than assuming.\n\nOn cost: the server your practice software runs on is backed up under a separate server backup line, quoted per server, with up to 1 TB of storage included for each. Your Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace data is covered under the per-user fee. For clinics the imaging is usually what drives storage, so we look at how fast your images are growing during the assessment rather than finding out when you pass the limit.", "related": [ "do-you-handle-backups-and-how-do-you-know-they-work", "what-is-included-in-the-monthly-fee-and-what-gets-billed-separately", "do-you-support-veterinary-practice-management-software", "can-you-show-us-a-restore-instead-of-a-backup-report" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-fix-wi-fi-dead-spots-in-exam-rooms-and-treatment-areas", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-fix-wi-fi-dead-spots-in-exam-rooms-and-treatment-areas", "question": "Can you fix Wi-Fi dead spots in exam rooms and treatment areas?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Clinic layouts defeat consumer wireless equipment.", "answer": "Cinder block walls, lead lined x-ray rooms, stainless surfaces, kennel areas, and outdoor runs make clinics one of the harder small buildings to cover well. One router at the front desk will never do it.\n\nWe place proper access points based on your actual floor plan so tablets and laptops keep working in the back, and keep client guest Wi-Fi separate from clinical systems.", "related": [ "can-you-support-a-business-with-a-warehouse-or-shop-floor-not-just-an", "why-does-our-practice-software-slow-down-during-the-day", "can-you-support-digital-x-ray-and-imaging-equipment-on-our-network", "do-you-support-veterinary-practice-management-software" ] }, { "slug": "what-happens-if-our-server-goes-down-during-appointments", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-happens-if-our-server-goes-down-during-appointments", "question": "What happens if our server goes down during appointments?", "shortAnswer": "You call, we start immediately, and a server outage is a critical priority.", "answer": "A clinic that cannot access records is not doing much for the rest of the day, so this falls under our one hour critical response commitment. More to the point, monitoring usually tells us a drive or a service is failing before it takes you down, which is the outage you never hear about.", "related": [ "the-server-goes-down-at-815-on-a-monday", "what-counts-as-a-critical-outage-for-a-field-service-business", "how-fast-will-someone-respond-when-something-breaks", "why-does-our-practice-software-slow-down-during-the-day" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-help-us-move-our-practice-software-to-the-cloud", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-help-us-move-our-practice-software-to-the-cloud", "question": "Can you help us move our practice software to the cloud?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, including hosting your current software if you are not switching platforms.", "answer": "There are two different moves people mean here. One is switching to a cloud native practice platform, which is a software decision you make, not us. The other is hosting your existing software on a hosted server so you are not maintaining hardware in a closet. We do the second one regularly and can support you through the first.\n\nEither way, verify your internet connection and backup plan first. Cloud software with a single fragile internet connection is a worse position than a local server.", "related": [ "do-you-handle-cloud-email-and-file-migrations", "do-you-support-veterinary-practice-management-software", "why-does-our-practice-software-slow-down-during-the-day", "how-do-we-make-sure-patient-records-are-backed-up-and-recoverable" ] }, { "slug": "do-veterinary-clinics-have-compliance-requirements-like-medical-office", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-veterinary-clinics-have-compliance-requirements-like-medical-office", "question": "Do veterinary clinics have compliance requirements like medical offices?", "shortAnswer": "Not HIPAA, but payment card and client data obligations still apply.", "answer": "Veterinary practices are generally not HIPAA covered entities, since HIPAA protects human health information. That does not leave you unregulated. You handle payment cards, which brings PCI obligations, and you hold client personal and financial data covered by Florida data breach notification law. Practices offering in-house payment plans or financing may also fall under FTC Safeguards.\n\nThe practical version: protect client and payment data properly, and be able to show what you did if something happens.", "related": [ "can-you-help-us-meet-hipaa-ftc-safeguards-cmmc-or-cyber-insurance-requ", "how-do-we-protect-donor-data-and-payment-information", "how-do-we-stay-pci-compliant-when-techs-take-payments-in-the-field", "will-you-sign-a-business-associate-agreement" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-support-us-outside-normal-business-hours-since-we-see-emergenc", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-support-us-outside-normal-business-hours-since-we-see-emergenc", "question": "Can you support us outside normal business hours, since we see emergencies?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Emergency support is covered around the clock for managed clients.", "answer": "Clinics with extended hours, weekend appointments, or emergency cases need support that does not stop at five. Our after hours line reaches on call staff and monitoring alerts us regardless of the hour.", "related": [ "is-after-hours-or-emergency-work-extra", "we-operate-24-7-what-does-your-after-hours-support-actually-look-like", "are-you-available-nights-and-weekends", "what-is-your-hourly-rate-if-we-just-want-occasional-help" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-support-multi-doctor-or-multi-location-veterinary-practices", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-support-multi-doctor-or-multi-location-veterinary-practices", "question": "Do you support multi-doctor or multi-location veterinary practices?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, with shared records across locations.", "answer": "Multiple locations need the practice database accessible from every site with acceptable performance, consistent imaging access, and one support relationship rather than each clinic fending for itself. We connect sites and manage them as one environment.", "related": [ "do-you-support-businesses-with-multiple-locations", "how-does-onboarding-work-for-a-multi-office-company", "can-you-support-remote-staff-and-multiple-program-sites", "do-you-support-veterinary-practice-management-software" ] } ] }, { "id": "dental", "group": "Who we work with", "title": "Dental practices", "summary": "HIPAA, imaging, operatory computers, and eight chairs that cannot sit idle.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/dental", "articles": [ { "slug": "do-you-work-with-dental-practices", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-work-with-dental-practices", "question": "Do you work with dental practices?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, and dental is a different job from a general professional office because of HIPAA, the imaging, and what an idle chair costs.", "answer": "A dental practice has three characteristics that change how it has to be supported. You are a HIPAA covered entity, which makes your IT provider a business associate with legal obligations rather than just a vendor. Your imaging generates far more data than a typical small business, and it is clinical data you cannot lose. And your revenue is measured in chair time, so an outage during business hours is not an inconvenience, it is production that never happens.\n\nThat shapes the work. Operatory computers get specified for a clinical environment rather than an office. Imaging storage and backup get sized against how fast your images are actually growing. Maintenance happens outside patient hours, without exception. And compliance evidence gets maintained continuously rather than assembled when somebody asks.\n\nAsk any provider whether they will sign a Business Associate Agreement and which practice management systems they have actually worked on. Those two answers separate the field quickly.", "related": [ "will-you-sign-a-business-associate-agreement", "do-you-support-dentrix-eaglesoft-and-open-dental", "the-server-goes-down-at-815-on-a-monday", "how-do-we-make-sure-patient-records-are-backed-up-and-recoverable" ] }, { "slug": "will-you-sign-a-business-associate-agreement", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/will-you-sign-a-business-associate-agreement", "question": "Will you sign a Business Associate Agreement?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, before we touch anything. If a provider hesitates on this, stop the conversation there.", "answer": "Under HIPAA, any vendor that creates, receives, maintains, or transmits protected health information on your behalf is a business associate, and that includes an IT provider with administrative access to the systems your patient data lives on. A signed BAA is required, not a courtesy, and it has to be in place before access is granted rather than added later.\n\nWe sign one with every covered entity we work with, and we can provide our standard agreement for your review or work from yours. It defines what we may access, our safeguards, our breach notification obligations to you and the timeline for them, and what happens to any of your data in our possession when the relationship ends.\n\nTwo things worth knowing. A BAA does not transfer your liability. You remain the covered entity and the obligation stays yours, which is why the quality of the underlying work matters more than the paperwork. And you need BAAs with your other vendors too, not only with us: your practice software vendor, your imaging cloud, your patient communication platform, your backup provider, your shredding company. We will help you inventory who needs one, because most practices have gaps there.", "related": [ "do-you-work-with-dental-practices", "do-veterinary-clinics-have-compliance-requirements-like-medical-office", "do-you-perform-the-hipaa-security-risk-analysis", "dental-practices-have-been-hit-through-their-it-vendors" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-support-dentrix-eaglesoft-and-open-dental", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-support-dentrix-eaglesoft-and-open-dental", "question": "Do you support Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental, and the other practice management systems?", "shortAnswer": "We support the server, database, workstations, and network they run on, and we handle their vendor support so your office manager does not.", "answer": "Whichever platform you run, we maintain everything underneath it: the server and its database, the operatory and front desk workstations, the network, and the integrations to imaging, patient communication, e-claims, and payments.\n\nWe are not the developer of your practice software and we will not claim to be. What we take off you is the vendor relationship. When the problem is inside the application, we open the ticket, gather what they ask for, and sit in their queue. Your office manager should be running your front office, not explaining a database error to a support rep during morning huddle.\n\nTheir updates are the part that catches practices out. Practice software releases regularly carry server, workstation, and database prerequisites that are not communicated clearly, and an update applied without them is how a practice loses a morning. We take those on our schedule, outside patient hours, after checking what the release actually requires.", "related": [ "do-you-support-the-specific-software-my-business-runs-on", "are-you-experienced-with-our-field-service-management-software", "do-you-support-veterinary-practice-management-software", "our-software-vendor-says-do-not-update-windows" ] }, { "slug": "our-software-vendor-says-do-not-update-windows", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/our-software-vendor-says-do-not-update-windows", "question": "Our practice software vendor says not to update Windows. What do you do with that?", "shortAnswer": "We separate security patches from feature updates. The first still get applied, the second get held and tested.", "answer": "That instruction is usually shorthand for something narrower than it sounds. What the vendor generally means is that they have not yet certified the latest major Windows feature release, which is a fair position. What they almost never mean is that you should stop applying security patches, though that is how practices interpret it, and we have walked into offices that had not been patched in two years because of a sentence in a vendor email.\n\nHow we handle it: security updates continue, tested on one machine first rather than pushed to all eight operatories at once. Feature updates are held until the vendor certifies them, then scheduled outside patient hours. If something breaks, we can roll it back, which is a different conversation from never updating at all.\n\nWhere a vendor genuinely requires an operating system that is no longer supported, usually on an imaging workstation, we isolate that machine on the network so it cannot be reached from everywhere and cannot reach everything. That is a real control rather than a hope, and it is also what an auditor expects to see documented.", "related": [ "do-you-support-dentrix-eaglesoft-and-open-dental", "who-owns-our-sensors-cbct-and-intraoral-scanners", "can-you-support-digital-x-ray-and-imaging-equipment-on-our-network", "do-you-work-with-dental-practices" ] }, { "slug": "who-owns-our-sensors-cbct-and-intraoral-scanners", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/who-owns-our-sensors-cbct-and-intraoral-scanners", "question": "Sensors, CBCT, and intraoral scanners. Who owns those when they stop working?", "shortAnswer": "The vendor owns the device and its software. We own the computer, drivers, network, and storage, which is where most of these failures actually live.", "answer": "The split is clearer than it looks. Your imaging vendor owns the hardware and their application. We own everything that surrounds it, and in practice that is where most of the daily failures originate.\n\n- Sensors that stop being recognized. Usually a driver, a USB port change, or a Windows update that reset something. We document which sensor works on which port with which driver version, so it is a five minute fix rather than a morning of guessing.\n\n- CBCT and pan storage. Volumes are large and they accumulate faster than practices expect. We size storage and backup against your actual growth rate rather than a guess, and tell you before you run short.\n\n- Images opening slowly. Almost always the network or the storage path, not the imaging software, and it is diagnosable.\n\n- Scanner cases not reaching the lab. We own connectivity and the workstation. The scanner vendor owns their cloud. We will establish which it is rather than leaving you between them.\n\nThe thing worth confirming during onboarding is whether your imaging is actually in the backup. It frequently is not, because it lives somewhere separate from the practice database and nobody checked.", "related": [ "why-does-our-practice-software-slow-down-during-the-day", "can-you-support-digital-x-ray-and-imaging-equipment-on-our-network", "do-you-support-dentrix-eaglesoft-and-open-dental", "our-software-vendor-says-do-not-update-windows" ] }, { "slug": "the-server-goes-down-at-815-on-a-monday", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/the-server-goes-down-at-815-on-a-monday", "question": "The server goes down at 8:15 on a Monday with a full schedule. What happens?", "shortAnswer": "It is a critical outage with a one hour response commitment, and in most cases monitoring has told us before your front desk does.", "answer": "A practice that cannot open charts is not practicing, so this sits at the top of our severity list. You call, or more often our monitoring alerts us first, and a technician is engaged within the hour. For a hardware failure we are onsite. For most software and service failures we are working on it remotely within minutes.\n\nThe more useful answer is what happens before that morning. Server health monitoring means a failing drive, a service that keeps restarting, or a database growing toward a limit gets caught while it is an inconvenience rather than an outage. Most of the Monday mornings we prevent, you never hear about.\n\nWe also build the downtime procedure with you, because at some point something will be down regardless of how well it is run. Printed schedules for the day available offline, a paper process for the front desk, and clarity on what can and cannot continue. Practices that have that keep seeing patients. Practices that do not send people home.\n\nOn what an hour costs you, we do not guess. Take your production per chair per hour, multiply by the chairs affected, and that is the number the entire conversation about IT spending should be measured against. Most owners have never done that arithmetic and are startled by it.", "related": [ "what-happens-if-our-server-goes-down-during-appointments", "what-counts-as-a-critical-outage-for-a-field-service-business", "if-we-are-encrypted-monday-morning-how-long-until-we-see-patients", "do-you-work-with-dental-practices" ] }, { "slug": "what-computers-do-you-put-in-operatories", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-computers-do-you-put-in-operatories", "question": "What do you put in operatories, given what happens to them in there?", "shortAnswer": "Sealed or barrier-friendly input devices, mounted machines with no intake vents at chair level, and solid state drives.", "answer": "Operatory computers get sprayed with disinfectant, touched with gloves, and live in a room full of aerosol and moisture. A standard office desktop under a cabinet is a machine you will replace early and repeatedly, and the keyboard is the part that fails first.\n\nWhat actually holds up: sealed keyboards and mice that can be wiped down, or standard ones under barriers if your team prefers that workflow. Small form factor or all-in-one machines mounted off the floor, positioned so intake vents are not pulling aerosol through the chassis. Solid state drives, which have no moving parts and tolerate the environment better while also making the imaging software feel considerably faster.\n\nOn the slow operatory: we measure before recommending a replacement. About half the time the machine is fine and the problem is the network path, the storage, or an antivirus product scanning imaging files it should be excluding. Replacing a computer that was not the problem is an expensive way to not fix something.\n\nCeiling mounted patient monitors and the media that plays on them are ours as well. We would rather own that than have you calling a separate vendor for a display that is part of the same system.", "related": [ "what-happens-to-old-computers-and-hard-drives", "do-you-work-with-dental-practices", "why-does-our-practice-software-slow-down-during-the-day", "can-you-recover-files-from-a-computer-that-will-not-turn-on" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-perform-the-hipaa-security-risk-analysis", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-perform-the-hipaa-security-risk-analysis", "question": "HIPAA requires a security risk analysis. Do you perform it?", "shortAnswer": "We perform the technical portion and help assemble the rest, and we will tell you when an independent assessor is the better choice.", "answer": "The HIPAA Security Rule requires a risk analysis, reviewed and updated periodically, and most practices treat it as annual. It is also the single most commonly cited deficiency when a practice gets examined, usually because it was done once years ago and never revisited.\n\nThe technical half is work we do anyway: asset inventory, where protected health information actually lives, access controls, encryption status, patching, backup and recovery, and audit logging. Because we manage the environment, that portion stays current rather than being reconstructed annually.\n\nThe other half is administrative and physical and it is genuinely yours: workforce training, sanction policies, your BAAs with other vendors, physical access to the operatories and server, and your own policies and procedures. We help assemble it and tell you where the gaps are.\n\nOne honest caveat, the same one we give about evaluating internal staff. We benefit commercially from findings that point at more technology. If you want a risk analysis with no possible appearance of a conflict, hire an assessor who is not your IT provider. We will hand them everything they need and it will cost you less overall than you might expect, because the evidence already exists.", "related": [ "can-you-produce-the-evidence-our-underwriters-ask-for", "if-we-sell-to-a-dso-does-this-help-or-hurt-in-diligence", "do-you-know-alta-best-practices-pillar-3", "will-you-sign-a-business-associate-agreement" ] }, { "slug": "we-email-records-to-labs-and-specialists", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/we-email-records-to-labs-and-specialists", "question": "We email records to labs and specialists. Is that a problem?", "shortAnswer": "Usually yes, as it is currently being done. There are straightforward fixes and none of them make your team's life harder.", "answer": "Encryption is what the Security Rule calls an addressable specification, which does not mean optional. It means you either implement it or document why a reasonable alternative is sufficient, and \"we have always done it this way\" is not that documentation. Ordinary email between your practice and an outside lab is not encrypted end to end and should not carry patient information.\n\nPractical options, roughly in order of how little they disrupt your front desk:\n\n- Encrypted email through your existing Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, which can be triggered automatically by rules that detect patient information, so nobody has to remember\n\n- A secure portal or link-based delivery for larger files and imaging\n\n- Using the lab's or specialist's own portal where they have one, which most now do\n\nPatients are a separate case. A patient may ask you to send their records by ordinary email, and you can do that if you have warned them of the risk and documented their preference. That exception applies to patients, not to labs, specialists, or insurers.\n\nThe bigger finding during onboarding is usually not how records go out. It is that years of patient information sitting in mailboxes has become the practice's largest unmanaged store of protected health information.", "related": [ "how-do-we-make-sure-patient-records-are-backed-up-and-recoverable", "how-do-i-submit-a-ticket-and-who-answers-the-phone", "if-we-are-encrypted-monday-morning-how-long-until-we-see-patients", "do-you-support-dentrix-eaglesoft-and-open-dental" ] }, { "slug": "dental-practices-have-been-hit-through-their-it-vendors", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/dental-practices-have-been-hit-through-their-it-vendors", "question": "Dental practices have been encrypted through their own IT vendors. What about you?", "shortAnswer": "A fair question and one you should press every provider on. Here is what we do about our own tooling.", "answer": "You are right to ask. Several hundred dental practices were encrypted in a single 2019 incident through a shared vendor platform many of them relied on for backup, and the broader pattern of attackers going after management tools to reach many businesses at once has continued since. A provider who has never considered that their own tools are an attack path is not one to hand administrative access to.\n\nWhat we do about it:\n\n- Multi factor authentication on every administrative account in our own tooling, with no exceptions for convenience\n\n- Administrative access granted at the least privilege each technician needs, rather than everyone holding everything\n\n- Our own administrative activity monitored and alerted on in the same security platform we run for clients, so unusual action by one of our own accounts surfaces\n\n- Backups that are not reachable using the same credentials as the systems they protect, which is the specific failure that turned that 2019 incident into a catastrophe rather than an inconvenience\n\n- Deliberate vendor selection, including how quickly a vendor discloses when they have a problem\n\nWhat we will not tell you is that it cannot happen. Ask any provider that question and be wary of a confident no. The right answer is what they have done to limit the damage if it does, and whether your backups would survive it.", "related": [ "if-we-are-encrypted-monday-morning-how-long-until-we-see-patients", "what-do-you-always-find-in-the-first-two-weeks", "do-you-monitor-for-mailbox-rules-and-impossible-travel", "will-you-sign-a-business-associate-agreement" ] }, { "slug": "if-we-are-encrypted-monday-morning-how-long-until-we-see-patients", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/if-we-are-encrypted-monday-morning-how-long-until-we-see-patients", "question": "If we are encrypted on a Monday morning, how long until we are seeing patients?", "shortAnswer": "Usually same day to next day for the practice software if backups are clean and isolated. Full cleanup runs longer.", "answer": "The honest answer has conditions attached, and any provider giving you a flat number without them is guessing.\n\nIf your backups are current, isolated, and tested, the realistic path is containment first, then restoring the practice database and server to clean hardware or a clean rebuild. Same day is achievable and next day is common. Imaging usually follows shortly after, though large volumes take longer to move.\n\nWhat extends it: backups that were reachable from the encrypted network and got hit too, which is the single biggest factor. No recent restore test, so the backup turns out to be incomplete. Unclear scope, meaning we cannot yet tell which systems are safe to bring back. And your practice software vendor's availability, since a restore frequently needs their involvement to bring the database up correctly.\n\nWhat runs for days afterward regardless: rebuilding workstations, forcing credential resets, determining what data was accessed, and your breach notification analysis. Being able to see patients and being finished are different milestones.\n\nFor clients where this matters most, we measure it rather than estimate. A scenario test brings your critical system up from backup in an isolated environment and times it, so the number you have been given is a measured one.", "related": [ "the-server-goes-down-at-815-on-a-monday", "have-you-actually-tested-disaster-recovery", "how-do-we-make-sure-patient-records-are-backed-up-and-recoverable", "dental-practices-have-been-hit-through-their-it-vendors" ] }, { "slug": "if-we-sell-to-a-dso-does-this-help-or-hurt-in-diligence", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/if-we-sell-to-a-dso-does-this-help-or-hurt-in-diligence", "question": "If we ever sell to a DSO, does what you build help or hurt us in due diligence?", "shortAnswer": "Helps, and sometimes materially. Buyers examine HIPAA posture and unresolved compliance issues can affect the number.", "answer": "A buyer's diligence looks at more than your production. They will ask for your security risk analysis and when it was last updated, your BAAs, your breach history, your software licensing position, the age and condition of your equipment, and whether patient data is where you say it is. A practice that cannot answer those quickly signals risk, and risk gets priced.\n\nBecause we maintain that documentation continuously rather than producing it on request, most of the technical diligence list is already assembled. Practices we support generally answer the IT and compliance sections in days rather than weeks, and without their office manager stopping her actual job to dig through files.\n\nThe items that most often cause trouble in a transaction are the ones that are cheap to fix years in advance and awkward to fix under a letter of intent: a risk analysis that has not been touched since 2019, missing BAAs with vendors, software licensed to an individual rather than the practice entity, and equipment that has quietly aged past useful life.\n\nTell us if a sale is on your horizon, even loosely. It changes what we would recommend you spend on and when, and there are purchases that make no sense to make eighteen months before a transaction.", "related": [ "do-you-perform-the-hipaa-security-risk-analysis", "do-you-work-with-dental-practices", "can-you-produce-the-evidence-our-underwriters-ask-for", "will-you-sign-a-business-associate-agreement" ] } ] }, { "id": "titleescrow", "group": "Who we work with", "title": "Title and escrow companies", "summary": "Wire fraud, ALTA Best Practices, underwriter audits, and the systems a closing runs on.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/titleescrow", "articles": [ { "slug": "do-you-work-with-title-and-escrow-companies", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-work-with-title-and-escrow-companies", "question": "Do you work with title and escrow companies?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, and we treat them differently from other professional offices because the threat and the regulator are both different.", "answer": "A title agency is not a law office with a different sign. You move large sums on short notice, you hold non-public personal information on every party to a transaction, you are examined by your state and audited by your underwriters, and you are one of the most deliberately targeted business types in the country for wire fraud.\n\nThat changes what matters. Email security and identity controls come first, not last. Audit evidence has to be producible on demand rather than assembled in a panic. And the systems that run a closing get treated as critical, because a day of downtime is not an inconvenience, it is closings that do not happen and referral sources who remember.\n\nAsk any provider how many title or escrow clients they have and what they know about ALTA Best Practices. If the answer is vague, you will be the one teaching them, on your time.", "related": [ "do-you-know-alta-best-practices-pillar-3", "can-you-produce-the-evidence-our-underwriters-ask-for", "where-does-non-public-personal-information-live-in-our-environment", "do-you-work-with-dental-practices" ] }, { "slug": "what-do-you-do-about-wire-fraud-and-business-email-compromise", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-do-you-do-about-wire-fraud-and-business-email-compromise", "question": "What do you do about wire fraud and business email compromise?", "shortAnswer": "Layered identity controls, monitoring built specifically for the mailbox takeover pattern, and support for the human verification step that actually stops the loss.", "answer": "Almost every wire fraud loss in this industry starts the same way: someone's mailbox is accessed, the attacker reads quietly for days or weeks to learn the deal and the language, then sends payment instructions at exactly the right moment. Nothing about it looks like an attack while it is happening.\n\nWhat we put in place:\n\n- Multi factor authentication on every account, with legacy authentication protocols disabled so it cannot be bypassed\n\n- External auto-forwarding blocked at the tenant level, because exfiltration by forwarding rule is the standard playbook\n\n- SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configured so your domain is harder to spoof to your own clients and agents\n\n- External sender marking so a lookalike domain does not read like an internal message\n\n- Lookalike domain monitoring for your own name\n\n- Security log monitoring tuned for the specific indicators described in the next article\n\n- Phishing simulation aimed at the scenarios your staff actually face, not generic prize emails\n\nThe honest part: technology reduces the odds, it does not eliminate them. The control that reliably stops the loss is a callback to a number you obtained independently, before funds move, every time, with no exceptions for busy days. We will support that process and make sure your systems do not quietly undermine it, but the procedure is yours.", "related": [ "what-catches-fraudulent-wire-instructions-before-money-moves", "do-you-monitor-for-mailbox-rules-and-impossible-travel", "what-do-you-do-to-protect-us-from-ransomware-and-phishing", "do-you-work-with-title-and-escrow-companies" ] }, { "slug": "what-catches-fraudulent-wire-instructions-before-money-moves", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-catches-fraudulent-wire-instructions-before-money-moves", "question": "A closer gets emailed updated wire instructions. What catches that before the money moves?", "shortAnswer": "Several things should flag it, but the one that stops it is verification by callback to a number you already had.", "answer": "Walk the scenario. The message arrives mid-transaction, references the correct property and parties, and explains the change plausibly. Here is what should intervene:\n\n- If it came from a lookalike domain, external sender marking and domain monitoring should make that visible\n\n- If it came from the real party's compromised mailbox, nothing technical on your side will flag the sender, because the sender is genuine\n\n- If it came from inside your own tenant, our monitoring should already have alerted on the compromise before this point\n\nThat middle case is the one that costs people money, and it is why procedure beats technology here. Instructions are verified by calling a number from your own file or from the original engagement, never a number contained in the email requesting the change. Changed instructions late in a transaction are treated as suspicious by default. Wire releases above a threshold require a second person.\n\nWe will help you build that into how your systems work: secure delivery of instructions rather than plain email, a documented verification step inside your workflow, and a written record that it was performed. Your underwriter will ask for that record, and so will your insurer if you ever file a claim.", "related": [ "what-do-you-do-about-wire-fraud-and-business-email-compromise", "what-happens-in-the-first-four-hours-of-a-wire-fraud", "do-you-work-with-title-and-escrow-companies", "can-you-tell-who-accessed-what" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-monitor-for-mailbox-rules-and-impossible-travel", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-monitor-for-mailbox-rules-and-impossible-travel", "question": "Do you monitor for mailbox forwarding rules, impossible travel, and multi-factor changes?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Those are the specific signals that indicate a mailbox takeover in progress, and we alert on all of them.", "answer": "We run our own security monitoring platform and feed Microsoft 365 audit activity into it. The detections that matter for your business are the quiet ones that indicate someone else is in a mailbox:\n\n- Inbox rules created that forward, delete, or move messages, especially rules that hide replies containing words like wire, invoice, or payoff\n\n- Mailbox forwarding configured to an external address\n\n- Multi factor authentication methods added or changed on an account\n\n- Sign-ins from locations you do not operate in, and sign-in pairs too far apart in time to be physically possible\n\n- Mailbox access by an account other than the owner\n\n- Searches run across mailboxes using administrative discovery tools\n\n- New administrative privilege granted to an account\n\nMost attackers create a rule within minutes of getting in. That rule is often the earliest reliable evidence you have, and it is invisible to the person whose mailbox it is.\n\nWorth asking any provider whether they are monitoring Microsoft 365 audit logs at all. Many are watching servers and workstations only, which means the attack surface that actually matters to a title agency is unwatched.", "related": [ "do-you-monitor-for-security-events-or-just-for-outages", "what-do-you-do-about-wire-fraud-and-business-email-compromise", "do-you-work-with-title-and-escrow-companies", "dental-practices-have-been-hit-through-their-it-vendors" ] }, { "slug": "what-happens-in-the-first-four-hours-of-a-wire-fraud", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/what-happens-in-the-first-four-hours-of-a-wire-fraud", "question": "If money moves and it is fraud, what is your role in the first four hours?", "shortAnswer": "Containment and evidence on our side while you and your bank chase the funds. Speed matters enormously in the first day.", "answer": "Two things run in parallel and neither waits for the other.\n\nYour side, immediately: call the sending bank and request a recall, then report to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center at IC3.gov. There is a federal process for attempting to freeze fraudulently wired funds, and it works far better inside the first 24 to 72 hours than after. Notify your underwriter and your insurance carrier promptly, because late notice is a common reason claims get reduced or denied.\n\nOur side, immediately: contain the compromised account, revoke active sessions and tokens rather than only resetting the password, remove attacker-created rules and forwarding, check whether other accounts were touched, and preserve the audit logs before retention windows close. Then determine what was actually accessed, because that determines your notification obligations to affected parties and your state.\n\nWe also handle the technical side of the report your insurer and your underwriter will want: timeline, entry point, what was accessed, what was contained and when.\n\nDecide in advance who has authority to make these calls at 6 PM on a Friday. We set that out during onboarding rather than discovering the gap during the event.", "related": [ "what-happens-if-we-get-breached-what-is-your-role", "can-you-produce-the-evidence-our-underwriters-ask-for", "what-catches-fraudulent-wire-instructions-before-money-moves", "how-fast-is-access-removed-when-someone-leaves" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-know-alta-best-practices-pillar-3", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-know-alta-best-practices-pillar-3", "question": "Do you know ALTA Best Practices, Pillar 3 specifically?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Pillar 3 is the information security pillar, and most of it maps directly onto work we already do.", "answer": "Pillar 3 of the ALTA Best Practices framework requires a written information security program protecting non-public personal information, with a named individual accountable for it. The current framework is version 4.0, which sharpened the security expectations considerably.\n\nWhat it asks for, and where we fit:\n\n- A written information security program. We help produce it and, more importantly, keep it matching reality. A policy that describes controls you do not have is worse than no policy.\n\n- Risk assessment and asset inventory. Ours is continuous rather than annual, because we are managing the assets anyway.\n\n- Network security and multi factor authentication. Version 4.0 singles out MFA as the most important control. It is a floor for every client we take on, so this is already in place.\n\n- Password standards, timely patching, device security wherever NPI might land. Managed and reported.\n\n- Third party and vendor due diligence. We can provide our own documentation, and help you assess the other vendors touching your data.\n\n- Physical access, clean desk, retention and disposal. Partly operational and yours, partly technical and ours, including secure disposal of equipment that held NPI.\n\nPillar 2, escrow trust accounting, is your accounting function rather than ours, though we secure and control access to the systems it runs on.", "related": [ "where-does-non-public-personal-information-live-in-our-environment", "do-you-touch-escrow-accounting-and-reconciliation", "do-you-work-with-title-and-escrow-companies", "do-you-perform-the-hipaa-security-risk-analysis" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-produce-the-evidence-our-underwriters-ask-for", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-produce-the-evidence-our-underwriters-ask-for", "question": "Can you produce the evidence our underwriters ask for in an audit?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, and the point is that it exists before they ask rather than being assembled the week of.", "answer": "Underwriter audits and state examinations ask for the same categories of evidence repeatedly: your written information security program, proof that access is restricted and reviewed, patching and endpoint protection status, backup and restore verification, multi factor authentication enforcement, security awareness training completion, vendor due diligence, and incident response documentation.\n\nAll of that is a byproduct of managing your environment properly, so we maintain it continuously and hand it over on request. What we will not do is help you assemble a plausible-looking package the week before an audit for controls that were not actually running. That is how agencies end up in a worse position than if they had failed honestly.\n\nIf an examiner or underwriter comes back with a finding on the technical side, we address it and document the remediation. Your staff should not be the ones translating a security questionnaire.", "related": [ "do-you-work-with-title-and-escrow-companies", "do-you-perform-the-hipaa-security-risk-analysis", "do-you-know-alta-best-practices-pillar-3", "what-happens-in-the-first-four-hours-of-a-wire-fraud" ] }, { "slug": "where-does-non-public-personal-information-live-in-our-environment", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/where-does-non-public-personal-information-live-in-our-environment", "question": "Do you know where non-public personal information lives in our environment?", "shortAnswer": "Not on day one. Finding out is part of onboarding, and the answer usually surprises people.", "answer": "No provider can answer this honestly before looking. What we can tell you is that the answer is almost always broader than the owner expects.\n\nNPI accumulates in places nobody designed: mailboxes going back years, local Downloads folders on individual workstations, spreadsheets exported for a one-off report and never deleted, scanner destination folders, personal cloud storage that someone set up when the VPN was slow, and old file shares from an office you acquired.\n\nDuring onboarding we map where it actually sits, reduce the footprint, get retention and disposal applied so data does not live forever by default, and lock down the paths that should not exist. That work supports Pillar 3 directly and it is also the difference between a contained incident and a notification event affecting every transaction you have ever handled.\n\nThe uncomfortable truth for most agencies is that the mailboxes are the real archive, not the document management system.", "related": [ "do-you-know-alta-best-practices-pillar-3", "do-you-work-with-title-and-escrow-companies", "can-you-produce-the-evidence-our-underwriters-ask-for", "what-do-you-do-when-you-do-not-know-the-answer" ] }, { "slug": "do-you-touch-escrow-accounting-and-reconciliation", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-touch-escrow-accounting-and-reconciliation", "question": "Do you touch escrow accounting and reconciliation?", "shortAnswer": "No. We secure and control access to the systems it runs on, and we stay out of the accounting itself.", "answer": "A clear answer, because you should be suspicious of a vague one. Escrow trust accounting, three-way reconciliation, and anything affecting trust balances is your accounting and compliance function. We do not perform it, review it, or have access to perform transactions in it.\n\nWhat we do own is everything around it: the systems it runs on, their availability and backup, and the access controls. That last part matters more than it sounds. Separation of duties in a trust environment is enforced partly through system permissions, and permissions drift over time as people change roles and nobody revisits them.\n\nSo we make sure the permissions in your production and accounting systems actually reflect the separation your procedures describe, that changes to them are logged, and that access reviews happen on a schedule rather than when an examiner asks. We will flag it when we see one person holding a combination of rights that your own controls say should be split.", "related": [ "do-you-know-alta-best-practices-pillar-3", "do-you-work-with-title-and-escrow-companies", "can-we-limit-what-each-staff-member-can-see", "do-you-support-the-specific-software-my-business-runs-on" ] }, { "slug": "who-owns-the-relationships-with-our-title-production-vendors", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/who-owns-the-relationships-with-our-title-production-vendors", "question": "Our title production software, e-recording, and lender portals. Who owns those relationships?", "shortAnswer": "You own the contracts. We own the technical relationship, including sitting on hold with their support.", "answer": "The commercial relationship stays yours: what platform you use, which modules, what you pay. We do not want to be between you and a vendor decision that shapes how your business runs.\n\nThe technical relationship is ours. When your production platform, e-recording service, remote online notarization provider, or a lender portal has a problem, we open the ticket, supply the logs and details they ask for, and stay on the call. Your closers should not be losing an afternoon to a vendor queue.\n\nWe also handle the requirements these vendors impose on you, which are constant and rarely announced clearly: browser versions, certificate installs, workstation prerequisites, IP allowlisting, and integration credentials that expire. Most of the friction your staff experiences with these platforms is one of those things, not the platform itself.\n\nOn the recurring argument: when the vendor says it is your network and we believe it is their software, we produce evidence rather than opinions, and we take it up their escalation chain. You should not be adjudicating a dispute between two technical vendors.", "related": [ "do-you-support-the-specific-software-my-business-runs-on", "are-you-experienced-with-our-field-service-management-software", "do-you-support-dentrix-eaglesoft-and-open-dental", "do-you-support-veterinary-practice-management-software" ] } ] }, { "id": "nonprofit", "group": "Who we work with", "title": "Nonprofits", "summary": "Tight budgets, volunteer turnover, and donor data that has to be protected.", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/nonprofit", "articles": [ { "slug": "do-you-offer-nonprofit-pricing-for-it-support", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-offer-nonprofit-pricing-for-it-support", "question": "Do you offer nonprofit pricing for IT support?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, and more importantly we help you use the nonprofit programs the vendors already offer.", "answer": "We work with Jacksonville area nonprofits at adjusted rates. The larger savings usually come from licensing though. Many nonprofits pay full commercial price for software they qualify to get free or heavily discounted, simply because nobody walked them through the eligibility process.", "related": [ "can-you-help-us-get-nonprofit-software-grants-and-discounts", "how-do-we-handle-it-on-a-nonprofit-budget", "can-you-consolidate-the-technology-vendors-we-pay", "do-you-offer-a-co-managed-option-if-we-hire-our-own-it-person" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-help-us-get-nonprofit-software-grants-and-discounts", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-help-us-get-nonprofit-software-grants-and-discounts", "question": "Can you help us get nonprofit software grants and discounts?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, starting with verifying your eligibility with each vendor.", "answer": "Microsoft and Google both run nonprofit programs, as do many security and productivity vendors. The terms of these programs have changed meaningfully in the last couple of years, so we check what is currently available for your organization rather than quoting numbers that were true a while ago.\n\nThe verification process takes some paperwork and a bit of patience. We handle it.", "related": [ "do-you-offer-nonprofit-pricing-for-it-support", "how-do-we-handle-it-on-a-nonprofit-budget", "can-you-support-an-organization-with-a-lot-of-volunteer-turnover", "can-you-set-up-a-new-computer-and-move-everything-over" ] }, { "slug": "how-do-we-handle-it-on-a-nonprofit-budget", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-do-we-handle-it-on-a-nonprofit-budget", "question": "How do we handle IT on a nonprofit budget?", "shortAnswer": "Protect the things that would end the organization first, then work down the list.", "answer": "With limited money, sequence matters. Secure email and accounts, get backups working, and make sure donor data is protected. Those prevent the events that cost a nonprofit its funding and its reputation. Nicer computers and new equipment come after.\n\nWe are straightforward with nonprofit clients about what can wait. Board members generally appreciate seeing that reasoning written down.", "related": [ "do-you-offer-nonprofit-pricing-for-it-support", "can-you-help-us-get-nonprofit-software-grants-and-discounts", "how-do-we-protect-donor-data-and-payment-information", "which-of-your-recommendations-are-actually-urgent" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-support-an-organization-with-a-lot-of-volunteer-turnover", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-support-an-organization-with-a-lot-of-volunteer-turnover", "question": "Can you support an organization with a lot of volunteer turnover?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, with fast account setup and reliable shutoff when people leave.", "answer": "Volunteer heavy organizations accumulate active accounts belonging to people who stopped volunteering years ago, which is a real security problem and sometimes an audit finding. We set up a clean process for granting and removing access, and limit what volunteer accounts can reach in the first place.", "related": [ "how-fast-is-access-removed-when-someone-leaves", "how-fast-can-you-get-a-new-employee-set-up", "how-do-we-handle-it-on-a-nonprofit-budget", "do-you-offer-someone-onsite-five-days-a-week" ] }, { "slug": "how-do-we-protect-donor-data-and-payment-information", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/how-do-we-protect-donor-data-and-payment-information", "question": "How do we protect donor data and payment information?", "shortAnswer": "Limit who can see it, secure the accounts that can, and keep card data out of your own systems.", "answer": "Donor records carry names, addresses, giving history, and sometimes payment details, which makes them worth stealing and damaging to lose. The core controls are multi factor authentication on every account, restricting donor database access to the people who need it, using a payment processor so card numbers never live on your systems, and training staff and volunteers on the fraud attempts that target nonprofits specifically.\n\nFake donation confirmations and messages impersonating your executive director are extremely common against nonprofits.", "related": [ "how-do-we-stay-pci-compliant-when-techs-take-payments-in-the-field", "how-do-we-handle-it-on-a-nonprofit-budget", "do-veterinary-clinics-have-compliance-requirements-like-medical-office", "what-do-you-do-to-protect-us-from-ransomware-and-phishing" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-help-with-grant-requirements-around-data-security", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-help-with-grant-requirements-around-data-security", "question": "Can you help with grant requirements around data security?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Grant applications increasingly ask security questions, and we help you answer them accurately.", "answer": "Government and foundation funders now routinely ask about data protection, backup, and incident response. Our compliance work produces exactly what those questions need: written policies, documented controls, and evidence that they are actually in place.\n\nAnswering yes to a control you do not have is a problem in a grant application for the same reason it is in an insurance questionnaire.", "related": [ "can-you-help-us-meet-hipaa-ftc-safeguards-cmmc-or-cyber-insurance-requ", "can-you-produce-the-evidence-our-underwriters-ask-for", "do-veterinary-clinics-have-compliance-requirements-like-medical-office", "what-happens-if-we-get-breached-what-is-your-role" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-support-remote-staff-and-multiple-program-sites", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-support-remote-staff-and-multiple-program-sites", "question": "Can you support remote staff and multiple program sites?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, including case workers in the field and part time program locations.", "answer": "Nonprofits are often spread across an administrative office, program sites, and staff working from homes and in the community. Cloud based files and email plus managed laptops usually serve this better than a server anyone has to drive to.", "related": [ "do-you-support-businesses-with-multiple-locations", "do-you-support-multi-doctor-or-multi-location-veterinary-practices", "how-does-onboarding-work-for-a-multi-office-company", "do-you-work-with-contractors-trades-and-manufacturers" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-help-us-with-donated-or-aging-computer-equipment", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-help-us-with-donated-or-aging-computer-equipment", "question": "Can you help us with donated or aging computer equipment?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, with honest advice about which donations are worth accepting.", "answer": "Donated equipment is genuinely helpful sometimes and a liability other times. A machine too old to run a supported operating system costs you more in support time and security risk than it saves. We evaluate what you have, get the usable equipment properly set up and wiped of its previous owner's data, and tell you when a donation should be politely declined.", "related": [ "can-you-set-up-a-new-computer-and-move-everything-over", "can-you-help-us-get-off-an-old-server", "is-it-worth-repairing-my-computer-or-should-i-replace-it", "when-should-we-stop-relying-on-the-owner-or-office-manager-for-it" ] } ] }, { "id": "repair", "group": "Who we work with", "title": "Home and personal computers", "summary": "Computer repair for individuals is handled by our sister company, Advanced Computer Consulting (https://www.advancedcpc.com/).", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/topic/repair", "articles": [ { "slug": "do-you-repair-home-computers-and-laptops", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/do-you-repair-home-computers-and-laptops", "question": "Do you repair home computers and laptops?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, through Advanced Computer Consulting, our consumer repair business.", "answer": "Advanced IT Support works with businesses under ongoing agreements. Home computer repair, individual laptops, and personal machines are handled by Advanced Computer Consulting (https://www.advancedcpc.com/), which has been doing this in Jacksonville since 2014. Same ownership, same technicians, different service.\n\nThey are at 4237 Salisbury Road, Suite 210, two doors down from us, and they handle drop-off repairs as well as onsite visits to your home.\n\nFor anything on this page, go to advancedcpc.com (https://www.advancedcpc.com/) rather than calling our business support line, and you will get to the right people faster.", "related": [ "can-you-set-up-a-new-computer-and-move-everything-over", "is-it-worth-repairing-my-computer-or-should-i-replace-it", "can-you-recover-files-from-a-computer-that-will-not-turn-on", "who-provides-managed-it-services-in-jacksonville-fl" ] }, { "slug": "is-it-worth-repairing-my-computer-or-should-i-replace-it", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/is-it-worth-repairing-my-computer-or-should-i-replace-it", "question": "Is it worth repairing my computer, or should I replace it?", "shortAnswer": "It depends on the machine's age and what failed. We will tell you when replacing makes more sense.", "answer": "Some repairs are clearly worth it: a failed drive, more memory, a battery, cleaning out a machine that has slowed to a crawl. Others are not, particularly major component failures on older laptops where the repair approaches the cost of a better machine.\n\nWe give you the honest comparison. Selling someone a repair that does not make financial sense is a good way to never see them again.", "related": [ "do-you-repair-home-computers-and-laptops", "can-you-recover-files-from-a-computer-that-will-not-turn-on", "do-we-need-an-it-provider-if-we-only-have-eight-employees", "can-you-set-up-a-new-computer-and-move-everything-over" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-recover-files-from-a-computer-that-will-not-turn-on", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-recover-files-from-a-computer-that-will-not-turn-on", "question": "Can you recover files from a computer that will not turn on?", "shortAnswer": "Usually yes, if the storage drive itself has not failed physically.", "answer": "A computer that will not power on often has perfectly intact data. We can typically recover files from the drive even when the machine is beyond repair. Drives with physical damage are a different and more expensive category, and we will tell you when that is what you are facing rather than running up a bill first.\n\nStop using a drive as soon as you suspect a problem. Continuing to run it makes recovery harder.", "related": [ "is-it-worth-repairing-my-computer-or-should-i-replace-it", "do-you-repair-home-computers-and-laptops", "can-you-set-up-a-new-computer-and-move-everything-over", "what-happens-to-old-computers-and-hard-drives" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-remove-a-virus-or-do-i-need-a-new-computer", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-remove-a-virus-or-do-i-need-a-new-computer", "question": "Can you remove a virus, or do I need a new computer?", "shortAnswer": "Almost always removable. You rarely need a new computer because of an infection.", "answer": "Most infections are cleanable, and a clean reinstall with your files preserved handles the stubborn ones. If someone told you a virus means you have to buy a new computer, get a second opinion.\n\nOne important note: if you were contacted by someone claiming to be tech support, or you gave anyone remote access to your machine, change your passwords from a different device and check your bank accounts. That situation is usually about your accounts, not your computer.", "related": [ "can-you-set-up-a-new-computer-and-move-everything-over", "how-fast-is-access-removed-when-someone-leaves", "can-you-recover-files-from-a-computer-that-will-not-turn-on", "do-you-repair-home-computers-and-laptops" ] }, { "slug": "can-you-set-up-a-new-computer-and-move-everything-over", "url": "https://www.advancedits.net/knowledge-base/#/article/can-you-set-up-a-new-computer-and-move-everything-over", "question": "Can you set up a new computer and move everything over?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, including files, email, printers, and programs.", "answer": "New computer setup is one of the most common things we do for individuals: moving your documents, photos, email, bookmarks, and printers to the new machine, getting your programs installed, and making sure the old computer is properly wiped before you get rid of it.\n\nThis is Advanced Computer Consulting (https://www.advancedcpc.com/) work rather than Advanced IT Support work, so start at advancedcpc.com (https://www.advancedcpc.com/).", "related": [ "do-you-repair-home-computers-and-laptops", "can-you-remove-a-virus-or-do-i-need-a-new-computer", "can-you-recover-files-from-a-computer-that-will-not-turn-on", "do-you-work-with-contractors-trades-and-manufacturers" ] } ] } ] }