Industries
IT for accounting firms
No changes until June.
From February to June an accounting firm has no slack at all. happier IT provides managed IT and cybersecurity to CPA (Chartered Professional Accountant) firms and bookkeeping practices in Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario. CaseWare, TaxCycle, QuickBooks, Xero and Sage on the desktop, a secure way to exchange documents with clients, and no change of any kind during the crunch.
Who it's for
The software, and the calendar it runs on.
CaseWare Working Papers
The engagement file, and the biggest single source of "it feels slow". It is sensitive to network latency and file locking, so where the file lives matters more than how fast the laptop is.
TaxCycle, ProFile and DT Max
Tax preparation software, updated repeatedly through the season as forms are released, with hard filing deadlines behind every update.
QuickBooks, Xero and Sage
Client bookkeeping files, often one per client and sometimes on the client's own systems. Access sprawl lives here: logins to dozens of external environments, rarely reviewed.
Client portals and document exchange
Where personal financial information actually moves. Emailed attachments remain the default in many practices, and replacing them with a portal clients will use is the highest-value change available.
Workpaper retention
Provincial CPA bodies set expectations for documentation and file retention.
What's included
What we do for a practice.
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CaseWare performance treated as a real problem
Measured, file open times from different desks at different times, then fixed at the cause: where the file lives, the network path, or antivirus scanning a folder it should leave alone.
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Tax software updates scheduled around filing dates
Updates tested and deployed at times you choose, with a known-good rollback, so nobody meets a new version halfway through a return due that afternoon.
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A client portal people will actually use
Secure document exchange a client can operate without phoning you.
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External client file access, inventoried and reviewed
Every login your staff hold into a client's QuickBooks, Xero or Sage environment, listed with an owner and removed when an engagement or a staff member ends.
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Retention and archive that survives turnover
Working papers, prior-year files and correspondence stored where they persist beyond the person who created them, with restore-tested backups.
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A hard change freeze through busy season
From February to June we do not migrate, upgrade or restart anything.
How it works
When and how we start.
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We start in summer or early autumn
Onboarding a practice in March makes everyone's worst month worse. If you reach us in February, we do the safe stabilising work and schedule the rest for July.
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We fix file-open speed first
Every practice has this complaint, usually treated as a mood rather than a measurement. We time it, find the cause, and fix that.
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We set the calendar for the year
Busy season freeze, update windows for tax software, project weeks in summer, and a quarterly review.
What it costs
What accounting firms pay.
The second cost is not ours: CaseWare, tax preparation licences and hosted desktops carry their own per-user pricing, and often outweigh the IT fee. Any proposal should show both, so you see the total.
Seasonal seats
Firms take on contract preparers for four months a year. Ask any provider, us included, how a seat used from February to May is billed, and get the answer before January rather than on an invoice in June.
Why us for this
What we can show you, and what we cannot yet.
Accounting practices sit inside the financial services work happier IT does across Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario.
Verifiable today: Microsoft, Cisco and Citrix certifications, and a Canadian security operations centre staffed by our own employees.
Go deeper
- IT for finance and insurance The parent page: sector-wide failure modes and evidence requirements.
- Microsoft 365 Where the portal, the mailboxes and the file store usually live.
Questions
What people ask before they sign anything.
Why is CaseWare slow to open files?
Nearly always because of how the workstation reaches the file rather than the speed of the workstation: a congested link to the file store, a remote desktop session with the data elsewhere, antivirus scanning the working directory, or several people in one file.
When can you do project work for an accounting firm?
Between July and January, and we hold that line even when a project feels urgent. In busy season we do the safe work only: security, backups, monitoring, helpdesk.
How should we send tax documents to clients securely?
Through a portal, with the emphasis on one your clients will actually use: the file never sits in a mailbox, access can be revoked, and there is a record of who downloaded what.
What does IT cost per person at a CPA firm?
Remember to add software, CaseWare and tax preparation licences are separate, and often larger than the IT fee.
Can you help with our file retention policy?
We can implement it; we cannot write it. Retention expectations come from your provincial CPA body, your professional liability insurer and your own firm policy, and once the period is set we make it hold with storage, deletion rules and an archive that survives turnover.
Related
Where to go next.
Want to know what this would look like for you?
A 30-minute call. No slides, no audit fee, no obligation. We ask what is breaking and tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.