New year IT health check: a 10-point checklist for small business

A ten-point, plain-English IT checklist for the new year that any business owner can work through, with why each item matters and how to check it.

January is the one month where most businesses get a bit of breathing room. Customers are quieter, half the team is still at the beach, and there is actually space to think about the year ahead. That makes it the best time to give your IT a proper health check, the same way you might book the car in for a service before a road trip.

You do not need to be technical to do this. Below are ten checks any owner or office manager can work through in an afternoon. Each one has a short "why it matters" and "how to check". Where you hit something you cannot answer, that is a useful finding on its own, because it usually means nobody is watching it.

The 10-point checklist

1. Review accounts and access

Why it matters: staff come and go, roles change, and old logins have a habit of sticking around. Every active account that nobody owns is a door left unlocked. How to check: pull the list of user accounts in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace and your other systems, and match it against your current staff list. Disable anything that does not belong to someone who is still with you, and check whether former staff still have access to shared mailboxes or files.

2. Turn on multi-factor authentication everywhere

Why it matters: multi-factor authentication, or MFA, is the extra step where you approve a login on your phone after entering a password. Passwords get guessed, reused and stolen. MFA is the single most effective thing a small business can do to stop account takeovers, and most insurers now expect it. How to check: look at the security settings for email, banking, accounting software and any cloud tools, and confirm MFA is on for every user, not just the owner.

3. Test a backup restore

Why it matters: a backup that has never been tested is a hope, not a plan. We regularly meet businesses who believed they were backed up and found out otherwise at the worst possible moment. How to check: pick one important file or folder and actually restore it from backup. Note how long it takes and who knows how to do it. If nobody has ever done a test restore, put it at the top of the list.

4. Look at your computers and their age

Why it matters: computers past about five years get slow, unreliable and harder to secure, and anything still running Windows 10 is now out of support and not receiving security updates. How to check: write down each computer, roughly how old it is and what version of Windows or macOS it runs. Any machine still on Windows 10 should be scheduled for replacement, not someday, but with an actual date.

5. Check your Wi-Fi and internet are fit for purpose

Why it matters: the business has probably grown since the internet was last thought about. More cloud software, more video calls and more devices all lean on the same connection and the same Wi-Fi. How to check: ask your team where the Wi-Fi drops out and when the internet feels slow. Then look at your NBN plan and confirm the speed tier still matches how you actually work. A plan chosen years ago for email and browsing may not suit a business that now lives in the cloud.

6. Cancel software licences you no longer use

Why it matters: subscriptions quietly pile up. The design tool someone trialled, the extra inboxes for staff who left, the app everyone moved on from. Each one is a small monthly leak. How to check: go through your bank or card statements line by line and list every recurring software charge. For each one, ask a simple question: who uses this, and what for? Cancel or downgrade anything without a good answer.

7. Write down your systems and who supports them

Why it matters: in plenty of small businesses, the knowledge of what runs what lives in one person's head. If that person is away or moves on, even simple problems become mysteries. How to check: make a one-page list of the systems you rely on (email, files, accounting, phones, website, any industry software) and next to each, who you call when it breaks. If the answer for several of them is "no idea", that is a gap worth closing.

8. Get a password manager in use

Why it matters: reused passwords are how one small breach turns into five. A password manager remembers a different strong password for every account so your team does not have to. How to check: ask your staff, honestly, how they keep track of passwords. If the answer involves a notebook, a spreadsheet or the same password everywhere, a password manager is an easy fix that pays for itself in avoided trouble.

9. Make sure staff know how to log a job

Why it matters: small issues get reported early only when reporting them is easy. Problems that go unmentioned have a way of becoming Friday-afternoon emergencies. How to check: ask two or three staff what they would do if their email stopped working or they saw something suspicious. Everyone should give the same simple answer, whether that is an email address, a phone number or a support portal.

10. Make a plan for the year

Why it matters: IT surprises are usually just unplanned replacements. Computers, servers and batteries all have working lives, and knowing what is due lets you budget calmly instead of scrambling. How to check: using the ages from point four, map out what is likely to need replacing this year and roughly when. Even a rough list on one page turns emergencies into line items.

If you would rather have someone do all of this with you, that is exactly what our team does for businesses across Victoria. We run the checklist, explain what we find in plain English, and give you a simple plan for the year.

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• new year
• it health check
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• small business