Guides, videos, and short write-ups, all in one place.

For Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace: go to the sign-in page, click "Forgot password," and follow the verification prompt (usually a text or backup email).

For a Windows login tied to a Microsoft account, click "I forgot my password" on the lock screen. This only works if the account is cloud-linked or a domain admin has self-reset enabled.

If neither applies, or you're locked out entirely, call us and we verify your identity and reset it directly, usually in a few minutes.

Install the VPN client we provide (OpenVPN or WireGuard, depending on your setup). The download link is in your onboarding email.

Import the config file we send you, or enter the server address, username, and password directly if asked.

Once connected, confirm it worked by checking that your IP address shows our office location instead of your own.

Common fix if it won't connect: your home router may be blocking the VPN port, so try switching the client from UDP to TCP in its settings.

Use IMAP or Exchange (not POP3), so your mail stays in sync across every device instead of downloading once and disappearing elsewhere.

For Microsoft 365, the "Add Work Account" flow in Outlook mobile auto-configures everything: just sign in with your work email and password.

For Google Workspace, the same happens through the Gmail app.

If autodiscovery fails, we can give you the exact server and port settings, usually a two-minute fix over the phone.

Open the print queue. On Windows, Settings → Devices → Printers, then double-click the printer; on Mac, System Settings → Printers.

Cancel all pending jobs. If a job won't cancel, restart the print spooler service (Windows) or just power-cycle the printer.

If it jams again immediately, check the paper tray itself for a physical jam before troubleshooting the software.

1. Turn on Cost Explorer and look at month-over-month change by service. The surprise is almost always one service, not a general increase.
2. Check for orphaned resources: unattached EBS volumes, unused Elastic IPs, and idle load balancers get billed even when nothing is using them.
3. Compare EC2 instance sizes against actual CPU/memory use. Most accounts have at least one instance sized for 80% load running at 5%.
4. Confirm anything running 24/7 is on a Savings Plan or Reserved Instance. On-demand pricing for a server that never turns off is the single most common overspend we see.
5. Check data transfer costs. Cross-region or cross-AZ traffic adds up quietly and rarely shows up until someone looks for it.
6. Set a billing alert, even a simple one, so a runaway cost shows up in days instead of at the end of the month.

If this feels like more time than it's worth, this is exactly what a cost audit is for: a fixed-scope look at your account, not an open-ended retainer.

• It's out of warranty and the manufacturer no longer sells parts for it. When it fails, "same-day fix" turns into "wait for a part."
• It's running an OS version that no longer gets security patches. Old but stable isn't the same as safe.
• Backups exist, but no one has actually tested a restore. An untested backup is a hope, not a plan.
• It's a single point of failure for something the business can't run without, with no failover.

None of this automatically means "move to the cloud." Sometimes it's a hardware refresh, sometimes it's a cloud migration, sometimes it's just fixing the backup situation. Worth a real look before it fails on its own schedule.

1. Disconnect the device from the network by unplugging the cable or turning off Wi-Fi. Don't shut it down; that can erase evidence of how it got in.
2. Don't try to clean it up yourself first. It's easy to delete the evidence along with the problem.
3. Change the password for any account you entered on that page, from a different, clean device.
4. Call your IT provider immediately. If files are already encrypted, don't pay before getting advice. Decryption isn't guaranteed, and paying doesn't always stop further exposure.
5. Report it internally, in case anyone else got the same email.

Managed clients have this response built in already. If it isn't in place for your business yet, it's the first thing worth fixing.

• Disable password-based SSH login in favor of key-based auth. This alone stops most automated attack attempts.
• Keep a real patch cadence. "We'll get to it eventually" is how known vulnerabilities stay open for months.
• Use a firewall (ufw, firewalld, or security groups if cloud-hosted), default to deny, and open only what's needed.
• Set up fail2ban or equivalent to auto-block repeated failed login attempts.
• Run services as non-root users wherever possible, so a compromised app doesn't mean a compromised system.
• Centralize logs somewhere other than the server itself, so they can't just be deleted after the fact.

This is a starting checklist, not a full audit. If you want an assessment against your specific setup, that's its own engagement.

• Your team has built a maze of spreadsheets or workarounds just to make two tools talk to each other.
• You're paying for a plan tier with ten features you don't use, because it's the only one that includes the one you need.
• The same manual step happens every day, and everyone doing it already agrees it should be automated.
• You've asked the vendor for a feature and been told it's "on the roadmap" for over a year.

None of this means custom software is automatically the answer. Sometimes the fix is a smaller integration, not a full build. Worth a conversation before assuming either way.

• Day-to-day troubleshooting: failed batch jobs, performance issues, user access problems, and the small breakages that happen in any live ERP system.
• Configuration changes: adjusting settings, workflows, and business rules within S/4HANA without a full consulting engagement for every small change.
• Working alongside your existing SAP team or vendor, if you have one, rather than replacing what's already in place.
• For businesses without an internal SAP resource, ongoing support so the system doesn't depend on one person who might leave.

This isn't a ground-up implementation practice. If you need a full S/4HANA rollout, that's a different conversation. This is support for a system that's already running.

1. Is this something a person does the same way, repeatedly, using judgment that's actually pretty consistent? (If every case is wildly different, an agent will struggle.)
2. Do you already have the source material it would need (documents, FAQs, past tickets) written down somewhere? (If the knowledge only lives in someone's head, that has to get written down first, agent or not.)
3. Is getting it wrong occasionally survivable? (Fine for answering routine questions; not fine for anything where one mistake is expensive.)
4. Would fixing this actually save meaningful time, or is it already a five-minutes-a-week task?

Three yeses and a real fourth yes means it's probably worth a conversation. If not, it might just need a simpler fix, and we'll tell you that too.

Every office we walk into has one. It's usually tucked in a closet, running something nobody's quite sure they can turn off, installed by someone who left the company years ago. It works, technically, and that's exactly the problem. Because it works, it never gets prioritized. There's no line item for "replace the mystery server," so it just keeps running until it doesn't.

The failure, when it happens, is rarely dramatic. Usually it's a drive finally giving out, or a mainboard that isn't sold anymore, on a Friday afternoon. At that point the question isn't "should we replace this." It's "how much of the business stops while we figure this out."

The fix isn't always "move everything to the cloud." Sometimes it's a straightforward hardware refresh, sometimes it's consolidating onto something newer and smaller, sometimes the workload genuinely belongs in AWS. The point isn't which answer is right. It's that nobody's looked at it in years, and looking costs nothing.

If there's a server in your office everyone's a little afraid to touch, that's usually the one worth having someone actually look at.

Nobody sets out to overspend on AWS. It happens a few dollars at a time, spread across a year, until the bill just... is what it is now.

The most common pattern isn't one big mistake. It's an accumulation of small, reasonable-at-the-time decisions. A test instance that was supposed to be temporary. A load balancer left running after a project wrapped. An instance sized for a launch traffic spike that never got resized back down once things settled. None of these look like a problem in isolation. Together, they're most of the surprise.

The other pattern is simpler: nobody owns the account. When cost isn't specifically anyone's job, it doesn't get looked at until finance asks a question. That's not a technology problem. It's an ownership one.

Neither pattern needs a dramatic fix. Usually it just needs someone to spend an afternoon going through the account with fresh eyes, comparing what's running against what's actually being used, and turning off, or resizing, what's left over.

The old advice still gets repeated: bad grammar, an obviously fake sender address, a stranger who needs help moving money. Increasingly, that's not what shows up in an inbox anymore.

What we see more of now: an email that looks exactly like a real invoice from a vendor you actually use, sent right after a real conversation thread, asking to update payment details. A text that appears to come from a coworker's number, asking for a quick favor involving gift cards. A fake login page that's a near-exact copy of your real Microsoft 365 sign-in screen, because copying a login page isn't hard to do anymore.

The common thread isn't sloppiness. It's specificity. These attempts increasingly reference something real: a real vendor, a real coworker's name, a real ongoing project. That's what makes "just look for red flags" less reliable advice than it used to be.

What still works: verifying anything involving money or credentials through a second channel, a phone call, or a message on a platform you already trust, before acting on an email alone, no matter how legitimate it looks.

Search for this and you'll get a wall of vague ranges, because the honest answer really does depend on a few specific things: how many devices, how much of your day depends on things not breaking, and how much is already a mess versus already in decent shape.

That said, ranges exist for a reason. In the Dallas market, a fully managed plan for a small office (device-level help desk, patching, backup, monitoring) typically lands somewhere between $90 and $220 per device per month, depending on how much is included. Project work, an office move, a migration, a one-time cleanup, is usually priced by the hour or as a flat quote, not folded into a monthly number.

The number that actually matters isn't the sticker price, it's what happens when something breaks. A cheap plan that leaves you on hold for two days during an outage isn't actually cheap. A pricier plan that includes backup, monitoring, and a real response time commitment often ends up cheaper than the alternative, once you count what an afternoon of downtime costs in lost work.

We put our actual starting numbers on the pricing page, not because every business fits neatly into a tier, but because "call for a quote" with zero anchor wastes everyone's time. If you want a number specific to your setup, the 60-second estimate tool gets you a real range before you talk to anyone.

Almost every business we talk to already has "backups." Almost none of them have tested a restore in the last year. Those are very different things, and the gap between them is where a lot of businesses find out the hard way that a backup job completing successfully isn't the same as being able to get your data back.

The common failure modes aren't exotic. A backup job that's been silently failing for months because nobody set up an alert for it. A backup that only covers the server, not the laptops where half the actual work happens. A cloud backup of Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace that people assume is automatic, because Microsoft and Google host the data, when in most cases it isn't included by default at all.

The fix isn't complicated, it's just rarely prioritized until after something goes wrong: automated backups that cover everything that actually matters, an alert when a job fails instead of silent failure, and a real, periodically tested restore, not just a green checkmark nobody looks at twice.

If you're not sure which category your business is in, that's exactly what the free network & security audit checks, alongside everything else. It's a fast way to find out before a bad week forces the question.