Mid-Year IT Audit for Small Business: 7 Line Items to Close Before Q3

June 28, 2026 • Business IT

Skits here. Q2 closes Tuesday. That's the natural moment to look at your IT line by line and decide what the next six months should look like — before they happen TO you instead of the other way around.

This isn't a 40-page audit. It's seven specific things you can knock out in a Friday afternoon, or hand to your IT person and have done by the end of next week. We do this with managed clients in late June, every year.

1. The license/subscription cleanup

Open your credit-card statement for May. Find every "$9.99" and "$14.99" and "$29.99" that shows up monthly. Make a list.

For each one, ask: do we still use this? Did the person who set this up leave the company? Is this for a tool we replaced two years ago?

Most small businesses we look at have at least three subscriptions paying for things nobody's used in 18 months. Microsoft 365 seats for a former employee. A backup service replaced last year but never canceled. An old domain renewing automatically. The cleanup is 15 minutes and pays for the holiday party.

2. The user-account cleanup

Pull up your Microsoft 365 admin center (or Google Workspace, whichever you're on). Look at the list of users. Is every name on that list actually currently working for you?

In 17 years of doing this, I have NEVER walked into a new client and found a clean user list on the first audit. There's always a former employee still active, still licensed, still potentially logged in somewhere. Deactivate them. Reclaim the license. Saves money AND closes a back door.

3. The MFA coverage check

Multi-Factor Authentication — that text-message-or-app code you get when you log in. Who has it turned on?

Your insurance renewal is going to ask about this. Possibly already has. The right answer is "every user, every system, no exceptions." If you can't answer that confidently, that's the priority audit item this month.

If MFA setup feels overwhelming — we can do it for you in a couple of hours. Most small businesses can be fully covered in an afternoon.

4. The 3-2-1 backup verification (not just the report — pull a file)

The 3-2-1 rule: 3 copies of your data, 2 different media types, 1 stored off-site. If your backup is "we sync to OneDrive" — that's one copy in two locations, not three on two media. Not the same thing.

The audit step: actually pull a file off your backup TODAY. Open it. Verify it's the right version. Do it from your office network and then do it from a hotspot. If both work, you have a real backup. If either fails, you don't.

Backing Up Your Business Data covers the full 3-2-1 layout in 10 minutes if your team's never seen it spelled out.

5. The hardware that's been wheezing

Walk through the office. Identify any machine that's been frustrating someone for the last six months. Slow to start. Loud fan. Battery that needs to be plugged in constantly. Spinning wheel on what used to be simple tasks.

If it's older than 5 years — budget the replacement for August or September. NOT December. Every December, every small-business owner discovers the main computer is dying. Prices are higher in December. Shipping is slower. Your accountant needs everything working for year-end. Decide in June. Buy in August. Move at your own pace.

Upgrade vs Repair walks the actual decision framework.

6. The Windows 10 question (still real)

If you still have any machines on Windows 10 — decide now. Upgrade in place, replace with new Windows 11 hardware, or budget for the extended-support workaround for one more year. Not deciding IS a decision; it's just the most expensive one.

Most small offices we look at have at least one machine quietly running Windows 10 because nobody asked.

7. The vacation-coverage check (yes, again)

If you wrote the Week 2 blog into your calendar two weeks ago — the 4 owner-handoff items: backup admin, password manager, restore test, OOO that doesn't help a thief — this is when you sanity-check that those handoffs got tested. Mid-year is the natural date to revisit. (If you missed it: Out-of-Office Done Right is the 10-minute companion.)

If you want a second set of eyes

Half the value of an outside review is that we'll spot the thing you've been looking at for so long you stopped seeing it. The orphan license. The forgotten admin account. The backup nobody's ever actually restored from. If you'd rather have somebody run this audit with you — 540.303.2410. We do these for Winchester-area small business all summer. Two hours, no obligation to do anything else after.

— Skits