When your computer crashes and you have a technical interruption at a crucial moment, it can be extremely frustrating. You’ve spent the last few hours putting together an outline of what your prospect needs, along with how you propose to fulfill it. Most of the details are on your laptop, ready for your meeting with them in ten minutes. You open the laptop and power it up, you open the file you saved just an hour ago and you get the dreaded response: Your file has been corrupted! You’re the unfortunate victim of a failing hard drive!
4 Tips to Prevent Technical Interruptions
Technical interruptions are a fact of life in any office, but it’s hard to get things done when your computer won’t boot up or your printer is out of paper. The good news is that there are a few simple techniques you can use to avoid these situations.
- Avoid using USB devices and external hard drives that aren’t backed up. One virus can wipe out an entire company’s data, so it’s best to always back up important documents to a secure server or to a personal hard drive.
- Make sure that everyone knows not to plug other devices into their computers and not to connect devices directly into your company’s computer network via the ports on the back of the computers. If it’s not supposed to be connected, don’t plug it in!
- Have at least two printers: one for your everyday printing, and another as a backup in case the primary printer breaks down.
- Make sure that you have at least one extra computer you can use if yours fails or if someone accidentally deletes all their files.
Why You Should Always Back-Up Your Computer
You might think that backing up your computer is not important, but if you lose your files, you can lose a lot of data as well. Some things that can be affected by not backing up your computer are:
- Lost data. If your hard drive crashes and you haven’t backed up your files, you could lose everything. There’s no way around it; if you don’t have a recent backup, you’re going to lose some data or even all of it.
- Viruses and malware infection. Viruses and other malicious software can infect your computer without warning, destroying files and causing all sorts of problems for which there is no cure. It’s much easier to prevent these attacks than it is to recover from them after they occur.
- Hardware failure or theft. If your hard drive fails or gets stolen, all of the work that was stored on it will be gone forever unless you have a recent backup that includes those files — and even then, there are no guarantees that those files can be recovered successfully (see above).
What Can you do to Prevent Technical Interruptions
The first and most important thing you can do to prevent issues is to properly maintain your equipment.
This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s surprising how many businesses put off maintenance or don’t know how to properly inspect their machinery.
The second best option is to replace and upgrade your equipment when necessary.
Have a Solid Plan in Place
Above all you need to make sure you are mindful that with time, things can and will go wrong. This is why you need to plan ahead. Planning ahead and having a good solid plan allows you to:
- Have a budget for replacing equipment when you need to
- Reduce unexpected downtime because of old assets
- Time replacements to minimize the impact on your cash flows
- Time replacements to give you the biggest tax benefits
- Use tax strategies to reduce the tax impact of disposing of old assets
Wasatch CPA Services Can Help You
If you want a solid replacement plan for your fixed assets, perhaps we should talk. We provide a solid replacement plan for your fixed assets. Our expert CFO Services can help you determine the best way to replace your equipment and put a plan in place to avoid technical interruptions. By doing this you won’t have to worry about finding the money or time to get it done.
We are located in Utah but offer services nationwide. So don’t wait! Schedule a time to look things over with us here, and let us show you how we can help.
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