I honestly do not know how many computers we have, how old they are, whether they are secure, or who has access to what. Can a provider really start from that point?

First, reassurance: this is the normal starting condition, not an embarrassing exception. Businesses accumulate technology the way they grow, in bursts and workarounds, and unless someone was specifically responsible for records, nobody has them. Providers see this weekly. You do not need to clean up before calling, any more than you need to organize your books before hiring an accountant.

Discovery is built for exactly this. Once monitoring tools deploy, they inventory automatically: every computer and server, hardware age and specs, operating system and patch status, installed software, and security state. Account review maps who has access to what, which always surfaces a few surprises (the ex-employee whose account still works, the shared password everyone knows, the admin rights nobody remembers granting). None of it requires you to know anything in advance; the tools and a methodical first month do the work.

What you get out the other side is the thing you have been missing: a documented environment the business owns. An asset list with ages and replacement priorities, a clean access map, backups verified or created, and the risky surprises converted into a prioritized fix list. From there, staying organized is automatic, because the monitoring that discovered everything keeps watching it. The starting point you are describing is not a barrier to getting help; it is the reason to get it.