How do I know when my business has outgrown DIY / break-fix IT?

Every business starts with someone's nephew, a capable office manager, or the owner handling IT — and there's a real point where that's fine. The tipping points are recognizable: around ten employees, interruptions and downtime start costing more than professional coverage would. If you handle regulated data (patient records, card payments, financial information), compliance obligations arrive regardless of your size. If an hour of downtime visibly costs revenue — missed appointments, a stopped shop floor, a silent phone system — reactive IT is a liability.

The subtler signal is opportunity cost: an owner or manager spending hours on password resets and printer fights is billing their own time at the most expensive rate in the building for the least valuable work in it.

Break-fix isn't cheaper, either — it just moves the cost into lost productivity, emergencies billed at crisis rates, and the incident nobody prevented. The honest comparison is total annual cost including interruptions, not invoice versus invoice. When the tipping points above describe your business, it's time to at least price the alternative.