CPA firms can prevent downtime during tax season by creating a business continuity plan that identifies critical systems, sets recovery priorities, assigns responsibilities, and prepares employees to work through an interruption. Reliable backups matter, but they represent only one part of the plan. Firms also need dependable internet service, maintained technology, tested remote access, vendor coordination, and clear communication procedures. Planning cannot eliminate every outage. However, it can keep a minor disruption from becoming a costly, firm-wide crisis during tax season.
For a Denver CPA firm, even a short outage can create a backlog. When deadlines are close, and employees cannot access tax software or client files, the financial impact grows quickly. We have spoken with CPAs who estimate that every unavailable hour can cost them $1,500 in lost productivity.
A documented plan helps the firm respond calmly and strategically instead of making critical decisions under pressure.
What a Business Continuity Plan Covers
A business continuity plan explains how a firm will continue its essential operations during and immediately after a disruption. It looks beyond technology to consider employees, facilities, vendors, communication, payroll, banking, and other business functions.
Many business leaders associate continuity planning only with major disasters. However, the plan should address any event that could cause an extended interruption. That might include a cyberattack, internet outage, failed server, damaged office, corrupted software update, extended power loss, or unavailable employee.
The sudden transition to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic provides a useful example. Firms had to determine how employees would access files, communicate with clients, protect confidential information, and complete work outside the office. A complete plan addresses these operational questions before another disruption occurs.
It helps to understand three related terms:
- Business continuity plan: The overarching plan for keeping essential business functions operating during a disruption. It covers technology, people, processes, communications, vendors, and facilities.
- Disaster recovery plan: The technical plan for restoring systems, applications, and data after a major outage or disaster.
- Data-backup strategy: The procedures and technology used to create protected copies of data and recover files when the originals become unavailable, damaged, or encrypted.
In simple terms, business continuity keeps the firm working. Disaster recovery restores the technology that failed. Backups provide the data needed for that recovery.
A backup alone does not tell employees what to do, who can declare a disaster, which systems get restored first, or how the firm will communicate with clients.
Technology Disruptions That Threaten CPA Firms
Small CPA firms often depend on a relatively concentrated technology environment. If employees lose access to one server, internet connection, cloud platform, or tax application, much of the firm may stop working. The most serious risks commonly include:
- Internet or network outages
- Server and workstation failures
- Cybersecurity incidents, including ransomware
- Corrupted files or failed software updates
- Cloud application and vendor outages
- Power disruptions
- Aging network equipment
- Inadequate internet capacity for remote work
- Loss of access to email, identity systems, or multifactor authentication
- Severe weather or another event that makes the office inaccessible
Internet capacity deserves more attention than it typically receives. A firm may select the least expensive internet plan and later expect 10 or 15 employees to connect remotely. Each employee then competes for limited bandwidth. Tax applications can lag, connections can drop, and entering information into tax software can become difficult.
Unreliable home internet can also disrupt employees working remotely throughout Lakewood, Highlands Ranch, Aurora, or other parts of the Denver metro area. A strong office connection cannot compensate for an employee’s unreliable home service.
To reduce technology disruptions, firms should maintain business-grade internet service, replace aging equipment, patch applications, monitor systems, and confirm remote access before tax season. They should also consider backup connectivity for critical locations and keep replacement workstations available when practical.
Backups require active oversight as well. At Onset Solutions, we use a centralized dashboard that flags backup problems. Our processes require our team to review those alerts and confirm that backups complete correctly. It is not enough for an IT provider to say that backups exist. The provider should explain how it monitors them, verifies results, and responds to failures.
Build a Business Continuity Plan Around Critical Systems
A useful business continuity plan begins with a business impact analysis. This process identifies the systems, data, employees, vendors, and workflows the firm needs to serve clients.
Start by asking practical questions:
- Which activities generate revenue or meet regulatory and filing obligations?
- Which systems do employees need to complete those activities?
- What happens if each system remains unavailable for an hour, a day, or several days?
- Which applications depend on other systems?
- Which client commitments or deadlines would an outage affect?
- Can employees complete the work another way?
- What information must the firm protect and recover?
- Which vendors control systems the firm cannot restore itself?
For most CPA firms, the critical list may include tax preparation software, audit and accounting applications, document-management platforms, email, client portals, file storage, payroll systems, internet access, and identity-management tools.
However, firms should evaluate the entire workflow rather than list applications in isolation. Employees may access a tax application through a local server, virtual private network, cloud identity service, or remote desktop connection. The application might work perfectly while an internet failure or authentication problem still prevents access.
Criticality also changes throughout the year. A tax application that can remain offline for several hours in July may require a much faster response in March. The plan should reflect these seasonal differences.
Establish Recovery Time and Recovery Point Objectives
Once leaders identify their critical systems, they should assign a recovery time objective and recovery point objective to each one.
- Recovery time objective (RTO): defines the maximum acceptable amount of time that a system can remain unavailable. If a firm decides its tax software must return within four hours, four hours becomes its RTO.
- Recovery point objective (RPO): defines how much recent data the firm can afford to lose. An RPO of one hour means the recovery process should restore data to a point no more than one hour before the disruption.
Firm leaders should set these objectives based on business impact, not wishful thinking. Every system cannot receive the highest recovery priority. Faster recovery and more frequent backup intervals can require additional technology, redundancy, and cost. When setting an RTO and RPO, consider:
- Lost billable time
- Filing and client deadlines
- The number of affected employees
- Data-reentry requirements
- Legal, regulatory, and contractual responsibilities
- Client communication needs
- Available recovery technology
- Application and internet dependencies
- Busy-season requirements
The firm should discuss these targets with its technology provider and software vendors. If a vendor cannot support the desired recovery time, the firm must either revise the objective, add another safeguard, or formally accept the risk.
A localized backup may restore certain files faster than a large download from the cloud, especially when internet service is slow. However, a local copy can create its own risk if the firm does not also maintain protected off-site backups. The right strategy usually combines multiple recovery options based on the firm’s environment.
Assign Roles Before an Outage Happens
A business continuity plan should tell everyone where they fit in the response. If employees do not know whom to contact, critical information may never reach the people who can resolve the problem.
Firm leaders should make business decisions, establish priorities, authorize major recovery actions, and approve communications to clients. The plan should also establish a succession order if the primary decision-maker becomes unavailable.
Employees should report problems through the designated process, follow security instructions, and use approved alternate workflows. They should not contact several vendors independently or attempt unapproved fixes that could complicate recovery.
The firm’s technology provider should diagnose the problem, coordinate technical recovery, restore systems, and communicate with internet or software vendors when appropriate. For example, if a Denver office loses internet service, an Onset Solutions client should contact us. We can confirm whether the problem involves the internal network or the provider and serve as the intermediary during the support process.
Software and cloud vendors should provide outage information, product-specific support, and realistic recovery estimates. The firm should document vendor contact information and understand each provider’s responsibilities before an incident occurs. The plan should identify:
- The emergency response team
- The person authorized to activate the plan
- Backup decision-makers
- Internal and external communication responsibilities
- Employee reporting procedures
- Technology recovery responsibilities
- Vendor escalation contacts
- Client notification responsibilities
- The person who records decisions, events, and recovery progress
These assignments should appear in writing. An accountability chart, contact tree, and short succession plan can prevent confusion during a stressful event.
Test Your Business Continuity Plan Before Busy Season
An untested business continuity plan contains assumptions. Testing reveals whether those assumptions hold up before employees face a real emergency.
At minimum, CPA firms should review and test their plans annually. A firm should also revisit the plan after changing its network, software, cloud services, office location, leadership, or critical vendors. Pairing the annual review with the firm’s Written Information Security Plan (WISP) review can help leaders evaluate security and continuity together.
The annual exercise does not need to interrupt client work. A tabletop exercise brings leaders, employees, and technology partners together to discuss how they would respond to a realistic scenario.
For example, the firm could assume its primary internet connection fails at 9:00 a.m. on a busy Monday in February. Participants would work through questions such as:
- Who identifies and reports the problem?
- Who contacts the technology provider?
- How does the firm determine the cause?
- Can employees work securely from another location?
- Which systems remain available?
- How will leaders update employees and clients?
- When should the firm escalate the incident?
- What happens if service remains unavailable all day?
Other useful scenarios include a ransomware infection, a corrupted tax software update, an unavailable cloud vendor, or a major snowstorm that prevents employees from reaching an office near downtown Denver or the Denver Tech Center.
A business continuity plan should evolve with the firm. Technology changes, employees leave, vendors update their systems, and new workflows become essential. Regular reviews keep the plan aligned with the way the firm operates.
Prepare Your CPA Firm Before the Next Deadline
Tax season leaves little room for preventable downtime. The best time to identify weak internet service, untested backups, unclear responsibilities, and unrealistic recovery expectations is before employees depend on those systems to meet critical deadlines.
Onset Solutions has helped Denver businesses build stable, supportive, and strategic technology environments since 2001. We can help your CPA firm assess its systems, clarify recovery priorities, strengthen backup oversight, and prepare for disruptions.
Contact Onset Solutions for a free IT assessment and learn where your firm’s business continuity preparations are strong, where gaps remain, and what to address before busy season.
Hilary Taylor
Hilary is the CEO of Onset Solutions. She helps small and mid-sized businesses strengthen their IT strategy, improve cybersecurity, and streamline daily operations. With a practical, people-first approach, Hilary focuses on making complex technology simple, secure, and easy to use for growing organizations.
