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IT support for accountants

IT support for accountants

Get through self-assessment season and year-end without losing a day, with secured HMRC access, Microsoft 365 done properly and engineers who pick up the phone.

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Sector
Accountants
Typical size
up to 250 staff
Coverage
Herts, Essex, London
Proof
Client reviews

In short

Dig IT Solutions provides managed IT support for accountancy practices across Hertfordshire, west Essex and London. We keep tax and practice software such as IRIS, CCH, Sage and Xero running, secure Microsoft 365 and HMRC agent services logins with MFA, back up client data and staff the helpdesk through January and year-end. It suits firms of 5 to 80 people without their own IT department.

Who this is for: Independent and regional accountancy practices of roughly 5 to 80 staff: ICAEW and ACCA member firms, bookkeeping and payroll bureaus, and multi-partner practices with a second office. Our day-to-day contact is usually the managing partner, the practice manager or whichever partner has ended up owning IT.

Sector pressures

What keeps accountants up at night

  1. 01

    January and year-end leave no room for downtime

    The 31 January self-assessment deadline, company year-ends, VAT quarters and weekly payroll runs mean the calendar decides when you can afford a fault, and the answer is never. A lost day in late January is lost fees and missed filings, with penalties your clients will expect you to explain.

  2. 02

    The HMRC agent services account is your most valuable login

    One set of credentials reaches every client's tax records, and the phishing that targets it peaks when HMRC emails are expected. Shared logins, weak MFA or an unprotected mailbox receiving access codes put the whole client base at risk. Identity security matters more here than in almost any other small business.

  3. 03

    Making Tax Digital and a growing cloud stack

    MTD for VAT and, from April 2026, MTD for Income Tax mean more clients on Xero, QuickBooks and Sage, more bridging tools and more browser-based apps per fee-earner. Each one is a separate identity to protect and a separate integration to keep working, so the practice's security perimeter is now its user accounts rather than its office.

  4. 04

    Client data under UK GDPR and the AML regime

    A practice holds passports, bank statements, payroll records and personal tax affairs for hundreds of clients, and the Money Laundering Regulations require due diligence records to be kept securely for years. One breach touches every client at once, so encryption, retention rules and a secure document portal instead of email attachments are the practical controls.

  5. 05

    Practice software on an ageing server

    IRIS, Sage 50 and CCH Central often sit on a Windows server bought years ago, with a SQL database nobody has restored from backup and remote desktop open to the internet. When that server reaches end of support the choice is a replacement, a hosted edition or the vendor's cloud product, and it needs planning outside the busy season.

What we do

How we support you

  • 01

    A helpdesk built around your filing calendar

    Remote support via Splashtop fixes a frozen tax return in minutes, and on-site engineers from Hoddesdon handle hardware and network faults. We schedule updates and server work around your deadlines and hold a change freeze in the last two weeks of January.

  • 02

    MFA and conditional access for HMRC and Microsoft 365

    Every user gets MFA, conditional access limits sign-ins to managed devices and expected locations, and shared HMRC logins are replaced with named access. We secure the mailbox that receives HMRC codes as carefully as the account itself.

  • 03

    Practice software kept current and recoverable

    Server patching through our remote monitoring and management platform, IRIS, Sage and CCH version upgrades scheduled with the vendor, SQL backups verified by restore, and a costed plan for moving to hosted or cloud editions when the server needs replacing.

  • 04

    Backups you can prove to a client or regulator

    Local and cloud backups of servers and file stores, Microsoft 365 backup for mailboxes, OneDrive and SharePoint, and periodic test restores with written reports. If a member of staff deletes a client folder in March, we bring it back rather than rebuilding it.

  • 05

    Email security and awareness training for HMRC-themed phishing

    Filtering that catches HMRC and client impersonation, DMARC on your own domain so it cannot easily be used against your clients, and short, regular security awareness training timed for the run-up to January when the fake refund emails arrive.

  • 06

    Growth handled: starters, hardware and phones

    HP or Dell laptops with dual screens imaged and ready before a new trainee starts, new-starter and leaver forms through the client portal, and 8x8 VoIP with call queues so client calls are answered in busy weeks rather than bouncing to voicemail.

Software we work alongside

Systems we see every week

  • IRIS Accountancy Suite
  • CCH Central
  • Sage 50 and Sage Business Cloud Accounting
  • Xero and Xero Practice Manager
  • QuickBooks Online
  • TaxCalc
  • BrightPay
  • Dext

Listed to show familiarity, not as vendor partnerships. We support the platform your software runs on and work with each vendor’s support team on your behalf.

Compliance and expectations

  • HMRC agent services and Making Tax Digital

    HMRC's agent services account and MTD-compatible software give a practice direct access to client tax records, so HMRC expects agents to protect those credentials. For IT that means MFA everywhere, no shared logins, secured mailboxes for verification codes and prompt removal of access when staff leave.

    HM Revenue & Customs

  • UK GDPR and the ICO

    Client identity documents, bank details and tax records are personal data that must be protected and retained only as long as needed. A breach affecting clients must be assessed and, where required, reported to the ICO within 72 hours, which needs logging and a provider who can establish what happened.

    Information Commissioner's Office

  • Cyber Essentials

    Professional bodies, insurers and larger clients increasingly ask practices whether they hold Cyber Essentials. Its five controls, from patching to access control, are what we operate anyway, so preparation is mostly closing exceptions and writing down what is already true.

    NCSC Cyber Essentials

Switching to us

How the handover works

We do not move accountancy practices in January or the week of a payroll run. Switching starts with a discovery visit to record every application, server, licence, HMRC login and integration, followed by documentation your practice manager can actually read. We run in parallel with your current provider through handover, migrate quietly in a chosen quiet week, and brief staff before anything changes on their desks. The step-by-step process is at our switching IT provider guide.

Plan your IT switchOr start with an IT health check

FAQ

Accountants: questions we are asked

Straight answers. If yours is not here, call 020 8482 4020 or 01992 939 365 and ask an engineer.
What software do most accountants use, and can you support it?
UK practices typically run a practice and tax suite such as IRIS, CCH, TaxCalc or Sage, cloud bookkeeping in Xero, QuickBooks or Sage Business Cloud, payroll in BrightPay or Sage, and receipt capture through Dext, with Microsoft 365 underneath. We support the servers, devices, identities and networks these run on and work with each vendor on application issues, so one call covers the whole stack.
How do we protect our HMRC agent services account?
Give every user their own credentials rather than a shared login, enforce MFA on Microsoft 365 and on the Government Gateway, and protect the mailbox that receives verification codes with the same care as the account. Add email filtering for HMRC impersonation, remove access the day someone leaves, and train staff to expect fake refund and penalty emails every January.
Can you promise no downtime in January?
Nobody can honestly promise zero downtime, and we would be wary of anyone who does. What we do is reduce the odds and shorten the recovery: a change freeze in the last two weeks of January, monitoring that flags problems before they stop work, spare laptops ready to swap, tested backups and a helpdesk that treats a tax-season ticket as urgent by default.
Should we move IRIS or Sage to the cloud?
It depends on the age of your server, how much you rely on integrations, and the vendor's hosted or cloud editions. Moving removes the risk of a single ageing server and makes home working simpler, but pricing and performance vary by product. We assess the options with you, cost them side by side and schedule any migration well outside filing peaks.
How much does IT support cost for an accountancy practice?
Managed IT support is typically priced per user or per device per month, with the figure driven by headcount, whether you keep an on-premises server, and how much security and backup you need for client data. Our indicative per-device figures are published on our pricing page, and you can build a quick estimate for your practice at the IT support cost calculator.
Do we still need to back up Microsoft 365 if our accounts software is in the cloud?
Yes. Xero or QuickBooks hold the ledgers, but the working papers, client emails, engagement letters and spreadsheets live in Outlook, OneDrive and SharePoint. Microsoft's own retention will not necessarily recover a folder deleted in March and noticed in June, or data lost to a ransomware attack, so a separate Microsoft 365 backup with test restores is the sensible position for a practice.

Insights

Guides for accountants

All insights

Next step

Talk to an engineer, not a sales script

Tell us what is not working, or what you are planning, and we will give you a straight view on what it would take to fix.

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020 8482 4020 01992 939 365 WhatsApp +44 7726 366420Mon–Fri 8:30am – 5:30pm
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