New Financial Year: The IT Checklist for April

New financial year, fresh budget. Here's the IT housekeeping that smart businesses tackle in April.

The UK financial year starts in April. For many businesses, that means fresh budgets, new plans, and good intentions.

It's also the perfect time for IT housekeeping that gets forgotten during the year. Here's your April checklist.

1. Licence Audit

Pull your software subscription list. For each one, ask:

• Are we still using this?
• How many licences do we have vs. how many do we actually need?
• Are we on the right tier, or are we overpaying for features we don't use?

We typically find 15-30% waste when we audit client licences. That's money recoverable within days.

Don't forget to check for leavers who still have active licences. Every month you're paying for someone who left is pure waste.

2. Access Permission Review

Who can access what? Permissions tend to accumulate over time. Someone needed temporary access to a folder two years ago and still has it.

Audit:

• Admin accounts (who has administrator rights and should they?)
• Shared drives and folders (who can see sensitive data?)
• Cloud applications (are there orphaned accounts?)
• Financial systems (who can approve payments?)

3. Password and MFA Check

Is MFA enabled on all cloud accounts? Not just email - every cloud service with company data.

Are there shared passwords that should have been eliminated? (That 'everyone knows' social media login, for instance.)

Are password policies enforced, or just documented?

4. Hardware Inventory

What equipment do you actually have? Where is it? How old is it?

For each device:

• Is it still under warranty or support?
• Can it run Windows 11? (Important with Windows 10 end of life in October)
• Is it due for replacement in the next 12 months?

This prevents surprise failures and enables planned replacement instead of emergency procurement.

5. Backup Verification

When did you last test a restore? (See our World Backup Day article for why this matters.)

April is a good time to:

• Verify backup coverage (are all systems included?)
• Test a random restore
• Confirm offsite/cloud copies are working
• Document recovery procedures

6. Contract Review

When do your IT contracts renew? Check:

• Managed service agreements
• Software subscriptions (especially annual ones)
• Support contracts
• Internet and phone services

Knowing renewal dates gives you negotiating leverage and time to evaluate alternatives.

7. Insurance Check

Does your cyber insurance still match your risk profile? Has your business changed since you last renewed?

Are you meeting the security requirements in your policy? (Many policies require MFA, backups, etc. - if you're not compliant, claims may be rejected.)

The 30-Minute Version

If you can only do one thing: export your Microsoft 365 user list and licence assignments. Compare it to your current employee list. Remove the mismatches.

This alone often saves hundreds of pounds per year.

Getting Help

We do financial year IT reviews for clients as part of our managed service. It includes all of the above, with a written report and action plan.

If you'd like us to do the same for you - whether you become a client or not - we're happy to help.

Book a financial year IT review