Building a 12-Month IT Budget for a 20-Person Business

Most IT budgets at small companies are three numbers and a hope: what we spent last year, what the owner will approve this year, and please let nothing break.

That works until a server dies in July. Then the rest of the year goes toward recovering money that was never set aside, and the projects that might have prevented the failure are the first thing cut.

A 20-person business does not need a complicated budget. It needs four categories, a monthly number you can actually pay, and a short list of expenses you already know are coming. Here is how we build one with clients.

Why 20 People Is a Useful Size

At around 20 employees you are past the point where one person handles IT on the side, and not yet at the point where a full internal department makes sense. Nearly every cost is per person. Multiply by 20, add the shared equipment, and you have a total you can defend to a partner or a lender.

It is also the size where a single failure hurts but rarely closes the business. That is exactly the moment to plan, because the next growth spurt is easier to absorb if the technology is already on a schedule.

Four Buckets, Not Twenty Lines

Ongoing support

This covers monitoring, patching, the help desk, and someone who answers when something breaks. Most providers price it per user or per device. For a business your size, expect somewhere between $125 and $250 per person per month depending on what is included. At 20 people that lands between $2,500 and $5,000 a month.

It is the line worth comparing most carefully. Cheap support usually means waiting on hold, and waiting on hold is a cost whether or not it appears on the invoice.

Software and cloud

Microsoft 365, the accounting system, the industry tool nobody can work without, and every subscription that quietly renews. This is usually the second-largest line, and it grows every time you hire. Multiply the per-seat prices by 20 and add about 10 percent for the tools people sign up for without telling you.

Hardware

Laptops, desktops, network switches, the server or cloud instances, printers and phones. The important part is not the total. It is that you replace equipment on a schedule instead of on a bad day.

Projects and security

The work that is not monthly: a firewall replacement, a camera system, a security review, an office move, a big migration. Give this bucket a number even in a quiet year. Quiet years are when you fix the problems that would otherwise turn into emergencies.

The Line Most Budgets Forget

Hardware replacement. Twenty laptops at roughly $1,200 each is $24,000. Spread across a five-year life, that is about $5,000 a year. If it is not in the budget, the money does not vanish. It just arrives later, at full price, on a Friday, with the whole office idle.

The same logic applies to the server room, the network gear and the phone system. Every piece of equipment has a birthday. A budget writes the birthday down in advance, and a provider of managed IT services in Central PA should be able to hand you that list for your own office.

Add Up the Monthly Number

A realistic monthly range for a 20-person business often looks like this:

• Ongoing support: $3,000 to $5,000
• Software and cloud: $1,500 to $3,000
• Backup and security tools: $300 to $800
• Hardware fund: about $400 to $600
• Phone and internet: $500 to $1,200

That is somewhere between $5,700 and $10,600 a month, or roughly $68,000 to $127,000 a year. It is a wide range, and yours will sit somewhere inside it. The point is not the exact figure. The point is that most owners guess low, then treat the difference as bad luck.

Two of those lines deserve their own plan rather than a line item. Backup should be tested, not just paid for, which is why we treat backup and disaster recovery as a service with a schedule. Security should be reviewed at least once a year through cybersecurity services in Central PA, so the budget matches what actually needs fixing.

The Part Owners Skip

Review it every quarter. Prices change, headcount changes, and a tool you bought in January may be redundant by June. Fifteen minutes four times a year beats a two-day panic in December.

Also, write down what you are not doing. A budget that says "no new laptops this year" is honest. A budget that silently assumes the laptops will last one more year is a plan to spend the money anyway, later and worse.

What a Budget Actually Buys You

Two things beyond money. It turns a series of surprises into a schedule. And it gives you something concrete to hold a provider to, so a conversation about cost becomes a conversation about what is covered instead of what the invoice says.

If you would like help building the numbers, call BlackCSI at (717) 620-3042 or get in touch. We will walk through your headcount, your current tools and the age of your equipment, then put a 12-month figure on paper you can take to your accountant.