Not in This Year’s Budget? How to Plan IT Into Next Year’s

Article by Mike Wooldridge, President | Posted on November 5, 2026

Expert contribution by Taylor Willis, Senior Account Manager.

When a proposal stalls on budget, what we tend to hear is “this needs to be put on hold” or “let’s revisit it next quarter,” rarely a flat “it’s not in the budget.” It usually comes from the person we’ve been working with, or from the accountant joining the email thread, not from the owner. My first answer is a question: what is in the budget? There’s usually a starting point that fits that number.

The longer-term fix is IT budget planning: deciding before the year starts what IT will cost each month, which projects and equipment get their own lines, and when each piece begins. Done that way, IT reaches finance as a plan they’ve already seen, instead of a request they have to push back. Below is how we help organizations get there, including a budget builder you can fill in with your own numbers and print for your finance team or board.

Why IT Gets Stuck in Finance

When a finance department or board holds up an IT decision, in my experience they were brought in too late. They’re handed a finished proposal for a service they didn’t know anyone was shopping for, and “next year” is the safest answer they can give. Had they known about the search from the start, they would have approved the search itself, and the proposal would have arrived as the expected next step.

Boards add a pattern of their own. We find they typically want to see three quotes, and since most board members aren’t technical, they lean toward the smallest setup that will do. That’s a sensible instinct for a purchase you can’t judge in detail, so the case for more than the minimum has to be made in terms a board can weigh: cost, risk, and timing.

What Paying as Things Come Up Leaves Out

Paying by the hour when something breaks can look cheaper than a fixed monthly fee. Over time, though, systems nobody maintains fall out of compliance, and the problems they cause get bigger the longer they wait. NIST’s guide to patch management describes patching as preventive maintenance and “a cost of doing business.” Under an hourly arrangement, that work tends to slide, because nobody is responsible for it until something fails.

The larger cost never shows up on the IT bill. When systems go down, payroll keeps running while people can’t work, and whatever they would have finished that day is lost. Ready.gov’s business impact analysis guidance lists the same kinds of losses, from lost income to added expenses such as overtime to catch up. Our rule of thumb is that preventing one major outage a year roughly pays for the service. If you’d like a figure for your own business, you can estimate your own downtime cost with our IT Cost Calculator.

One nonprofit we work with shows how this plays out. Its leaders knew they wanted our help, and we had already done small projects for them, but the board kept managed IT out of the budget year after year and stayed on time and materials. A few months in, they could see they were spending more on hourly work than a managed contract would have cost. They moved to managed services six to nine months after our first conversation and the first limited services.

It Doesn’t Have to Start All at Once

Every client starts with a required core set of security and management tools, and we add services as the value shows. We call this getting it on the fairway: get something in place, start the relationship, and improve the setup over time. Most people’s appetite for IT spending matches what they expect the budget to be, and it takes some time and trust to grow into the setup they need.

What gets added, and when, comes out of regular reviews of the monthly security reports. If devices that don’t belong to the organization keep showing up on the network, that points to adding network monitoring. A steady stream of email threats points to stronger email protection. Each addition gets scheduled for a later quarter, so year one carries only what has to come first. If you’re still deciding which piece of IT to start with, we’ve written about the common starting points.

Give Finance One Number, and Budget the Rest Separately

Finance can approve a number it can predict. Ongoing support works best as one fixed monthly fee for the responsibilities you agree on, which some providers call flat-rate pricing. Larger one-time items sit outside that fee and belong on their own budget lines:

• Projects such as a migration to Microsoft 365 or installing a new server
• New computers and other hardware
• Setting up more than two new devices in the same month, which is billed as setup labor per device
• Advanced vCIO or vCISO work, beyond the planning that comes with the service

Hardware is an easy line to leave out. Windows 10 reached end of support on October 14, 2025, and Microsoft no longer provides security fixes for PCs still running it. CISA’s Cyber Essentials guide tells small business leaders to replace unsupported operating systems and hardware. Any computers that can’t move to Windows 11 belong in next year’s budget.

Our clients plan these items in regular planning meetings with us, with a budget and deliverables for each project, so finance sees them a quarter or more ahead. For typical price ranges, we’ve covered what managed IT services cost separately.

Build Next Year’s IT Budget

Use the builder to lay out next year with your own numbers: what unplanned IT work cost you this year, your support quote, and the hardware and projects you know are coming, each in the quarter it starts. You’ll get a quarter-by-quarter budget, the monthly number for finance, and a one-page summary to hand to whoever approves the budget. Nothing you enter leaves your browser.

Bring Finance and the Board In Early

Tell your controller, finance committee, or board when you start looking at IT providers, well before quotes arrive. Then bring them what they’ll ask about: comparable quotes, the phased plan, the monthly number with projects listed separately, and what unplanned IT work and downtime cost you this year.

Cyber insurance is often the point that lands with a board. Insurers ask about the same security basics a managed service puts in place, so money spent on those controls protects the organization and supports the answers on your insurance application, which can affect what you pay for coverage. We put the question to boards directly: would you rather put that money into premiums alone, or into security work that also helps at renewal? Our TotalCare service is built to meet what insurers ask for, and we help clients with their insurance questionnaires whenever one comes up. CISA’s guide makes the same point to leaders, asking them to lead investment in basic cybersecurity and to approach cyber as a business risk.

Before Your Budget Locks

You can do all of this before talking to any provider:

• Add up this year’s hourly IT invoices, emergency purchases, and the hours staff lost to IT problems.
• Estimate what downtime costs you: the people who stop working, times their hourly pay, times the hours down.
• List computers still on Windows 10 or out of warranty, plus any server, Microsoft 365, or network project you know is coming.
• Let whoever approves the budget know you’re looking at IT providers.
• If your board will want three quotes, ask each provider to price the same scope so the quotes compare.
• Decide what has to start in the first quarter and what can wait for a later one.
• Put the recurring fee, hardware, and projects on separate budget lines.
• Pull your cyber insurance renewal date and last year’s questionnaire.

Where Micro Solutions Fits

Our TotalCare managed IT service runs on a recurring monthly fee based on your technology environment and the responsibilities we agree on. It covers help desk support for your staff, device monitoring and patching, Microsoft 365 administration, cybersecurity management, backup oversight, vendor coordination, and documentation. Technology planning comes with it: replacement priorities, budget conversations, technology roadmaps, and recurring business reviews. Major projects, new hardware, licensing, and advanced vCIO or vCISO services are scoped separately, so you see them coming. Clients can begin with the core and add services over time.