Frequently Asked Questions

TCG - short for The Computer Guy, LLC - is a Metro Detroit managed IT and cybersecurity provider, in business since 2005, that specializes in compliance-heavy professional-services firms: accounting firms, eye-care practices, and immigration law firms. We run your technology on a flat monthly fee: unlimited support, monitoring, security, backups, and vendor coordination, scoped to your firm's size and environment. Our focus is narrow on purpose. Because we work inside a small number of regulated fields every day, we already know your software, your compliance obligations, and the deadlines you can't miss - so you spend less time explaining your business and more time running it. Our promise is deliberately unglamorous: boring, predictable, reliable technology that stays out of your way. We measure ourselves on response times, first-contact resolution, and backups that actually restore when tested. If your current IT is a source of surprises, a short assessment shows you where the gaps are before you change anything - no sales pitch, just a discussion about whether we're the right fit.

We work with three kinds of firms: mid-size accounting and CPA firms, independent eye-care practices, and immigration law firms - generally in the 20–50 person range. We don't take every business that calls, and that's the point. Specializing in a few regulated fields means we already understand the compliance frameworks each one answers to, the software they run, and the calendar pressures that make IT failures expensive - tax season, clinic hours, filing deadlines. A generalist provider has to learn your world on your time; we've worked inside these fields since 2005, so that learning curve is behind us. If you're in one of these three areas, you'll find we speak your language from the first call. If you're not, we'll point you toward someone better suited. Want to see what specialized IT looks like for your field? Start with a short, no-commitment assessment.

Because we'd rather go deep in a few regulated fields than spread ourselves thin across every industry. Since 2005 we've supported all kinds of businesses, and we learned that the firms we protect best are the ones we understand inside and out - the software they run, the workflows they depend on, and the compliance obligations they answer to. That kind of depth takes years to build, so we made a deliberate choice to build it where it matters most: accounting and CPA firms, eye-care practices, and immigration law firms. It isn't that other businesses couldn't benefit from what we do - it's that we'd rather be the specialist a few professions count on than a generalist available to everyone. When we commit to an industry, we commit all the way. Curious whether your field is one we go deep in? A short, no-pressure assessment is the best place to start.

Yes - definitely. Those three are where we've built our deepest expertise, but they're far from the only firms we serve. We work with other healthcare practices, other law firms, and professional businesses across Metro Detroit that share the same priorities: protecting sensitive client data, staying compliant, and keeping technology from getting in the way of the work. If that sounds like you, we'd like to talk. The way we see it, our focus isn't a fence - it's proof of how we work. When we commit to the people we serve, we commit all the way, whether or not your field is one of the three we specialize in. Not sure whether we're the right fit for your firm? Start with a short assessment and we'll tell you honestly.

We serve Metro Detroit - specifically Oakland, Wayne, and Macomb counties. We're a local provider by design, and have been since 2005: close enough to be on-site quickly when a problem genuinely needs hands on hardware, and familiar with the businesses and deadlines in this region. Most day-to-day support is handled remotely and resolved fast - on average we respond within minutes - but for office moves, hardware installs, and issues that can't be fixed in a remote session, being nearby matters. You reach a local team, not a national call center.

Most firms in the 20–50 person range pay between $150 and $225 per user per month. We price managed IT as a flat monthly fee per user - a single, predictable number covering unlimited support, monitoring, security, and vendor coordination, scoped to your firm's size and environment. Where you land in that range depends on your security and compliance needs: a firm carrying heavier regulatory obligations or a larger security stack sits toward the top, a leaner environment toward the bottom. What you won't see are hourly escalations, surprise project invoices for things that should be included, or scope creep mid-engagement. Project work outside the managed scope - a planned office move, a major migration, hardware procurement - is quoted separately and approved by you before it starts. The result is an IT line item your managing partner can sign off on without hesitation: a stable, defensible number rather than a guess. Want a number scoped to your actual environment? A short assessment gives you an exact figure before you commit to anything.

Your flat monthly fee covers everything involved in keeping your firm running day to day: unlimited help-desk support, monitoring and patching, cybersecurity (multi-factor authentication, endpoint protection, email and phishing defense), backups tested to actually restore, and coordination with your software and hardware vendors on your behalf. The recurring work of keeping your technology boring and predictable is included - no per-ticket charges, no nickel-and-diming for routine fixes. Larger one-time projects are quoted separately and approved before they begin: office moves, major migrations, hardware procurement, and similar work outside normal operations. We do this so the line between "included" and "extra" is clear from the start, and so the monthly number stays stable. You'll always know what a project costs before it starts, never after. Want the full inclusion list mapped to your environment? Ask us for a scoped breakdown during your assessment.

Most firms that switch to us don't do it because their IT is obviously broken - they do it because it's failing quietly. A generalist provider or a part-time internal person can keep the lights on, but the gaps tend to be the expensive ones: backups that have never been test-restored, security decisions your staff make under deadline pressure without realizing it, compliance documentation nobody has actually produced. Those don't surface until an audit, an outage, or a breach. We start every engagement with an assessment so you can see those gaps before you commit to changing anything - no pressure, just an honest picture. And switching isn't always all-or-nothing: if you have a capable internal person, we can work alongside them in a co-managed arrangement, handling the security, monitoring, and specialized work while they keep doing what they do well. Not sure whether your current setup has gaps? The assessment will tell you, whether or not you ever become a client.

On average we respond to and triage a ticket within 12 minutes, and a technician is typically actively working a non-emergency issue within an hour. About 70% of tickets are resolved on first contact with no follow-up needed, and 95% are completed by the same technician who started the work - so you're not re-explaining your problem to a new person each time you call. These aren't aspirational targets; they're the standards we measure ourselves against on every engagement, every week. And they tighten rather than loosen during the periods when you can least afford downtime - tax season for accountants, clinic hours for eye-care practices, filing deadlines for immigration firms. For genuine emergencies, you can reach us directly by phone. Want to see these standards in writing for your firm? We'll walk you through them on a short call.

Yes - we support and secure the software you already run; we don't sell or replace it. Your case-management, practice-management, tax, or EHR platform is the heart of your firm, and our job is to keep it running and protected, not to push you onto something new. We also handle the technical conversation with your software and hardware vendors directly, so when something breaks at the seam between two systems, you're not refereeing a finger-pointing match between providers - we own that coordination. That includes Microsoft 365, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive, which we deploy and harden against account takeover, alongside the specialized tools specific to your field. Want to know how we'd support your exact stack? Tell us what you run and we'll walk you through it.

Yes - we provide the technical controls and documentation that sit underneath your compliance and cyber-insurance obligations. Every field we serve answers to a different framework: the FTC Safeguards Rule for accounting firms, HIPAA for eye-care practices, and bar ethics rules for immigration attorneys. The technical foundation is shared - multi-factor authentication, endpoint protection, tested backups, access controls, and audit-ready records - and it's increasingly what cyber-insurance underwriters demand before they'll renew. We put those controls in place and keep evidence that they're working, so you can answer an auditor or an insurer with documentation instead of a guess. One boundary: legal and regulatory responsibility remains with your firm. Our role is to enable and support your compliance program through technology controls, documentation, and operational discipline - not to serve as your compliance authority. For the specifics of your field, see our accounting, eye-care, or immigration page. Want to know where your current controls stand? The assessment maps them against what your framework and your insurer expect.

Getting started begins with an assessment. We look at your current environment, document where the gaps are, and show you the picture before you commit to changing anything - so the decision is yours to make with real information. There's no sales pitch and no obligation; if we're not the right fit, we'll say so. Reach out by phone or through the form on this page and we'll respond within one business day to set up that first conversation. If you decide to move forward, we scope a flat monthly price to your firm and plan onboarding around your calendar - never in the middle of your busiest week if we can help it. Ready to see where your IT stands? Start with a no-pressure assessment.

If your firm prepares or files tax returns, you're subject to the FTC Safeguards Rule, which requires a documented Written Information Security Program (WISP): a named qualified individual responsible for security, periodic risk assessments, and evidence that specific safeguards are actually in place. The framework behind it is IRS Publication 4557, the IRS's safeguarding guidelines for tax preparers. Most firms know the requirement exists but have never been shown what it looks like in practice - which is the gap that turns into a problem during an audit or after an incident. We put the technical safeguards in place (multi-factor authentication, endpoint protection, access controls, tested backups) and help you maintain the documentation that proves they're working, so your WISP is a living record rather than a file nobody has opened. One boundary worth stating: legal and regulatory responsibility stays with your firm. Our role is to enable and support your program through technology controls, documentation, and operational discipline. Not sure whether your WISP would hold up? A short assessment shows you exactly where you stand.

Our service standards tighten during tax season rather than loosen - the busiest weeks are exactly when an IT failure costs you the most, so that's when we lean in hardest. That means accelerated response during peak weeks, extended availability, and hardware tuned in advance for the document-heavy, multi-application workloads that define filing season. We also do the unglamorous preparation beforehand: confirming backups restore, checking that your tax and practice-management platforms are patched and stable, and resolving the small recurring interruptions that quietly cost an accountant roughly 45 minutes a day the rest of the year. During the weeks you can't afford to lose an hour, your technology stays boring and out of the way. Want your environment hardened before next season? The best time to plan is well before the deadline crunch.

You won't have to teach us your core platforms. We work with the tax and practice-management software accounting firms actually run - including UltraTax, CCH ProSystem fx, Practice CS, and Sage - along with Microsoft 365, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive. Because we specialize in accounting firms, we already understand how these applications behave under load, where they tend to break, and how they interact with your document workflows and storage. We support and secure these platforms; we don't sell or replace them. And when an issue lands at the seam between your software and its vendor, we handle that technical conversation directly so you're not translating between two support desks. Running a platform we didn't name here? Tell us your stack and we'll confirm how we'd support it.

Your duty to protect client data is an ethics rule, not just an IT preference - ABA Model Rules 1.1 (Comment 8) and 1.6(c), and their Michigan equivalents (MRPC 1.1 and 1.6), require technology competence and reasonable safeguards over confidential information, and they're enforced by the bar. Unlike accounting firms, you don't have a single federal IT rulebook; the obligation is a professional-responsibility standard you have to be able to demonstrate. We make it demonstrable. That includes per-attorney identity across USCIS, DOL FLAG, and E-Verify - each representative using their own MFA-protected account rather than shared portal logins, a common and serious exposure - plus endpoint protection, tested backups, and documented access controls. For business-immigration work, we also help keep employer-compliance records (I-9/E-Verify, H-1B Public Access Files, PERM audit files) retained and producible on demand. One boundary: ethical and regulatory responsibility stays with your firm; our role is to enable and support it through technology controls and documentation. Want your safeguards turned into something you can actually show the bar? Start with an assessment.

You won't have to teach us your case-management platform. We work with the software immigration firms actually run - including Docketwise, INSZoom, eImmigration, Imagility, and Clio - along with Microsoft 365, which we harden against account takeover. We support and secure these platforms; we never sell or replace them. Because we specialize in immigration firms, we already understand how these systems handle high-volume document intake, evidence packets, and the scanning and OCR that come with them, and how they connect to the government portals you file through. When an issue lands between your software and its vendor, we handle that technical conversation directly. Running a platform we didn't list? Tell us your stack and we'll confirm how we'd support it

The whole point of how we build immigration-firm IT is that a technology failure doesn't become a missed filing. Immigration deadlines don't move - the H-1B cap registration window is fixed each March, RFE clocks run, the one-year asylum bar is absolute - so we harden the things that fail at the worst moment. That means redundant internet with automatic failover so a dead circuit doesn't take you offline, monitoring that tightens around cap season and deadline windows, per-attorney MFA-protected portal access so an account problem doesn't lock out a filing, and backups tested to actually restore. Generalist IT sells you uptime; we build for the specific days you cannot miss. Want your filing windows stress-tested before the next deadline? An assessment shows you where you're exposed.

HIPAA's Security Rule requires your practice to safeguard electronic protected health information (ePHI) through administrative, physical, and technical controls - and to conduct an ongoing, documented Security Risk Analysis with corrective action when gaps are found. Regulators' single most common finding is a risk analysis that was completed once and then never acted on, which is exactly the trap a busy practice falls into. We put the technical safeguards in place - multi-factor authentication on every system that touches patient data, encryption at rest and in transit, and backups tested to actually restore - and we help you keep the risk analysis a living, documented cycle rather than a one-time checkbox. That documentation is also what cyber-insurance underwriters increasingly require before they'll renew. One boundary: regulatory responsibility stays with your practice. Our role is to enable and support your compliance program through technology controls, documentation, and operational discipline. Want to know whether your risk analysis would survive scrutiny? A short assessment will show you.

You won't have to explain your clinical systems to us. We work with the EHR and practice-management platforms eye-care practices run - including Nextech, ModMed, and Compulink - and with the imaging devices that feed them: OCT, visual field, fundus cameras, and angiography from makers like Zeiss, Topcon, and Heidelberg. What sets eye-care IT apart is the imaging chain - the path from a device to the patient record - and we treat that whole chain as our responsibility rather than leaving it to fall between your device maker and your EHR vendor. We support and secure these systems; we don't sell or replace them. Want to know how we'd handle your specific imaging setup? Tell us what you run and we'll walk you through it.

When the imaging chain breaks mid-clinic, we own the problem end to end rather than handing you off - that's the whole point of treating the device-to-record path as one system. In a typical generalist setup, a device that won't send results triggers finger-pointing: the device maker blames the EHR vendor, the EHR vendor blames the network, and the practice loses clinic time while nobody takes responsibility. We coordinate across the network, the storage, and the device-to-record connection ourselves, so the fix happens during clinic instead of after it. And because we monitor the chain proactively, the goal is to catch the failure before it strands a patient in a lane. Tired of refereeing your vendors? Let us take ownership of the imaging chain - start with an assessment.