Your IT Guy Just Quit. Now What? A no panic guide for the property manager staring at 12 helpless employees on Monday morning.

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It's Friday at 4:45 PM. Your IT person the one who knew every password, every quirk of your AppFolio setup, every reason printer #3 jams on Tuesdays just handed in their two weeks. Or worse, they didn't give you two weeks at all.

You're not panicking yet. But Monday is coming. And you've got a team of 12 to 20 people who are going to walk in, try to log into something, and look at you when it doesn't work.

We've seen this exact scenario play out dozens of times with property management companies across LA. Here's what to do and what not to do in the first 48 hours.

1st: Don't change anything yet

The instinct is to start resetting passwords, canceling accounts or calling your nephew who "knows computers." Resist all of it. The biggest risk right now isn't that something will break it's that you'll break something trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist yet.

Leave every system running. Leave every login alone. Your departing IT person's access is a separate conversation (and yes, it needs to happen but methodically, not in a panic).

2nd: Figure out what you actually have

Most small offices have no documentation. The IT person kept it all in their head. That's the real problem not that they're leaving, but that the knowledge is leaving with them.

Before their last day, sit them down and get answers to these questions: What's our internet provider and account number? Where are our backups? What software licenses do we pay for, and where are the logins? Who hosts our email? Is there a firewall and who manages it?

Write it down. Even if it's on a legal pad. You need a snapshot of your infrastructure before the person who understands it walks out the door.

3rd: Decide what you actually need

Here's the question most people skip: do you actually need another full time IT hire?

If your office is between 5 and 50 people, the answer is almost certainly no. A full time IT person costs $55,000 to $85,000 a year in LA plus benefits, plus the fact that they're a single point of failure. When they're sick, on vacation, or quit again, you're right back here.

A managed IT provider gives you an entire team for a fraction of that cost. Someone who knows your setup answers the phone every time. Your systems are monitored 24/7. And when one person is out, the rest of the team already knows your environment.

It's not about replacing a person. It's about replacing the vulnerability of depending on a single person.

4th: Don't wait until something breaks

The biggest mistake we see? Offices that lose their IT person, limp along for three months and then call us in a panic when the server crashes or ransomware hits.

The gap between "we lost our IT person" and "something went seriously wrong" is usually 30 to 90 days. That's the window. Use it.

If you're a property management company in LA and this is your Monday morning, we've helped offices in your exact situation get fully set up, documented and protected in under a week. No drama. No jargon. Just a team that picks up the phone and actually knows your name.