Practical advice for small-business leaders from the team at Clocktower Technology Services

Have you set aside a budget for replacing your company’s computer hardware and network equipment?

You should.

Planning for hardware replacement is essential for maintaining productivity, keeping your systems secure, and avoiding nasty surprises when something critical fails.

Here’s a simple and effective method we recommend to our clients:

Step 1: Know Your Replacement Value

Your IT management partner (hopefully that’s us!) should be providing regular reports that list your entire inventory of IT assets—laptops, desktops, servers, network switches, firewalls, access points, and printers—along with the total replacement value of all that equipment.

Step 2: Divide and Conquer

Once you know the replacement value of your hardware, you can use a simple rule of thumb to estimate how much to budget each year:

  • Divide by 4 if your business is mostly made up of user-facing computers (laptops and desktops). These systems typically need to be replaced every four years to ensure they stay fast, secure, and compatible with modern software.

  • Divide by 5 if you’re in a larger or multi-site environment with more infrastructure hardware—network switches, access points, and printers—which tend to have longer lifespans.

For example, if your equipment is worth $100,000 and you’re in a typical office setting, budgeting $25,000 per year will put you on a healthy 4-year replacement cycle. For the same value of equipment, in a larger physical environment with more durable infrastructure, $20,000 per year might suffice on a 5-year cycle.

Why This Matters

Budgeting this way ensures you’re not caught off guard when equipment fails, warranties expire, or aging systems start causing downtime and frustration. It also helps you spread costs out evenly over time, rather than scrambling to cover a massive overhaul all at once.

Still not sure what your total replacement value is—or how to track it? That’s where we come in. At Clocktower, we help SMBs plan, budget, and modernize their IT environments without guesswork.

Let’s talk. We’ll help you take the surprise out of your IT expenses.