Northvale Systems looks after the everyday computing for small and mid-sized businesses — file backup, workstation support, and the unglamorous maintenance work that keeps an ordinary Monday morning ordinary. No jargon, no long contracts, and a person who answers the phone.
Every backup we manage is restore-tested on a fixed schedule — and we send you the result in writing.
Most of our clients have somewhere between four and sixty people, one office (sometimes two), and nobody whose actual job is looking after the computers. We fill that gap on a fixed monthly fee, so the work gets done before it becomes an emergency rather than after.
We set up a backup routine that covers the things your business would genuinely struggle to re-create: shared drives, accounting files, job records, drawings, photographs and correspondence. Copies are kept both on site for a fast restore and off site in case the office itself is the problem.
A backup nobody has ever restored from is a hopeful guess. Every quarter we pick real files from your set, restore them to an isolated folder, open them, and confirm they are readable. Once a year we run a longer drill covering a full folder tree and a complete workstation image.
The printer that stopped talking to the accounts machine, the laptop that takes nine minutes to log in, the spreadsheet that will not open on one desk but opens fine on another. Staff can call, email, or use the shortcut we put on their desktop, and they get a named person rather than a queue.
Email is where a surprising amount of business memory lives — quotes, sign-offs, delivery notes, the message from three years ago that settles an argument. We keep an independent archive of company mailboxes and shared document libraries, so a deleted folder or a departed colleague's account does not take the record with it.
We keep a simple register of every machine you own: what it is, who uses it, when it was bought, and roughly when it should be replaced. That turns hardware from an unpredictable shock into a line on next year's budget. When something does need replacing we quote from two suppliers, order it, set it up, move the user's files across, and dispose of the old unit responsibly.
A great deal of small-business IT knowledge lives in one person's head, and that person eventually goes on holiday. We write it down: what each machine does, which supplier handles what, where the licences are recorded, and the exact steps to get trading again after a bad day. The pack is yours, kept current, and readable by someone who is not technical.
Some of our clients trade on Saturdays, and a few run a payroll or stock count that has to finish overnight. Out-of-hours cover gives you a direct number that reaches a duty engineer between 5:30pm and 10pm on weekdays and from 8am to 4pm at weekends. It is charged as a small flat monthly amount rather than by the call, so nobody hesitates to ring.
We have run this same sequence for every client since the company started. It takes about three weeks from the first conversation to a system that is properly looked after, and you know the cost before anything is ordered.
A 45-minute visit, free and with nothing to sign. We look at what you have, ask what would hurt most to lose, and write down where the gaps are. You get that note whether or not you become a client.
A short proposal in plain language: what we would back up, how often, how long copies are kept, what it costs each month, and what is deliberately left out. One page of summary, three pages of detail.
We do the installation work outside your trading hours wherever possible. The first full copy of a large shared drive can take a couple of days to complete, so we start it on a Friday afternoon.
From then on it is routine: daily runs watched by us, a monthly summary in your inbox, a quarterly test restore, and a yearly sit-down to check the plan still matches how the business actually works.
The most common request we get is not a disaster — it is somebody overwriting a quotation on a Tuesday afternoon. Here is the realistic timeline for the three sizes of problem we see, measured from the moment you call us during office hours.
Those are the figures we have measured across our own client base, not a marketing promise. Larger data sets take longer, and we will tell you that during the review rather than afterwards.
We are not specialists in one trade, but after fourteen years certain kinds of office turn up repeatedly, and we have learned what each of them worries about.
Practices live and die by their working papers and their filing deadlines. The pattern we see is a busy January, a quiet spring, and a very low tolerance for anything that interrupts the January. We schedule all disruptive work around your filing calendar and keep a longer retention window on client ledgers than we would for general office files.
A workshop office is a hard environment for computers: dust, vibration, warm summers and a machine that has been under a bench since 2016. For these clients we specify sealed or filtered enclosures where it makes sense, keep a configured spare on the shelf, and pay particular attention to the drawings and cutting files, which are often the only copy of a design a customer approved years ago.
Letting agencies accumulate an enormous amount of correspondence, inventory photography and signed paperwork, and they need to find a specific item from four years ago at short notice. Our work here is mostly about structure: a sensible folder layout, an archive that is genuinely searchable, and making sure the photographs taken on someone's phone during a check-out actually end up in the file rather than staying on the phone.
Small charities often have more volunteers than staff, high turnover on the committee, and a budget that has to be justified line by line to trustees. We offer a reduced rate for registered charities, write documentation aimed at a volunteer rather than a technician, and are happy to attend one trustee meeting a year to explain in person what is being spent and why.
We charge per device, per month, and the figure includes the labour. There is no minimum term after the first three months, no charge for phoning us, and no separate call-out fee during office hours for clients on the Standard and Full Care plans. Prices below exclude tax.
Backup and monitoring, with support charged at an hourly rate when you need it. Suited to offices of two to six people who mostly manage on their own.
The plan roughly three quarters of our clients are on. Backup, unlimited remote support, and the maintenance work included rather than billed.
For offices where a stopped computer stops the work. Includes on-site response, longer retention and a standing spare machine held for you.
We would rather be dull and clear about this than have an awkward conversation about an invoice later. The monthly fee is labour and management. It does not cover:
Everything else that appears on your invoice will have been agreed in writing beforehand. If you receive a bill you were not expecting, tell us and we will withdraw it while we work out what went wrong.
We send a short questionnaire once a year. These are printed with permission and lightly trimmed for length, but not otherwise edited.
“Our practice management system went down on a Monday morning with a full appointment book. I rang at 8:40 and someone was already dialled in before I finished explaining. We were running again by half past nine and they stayed on the line while the first two patients went through, just to be sure. That is the whole reason we pay a monthly fee instead of calling somebody when things break.”
“What I appreciate most is being told when I do not need something. I asked about upgrading all fourteen machines last spring and was talked out of eleven of them — they were fine for another two years, and the three that were struggling only needed more memory. I have never had a supplier argue me down before.”
“We are a small charity and I am the only paid member of staff, so most of our computers are used by volunteers who come in one morning a week. The documentation Northvale wrote for us is genuinely readable — I have handed it to a seventy-year-old trustee and to an eighteen-year-old on work experience and both got on with it. That took real effort on their part.”
Northvale Systems was started in 2009 by two people who had spent the previous decade working in the IT departments of larger organisations and had grown tired of watching small businesses get sold things they did not need. The idea was straightforward: charge a predictable fee, do the boring preventative work properly, and be the kind of supplier you can ring without bracing yourself.
Fourteen years later there are nine of us. We have turned down growth more than once, because the thing our clients value — that the person answering the phone already knows their office — does not survive being scaled up carelessly. Our rule of thumb is that every engineer should be able to picture the layout of every site they cover.
We are based in the Northvale business park and cover roughly a forty-mile radius, which is as far as we can reasonably drive and still promise a same-day visit. If you are outside that, we will say so honestly and, where we can, suggest somebody closer.
Co-founded the company in 2009 after eleven years running internal systems for a regional builders' merchant. Ilona still does the initial review visit for almost every new client because, in her words, you cannot plan for a business you have not stood inside. She handles the annual recovery rehearsals and is the person who writes the documentation packs.
The other founder, and the one who deals with quotes, invoices and awkward conversations about budgets. Martin came from a purchasing background rather than a technical one, which is why our proposals read the way they do. He is the first point of contact if you ever want to query a bill or renegotiate a plan, and he would genuinely rather you did that than quietly resent it.
Ekene answers more calls than anybody else and has an unreasonable amount of patience with printers. He joined us in 2019 straight from a college apprenticeship and now runs our new-starter setup process, which means most of the laptops arriving in client offices have been through his hands. He also runs the short training sessions we offer for new staff.
Practical announcements, occasional short guides, and the odd bit of company news. We post here perhaps once a month.
We publish our own service figures every January because it seemed unfair to ask clients to trust us without them. Last year we managed 21,900 scheduled backup jobs, of which 99.4% completed on the first attempt and all but three of the remainder completed on an automatic retry. We performed 244 restores at client request and 61 test restores of our own. Median first response during office hours was fourteen minutes.
If your question is not here, ring us and ask. We do not consider it a sales call and there is nobody on commission.
Yes, and about a fifth of our clients are exactly that arrangement. It works best when everyone knows who owns what, so we would want a short conversation with your existing supplier at the start to agree the boundary in writing. We have never had one object; most are quietly relieved to hand over the part of the job that involves being blamed at three in the morning.
Installation and maintenance work, yes, routinely — we would rather not have an engineer under a desk while you are trying to see customers. Reactive support outside 8:30am to 5:30pm is covered by the optional out-of-hours plan, which gives you a duty number for weekday evenings and weekend daytime. Without that plan, evening and weekend call-outs are chargeable at an enhanced rate and depend on somebody being available, which we cannot guarantee.
Happily, and it is included. A good deal of our week is spent on the phone to other people's suppliers on behalf of clients, chasing a licence key or arranging access for a contractor. All we need is your authority in writing to act on your behalf, which is a one-line email. We will always copy you into the outcome rather than just telling you it is sorted.
Any computer a person sits at and works on: a desktop, a laptop, or an all-in-one. Shared storage is included in the site charge rather than counted separately. Printers, scanners, telephones and tablets used only for email are not charged for, although we will still help with them. If a machine is used by two people on different shifts it is still one device. If somebody has both a desktop and a laptop, that is two, and we will usually suggest it should probably be one.
Probably not on a Full Care plan, because we could not honestly promise a same-day visit at that distance and we would rather not sell you something we cannot deliver. Essentials, which is mostly remote, sometimes works further out. Ring us and describe where you are — if we think somebody nearer would serve you better we will say so, and where we know a decent firm in that direction we will give you the name.
That is the usual starting position. Book the free review — 45 minutes, no obligation, and you keep the written notes whatever you decide afterwards.
Daniel answers the main line and will either help you himself or put you straight through to an engineer. There is no menu to sit through.
Main line: +1 (555) 0142
Helpdesk direct: +1 (555) 0188
Accounts: +1 (555) 0171
Lines are staffed Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 5:30pm, excluding public holidays.
General enquiries:
hello@northvale-systems.example.com
Support requests:
helpdesk@northvale-systems.example.com
Invoices and accounts:
accounts@northvale-systems.example.com
Visitor parking is at the rear of Building C. Please ring ahead — the engineers are usually out on site and we would hate you to have a wasted journey.
Last reviewed: January 2026
This notice explains what personal information Northvale Systems collects, why we collect it, how long we keep it, and what you can ask us to do with it. It is written to be read by people rather than by lawyers. If anything here is unclear, email hello@northvale-systems.example.com and we will explain it.
Northvale Systems is a small business providing managed backup and IT support services. Our registered office is Suite 210, Building C, Northvale Business Park. For the purposes of data protection law we act as a controller for the information we hold about our own enquirers, clients and staff, and as a processor for the information we handle on behalf of client businesses.
This site does not use tracking cookies, analytics services, embedded social media widgets or advertising networks. Nothing on this page loads from a third party. Our web host keeps a standard access log containing the requesting address, the time of the request, the page requested and the browser identifier. Those logs are kept for fourteen days and are used only to diagnose faults and identify abuse.
If you telephone or email us, we keep a record of the exchange: your name, the business you represent, your contact details, and a note of what was discussed. For enquiries that do not become clients, we keep that record for twelve months in case you get back in touch, and then delete it.
For businesses that engage us we hold contact details for the people we are authorised to deal with, a record of the equipment we manage, a history of support requests and the work done on them, and our own billing records. Support ticket histories are kept for six years because they are frequently the only account of why a decision was made. Billing records are kept for the period our accountants and the relevant tax authority require.
In the course of providing backup services we necessarily hold copies of files belonging to our clients, and those files may contain personal information about our clients' own customers, patients, tenants or staff. We do not read that material, we do not index its contents beyond what is needed to make a restore work, and we do not use it for any purpose other than delivering the service. Our engagement terms include a written processing agreement setting out exactly what we may and may not do with it.
We do not sell information to anybody and we do not pass client contact details to other suppliers for marketing. We share information only where it is necessary to do the work — for example giving a delivery address to a hardware supplier, or raising a support case with a software vendor on a client's behalf with their authority. Our accountants and, if it ever became necessary, our legal advisers may see billing records.
Client backup copies are held on equipment at your own premises and at our facility. Business records such as tickets and invoices are held in systems operated on our behalf under written contract. We do not move client backup material outside the country in which the client operates without asking first.
You can ask us what we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected if it is wrong, ask for it to be deleted where we do not have a legal reason to keep it, and object to particular uses. Write to the address above or email us and we will respond within one calendar month. There is no charge for a reasonable request. If you are unhappy with how we handle it you are entitled to complain to the relevant supervisory authority, and we will give you their details on request.
We send an occasional service notice to existing clients — things like a change of office hours or a scheduled maintenance window. That is part of delivering the service and it is not marketing. We do not run a newsletter, we do not send promotional email to people who have not asked for it, and we do not buy contact lists.
We review this notice every January. If we make a change that materially affects how we handle client information, we will tell affected clients directly rather than relying on you noticing an updated date at the top of a web page.
Applicable to engagements from January 2026
These are the standard terms on which Northvale Systems provides services. Where a signed engagement letter says something different, the engagement letter takes precedence. Nothing here is intended to remove any right you have under consumer or commercial law.
Our agreement consists of the engagement letter you sign, the service schedule attached to it listing the sites and devices covered, and these terms. The engagement letter records the monthly fee, the plan chosen, and anything specific that has been agreed for your business.
The initial term is three months from the date service commences. After that the agreement continues month to month until either party gives thirty days' written notice. Notice may be given by email. On termination we will provide a copy of your data and your site documentation at no charge.
Fees are invoiced monthly in advance and are due within fourteen days. Device counts are taken on the first working day of the month; a device added mid-month is charged pro rata from the following month rather than immediately. Fees may be reviewed once a year with effect from April, notified in writing no later than the preceding January. Late payment may attract interest at the statutory rate, though in practice we ring you first.
We will perform the services described in your service schedule with reasonable skill and care, using appropriately trained people. We will monitor scheduled backup jobs on every working day and investigate failures. We will test restores at the frequency set out in your plan and report the results to you in writing. We will respond to support requests within the times published on this site.
For the service to work, we need reasonable access to your premises and equipment at agreed times, an accurate list of the people authorised to request work, prompt notice of changes such as new equipment or a new office, and current licences for the third-party software you use. If you make significant changes without telling us and additional work results, we may charge for that work at the standard hourly rate.
Backup protects against loss of data. It does not protect against every possible business interruption, and no reputable supplier would claim otherwise. Restoring a large volume of information takes time, and the realistic figures for your business are set out in your service schedule. We cannot guarantee recovery of data that was never included in the agreed scope, that was corrupted before a copy was taken, or that was created after the most recent successful run.
Our liability to you in any twelve-month period is limited to the fees you paid us in that period, except where the law does not permit such a limit — for example in cases of death or personal injury caused by negligence, or fraud. We are not liable for indirect or consequential losses such as lost profit or lost business opportunity. We carry professional indemnity and public liability insurance and will provide certificates on request.
Each party will keep the other's confidential information confidential, will use it only for the purpose of the agreement, and will not disclose it except to people who need it to do the work and who are under equivalent obligations. This continues for five years after the agreement ends. Our engineers sign individual confidentiality undertakings on joining and are reminded of them annually.
We ask that neither party directly employs the other's staff for twelve months after they have worked together without first discussing it. We are a small firm and losing an engineer at short notice affects every client we serve. In practice we have never enforced this and would much rather have the conversation.
We occasionally use trusted subcontractors for specific tasks, most often cabling work and equipment disposal. We remain responsible to you for anything they do, we tell you in advance when a subcontractor will be attending your site, and they work under the same confidentiality obligations we do.
Complaints should be addressed to the client services director, who will acknowledge within two working days and respond substantively within ten. Both directors review every complaint at the quarterly management meeting. If you remain dissatisfied, we will agree with you a suitable independent third party to mediate before either of us considers anything more formal.
Neither party is liable for failure to perform caused by events genuinely outside its control. If any part of these terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest continues to apply. These terms are governed by the law of the jurisdiction in which our registered office sits, and the courts there have exclusive jurisdiction.
Northvale Systems is a fictional trading name used for illustrative purposes on this page. Telephone numbers and email addresses shown are reserved examples and are not in service.