Avoiding Nemo

I can say without reservation that my 2013 encounter with Nemo was far less pleasant than my experience roughly a decade before when I took my then much younger (and much less demanding of my ATM card) - offspring to see that delightful Disney movie.

No, this time around Nemo was not a cuddly little clownfish trying to find his way home, but rather an atmospheric demon in the form of a massive winter storm that buried close to 55 million people with anywhere from 12 to 41 inches of snow, gale force winds, not to mention downed power lines, impassable roadways and officially declared states of emergency in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Although it took the better part of two hours of shoveling to just to extricate my front door and garage from snowdrifts that closely resembled Mount Hood, I felt far luckier than other parts of the tri-state area, some of which at this writing have not even had their streets plowed.

In the past 18 months, the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut region has had two hurricanes (okay, technically one was a tropical storm), two ravaging Nor’easters, and a massive snowstorm. The fact that we’re ahead 2-0 in hurricanes over Florida is mind-numbing, but I digress.

So it got me to thinking.

What if I owned a small business, say for argument, a CPA firm, and one of these unwelcome weather systems decided to pay a visit and wreak havoc with my operations? Considering the number of CPA firms in the tri-state area that would be impacted, it’s a going headfirst through a windshield-type reality that every practice should have their finger on.

Disaster recovery and business continuity plans should be no small part of CPA firm strategies. The fact that Nemo hit just as most firms were hunkering down to the overtime and weekend demands of tax season should have triggered some semblance of the immediate need for a plan if one was not in place.

Ask yourself this, should we have a replay of Nemo or Sandy (and recent history dictates that it’s not all that far-fetched) is your firm prepared? Are your files backed up offsite and are your people equipped to work remotely?

I know I’m not one to lecture, as I’ve stubbornly avoided buying a portable generator, despite 11 power losses over the past two years, but then again, I don’t have anywhere near the sensitive client information at risk that most of you do.

However, it’s far better to have a spouse wagging her finger at you than trying to explain to an irate client why his files are now part of the Atlantic.