If Your Power or Internet Went Out Today, Could Your Business Keep Working?

Outages may be temporary, but their impact can extend far beyond the initial downtime. Even a short disruption can prevent your business from:

• Processing sales or customer payments.
• Accessing contracts, project files, or account information.
• Meeting delivery deadlines or response times.
• Communicating with employees, clients, and vendors.
• Operating equipment or completing scheduled work.
• Recording billable hours or documenting completed work.

The disruption may also create a backlog, require refunds or customer credits, or damage client relationships. For independent contractors and other service providers, losing the ability to work may also mean losing the ability to bill.

How to Prepare for and Respond to an Outage

You do not need a backup for every business process, but you should know which functions cannot stop and what you will do when a critical service becomes unavailable.

Before an outage

• Identify what your business depends on and prioritize essential operations. List the utilities, equipment, software, files, people, vendors, and locations you need to make money and serve customers. Decide which services, payments, appointments, customers, and deadlines would need immediate attention. Determine what work could continue manually, offline, from another location, or through another device.
• Set up practical backups. Depending on your business, this might include mobile hotspots, battery backups, spare equipment, automatic data backups, offline access to essential files, or an alternative place to work.
• Create another way to communicate. Keep current contact information for employees, contractors, customers, and vendors somewhere accessible if your normal systems become unavailable. Prepare a basic customer outage message in advance.
• Assign responsibility. Decide who can activate backup procedures, contact service providers, update employees, notify customers, and make decisions about closing or reducing operations.
• Protect deadlines and client work. Independent contractors and service businesses should know how they will preserve completed work, contact clients, document the specific cause of any delays, and propose a realistic revised timeline.
• Estimate the financial impact. Consider how much revenue you could lose in an hour or a day, along with continuing payroll, rent, refunds, overtime, and emergency expenses.
• Review your insurance. Ask your insurance provider whether your policy covers lost income, damaged equipment, utility interruptions, or the cost of temporarily operating elsewhere. Coverage may depend on the cause of the outage, whether physical property was damaged, and the specific terms of your policy.

During an outage

• Address immediate safety risks. Protect employees and customers from hazards such as darkness, disabled security systems, malfunctioning equipment, or unsafe building conditions.
• Determine what is affected. Identify which locations, systems, and services are unavailable and how the disruption affects your ability to make money or serve customers.
• Contact the appropriate provider. Report the problem to your utility, internet or software provider, landlord, or another responsible party. Ask for available information about the outage, including when it began, its expected duration, and how you can receive updates. Save notices, incident numbers, and other documentation the provider supplies.
• Activate your backup plan. Use available backup systems, prioritize essential operations, and tell employees and contractors what they should do and how they will receive updates.
• Review time-sensitive obligations. Check relevant contracts for deadlines, outage-notification requirements, response times, or other commitments that may be affected.
• Document the disruption. Record when the outage began, which systems were affected, whom you contacted, what work was delayed, and what expenses or revenue losses resulted.
• Communicate without overpromising. Tell employees and customers what is affected, what your business is doing, and when they can expect another update. Avoid promising a recovery time until you have reliable information.

After operations resume, review what worked and what did not. Update your plan based on communication problems, failed backup systems, lost revenue, or customer issues you experienced.

Check What Your Contracts Require During an Outage

Losing power, internet, or access to critical software does not automatically eliminate your contractual responsibilities.

Review important customer, vendor, and contractor agreements for:

• Project and delivery deadlines.
• Required response or resolution times.
• Uptime or availability commitments.
• Service-level agreements, commonly called SLAs.
• Customer-notification requirements.
• Service credits, refunds, penalties, or other remedies.
• Force majeure provisions (noting that jurisdictions often interpret these differently).
• Requirements to maintain backups or continuity procedures.
• Rights to suspend or terminate the agreement.

An SLA may require your business to respond within a certain period, maintain a specific level of availability, or provide a customer credit when service falls below an agreed standard. It may also explain how downtime is measured and which events are excluded.

Do not assume an outage automatically qualifies as force majeure. Whether a disruption excuses or delays performance depends on the language of the agreement, the cause of the outage, the law that applies, and whether the disruption actually prevents performance. Some contracts also require prompt written notice or reasonable efforts to limit the effects of the outage.

If your business relies heavily on infrastructure that may occasionally become unavailable, consider addressing outage risks when negotiating new agreements. Depending on the service, a contract might explain:

• What happens when either party’s systems become unavailable.
• Which party is responsible for providing access, equipment, or connectivity.
• How quickly the affected party must provide notice.
• Whether deadlines will be extended.
• Whether planned maintenance and third-party outages count as downtime.
• What credits, refunds, or other remedies may be available.
• Whether either party must maintain specific backup systems.

For high-value or time-sensitive agreements, consider asking an attorney to review these terms before an outage creates a dispute.

Questions to Ask About Outage Preparedness

Before the next outage, ask yourself:

• Which systems and services does my business need to make money? Do we have working backup options for our greatest risks?

• How long could we operate without essential utility disruptions or digital infrastructure downtime? Can we access important files and contacts offline?

• Which deadlines, contracts, or SLAs could be affected? How would we communicate with employees and customers?

• How much revenue could we lose in one day? Does our insurance cover any resulting losses?

What to Do Next

A few practical steps can make a short outage easier to manage:

1. List your critical dependencies. Identify the systems, services, equipment, and people your business cannot operate without.
2. Create a basic continuity plan. Document backup procedures, communication methods, priorities, and decision-makers.
3. Review your contracts and insurance. Understand your outage-related obligations, potential financial exposure, and available coverage.
4. Test and update your plan. Practice accessing backups and revise your procedures when your operations, technology, or contracts change.

An unexpected outage may be outside your control. Planning how your business will respond can help keep a temporary disruption from becoming a larger financial or contractual problem.