CAPO Digital Accounting — Full Microsoft 365 Migration & Setup

The Client

CAPO Digital Accounting is a modern digital accountancy practice based in Bridgend, South Wales. Founded by Carl Postians, CAPO serves a range of small and medium businesses with cloud-based accounting, payroll and financial reporting services.

As a digital-first practice, reliable, secure and well-configured cloud tools are essential to how CAPO operates — their team's ability to collaborate on client files, communicate professionally, and protect sensitive financial data depends entirely on having the right technology in place.

The Challenge

When Carl first reached out to Thorne Technology, CAPO had grown to the point where their existing email and file-sharing setup was causing friction. Emails were managed through a basic hosted mail service with no shared calendars, no proper file collaboration, and no mobile access that worked reliably.

More concerning from a security standpoint: there was no Multi-Factor Authentication on any account, no data backup beyond manual file exports, and no centralised way to manage user access — a significant risk for a practice handling sensitive client financial data.

The requirements were clear:

• Migrate all existing emails and contacts with zero data loss
• Set up Microsoft 365 Business Standard for the full team
• Configure SharePoint for document management and client file storage
• Set up Teams for internal communication
• Harden security — MFA, conditional access, and Microsoft Defender
• Complete the migration without disrupting a working business day

What We Did

Tyler led the project personally. The migration was planned and executed over two phases: a preparation phase the week before, and the migration itself on a Friday to minimise disruption.

Week before — preparation:

• Procured the correct Microsoft 365 Business Standard licences at partner pricing
• Set up the tenant, verified the domain and configured DNS records
• Pre-configured all user accounts, security policies and conditional access rules
• Ran a test migration on a mailbox copy to verify everything was working
• Briefed Carl and the team on what to expect and what they'd need to do

Migration day:

• Ran the full email migration using Microsoft's Exchange Migration tool — all historical emails, contacts and calendar data moved across
• Configured Outlook on all devices — desktop, laptop and mobile
• Set up SharePoint document libraries, migrated existing file structures from Google Drive
• Configured Teams channels, set up the company phone directory
• Enabled MFA on all accounts and walked every team member through the setup
• Configured Microsoft Defender for Office 365 — anti-phishing, safe links, safe attachments
• Set up Exclaimer for consistent company-wide email signatures

By end of business on Friday, every user was on Microsoft 365, every historical email was accessible, and all security policies were live. CAPO started Monday with a fully configured system.

The Result

The migration completed within a single working day with zero data loss and zero downtime — Carl's team didn't miss a single client communication during the transition.

Beyond the migration itself, CAPO now has:

• MFA enforced on all accounts — dramatically reducing the risk of account compromise
• SharePoint replacing their previous ad-hoc file sharing — all client files in one organised, permissioned location
• Teams for internal comms — replacing WhatsApp and reducing email noise
• Microsoft Defender filtering phishing and malicious links before they reach inboxes
• Consistent email signatures across every team member via Exclaimer
• Mobile access that actually works — Outlook mobile properly connected to the tenant

Services Used