What is SharePoint? A Plain-English Guide for Australian Businesses

For business owners and managers · 6 min read

Many Australian businesses already pay for SharePoint without knowing it. If your team uses Microsoft 365, SharePoint came with the subscription. It sits behind Teams, holds your shared files, and waits to be set up properly. So what is SharePoint, and is it worth the effort of setting it up well?

In short, SharePoint is Microsoft’s home for your company’s shared files and internal pages. Set up well, it replaces the office file server, ends the hunt for the latest version of a document, and keeps files with the business when staff leave. Set up badly, it becomes a second mess on top of the first. This guide covers what it does, what it costs, where it fits with OneDrive and Teams, and how to start.

Key takeaways

• SharePoint is included in Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard and Premium, so most businesses already have it.
• It holds files that belong to the business. OneDrive holds files that belong to one person, and Teams shows SharePoint files alongside chat.
• Business plans include 1 TB of shared storage plus 10 GB for each licence.
• SharePoint is not a backup, a CRM or a replacement for your line-of-business software.
• The structure and permissions you set up at the start decide whether it saves time or creates a new mess.

What is SharePoint?

Think of SharePoint as the company filing cabinet and noticeboard, moved online. Each department, project or team gets its own site: a shared space with document libraries for files, and pages for news, policies and links. Staff open files in a browser, in Teams, or from a synced folder on their computer, and everyone works on the same copy.

SharePoint signs people in with their normal Microsoft 365 login, so the account that opens their email also decides what they can see. When someone leaves and their account is switched off, their access goes with it, while the files stay with the business.

What is SharePoint used for?

• Shared files. One current version of each document, reachable from the office, from home or from a phone.
• Working together. Several people editing the same Word or Excel file at once, with no copies emailed around.
• Version history. Earlier versions of each file kept automatically, so you can roll back a bad edit.
• An intranet. Pages for policies, procedures, forms and company news, in one place staff can find.
• Permissions. Control over who can see and edit each site, library or folder.
• Simple lists and approvals. Registers, asset lists and sign-off steps, without buying another system.

The payoff is time. Every “which version is right?” email, every file saved to a desktop and lost with a laptop, and every search through a crowded shared drive costs your staff a few minutes. Across a team of 20, a few minutes each day adds up to many hours a month. SharePoint will not remove all of that, but a sensible structure removes most of it.

SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams: where files belong

Microsoft 365 gives you three places to keep files, and the overlap is the most common source of confusion. The simplest rule is ownership: who does the file belong to?

The last row trips people up. When you create a team in Teams, Microsoft creates a SharePoint site to hold its files. Teams and SharePoint are two views of the same storage, not two copies, so a file shared in a Teams channel is a SharePoint file.

What SharePoint costs and how much storage you get

SharePoint is included in Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard and Business Premium, so there is usually nothing extra to buy. Microsoft’s Australian pricing for Microsoft 365 business plans lists Business Basic, the entry plan, at AU$10.50 per user per month on an annual subscription, excluding GST.

Storage is pooled across the business. Under Microsoft’s published SharePoint limits, Business plans get 1 TB plus 10 GB for every licence purchased. A 20-person business therefore has about 1.2 TB of shared storage, separate from each person’s own OneDrive. A single site can hold up to 25 TB and a single file can be up to 250 GB, so few small businesses come near the limits. Where they do, you can buy extra storage in 1 GB blocks.

Where your data sits matters to many Australian businesses too. Australia is one of the countries where Microsoft runs dedicated Microsoft 365 data centres, and Microsoft’s data residency commitments cover SharePoint files for businesses that signed up here.

What is SharePoint not for?

Knowing where SharePoint stops matters as much as knowing what it does. Three limits matter to a business decision.

It is not a backup. Deleted files stay in the SharePoint recycle bin for 93 days, and version history lets you roll back an edit. Both cover everyday mistakes. Neither is a backup: if an account is compromised and files are encrypted or deleted in bulk, you need a separate copy. The Australian Signals Directorate’s small business guidance asks every business to have a backup plan that says what is backed up, when, and where the copies are kept.

It is not a CRM or line-of-business system. SharePoint can hold a simple register, but it does not replace proper customer, practice management or accounting software. Building one inside SharePoint usually costs more to look after than buying the right tool.

It is not a project for heavy customisation. Every custom feature has to keep working through Microsoft’s regular updates. Standard sites, libraries and lists cover most small business needs.

Getting started without the mess

The risks with SharePoint are rarely technical. They are about structure: too many sites, old folders copied across as they were, and permissions nobody can explain a year later. You can manage each one by planning it before any files move.

1. Map your structure first. Decide which sites you need, usually one per department or major function, and what sits inside each. Our Microsoft 365 setup guide for professional services firms shows how this fits with the rest of your setup.
2. Set permissions by group, not by person. Give access to “Finance” or “Managers” rather than to individuals, so a new starter or a leaver is a one-step change.
3. Clean up before you migrate. Archive or delete old files rather than copying years of clutter into a new system. Our comparison of SharePoint and a file server covers what to weigh up before you move.
4. Train your team. Show staff where files go and how to share them, so they do not fall back to email attachments and personal storage.
5. Name an owner. Give each site an owner, and review who has access a couple of times a year.

Common questions about SharePoint

How Empower IT can help

SharePoint pays off when it is set up around how your business works, not around how your old file server happened to grow. As part of our managed IT services, Empower IT plans, builds and looks after SharePoint for Australian businesses, from a first site structure through to migration, training and ongoing care.

We start with what you already have. Most businesses own the licences already, so the work is in the structure, the permissions and moving files across without disrupting the team. Once it is running, we keep access tidy as people join and leave, and we make sure your Microsoft 365 data is backed up separately.

• Check your current Microsoft 365 plan and what is already included
• Design a site and permission structure that suits your business
• Move files from your file server, shared drives or other cloud storage
• Train your team, and set up a separate backup of your Microsoft 365 data

Talk to us about setting up SharePoint properly