Getting Through the Christmas Rush

What actually goes wrong

Three separate things hit at once, and most tradies only plan for the first one.

• Demand spikes for six weeks. Everyone wants the deck done before the family arrives, the aircon working before the heat, the reno finished before the in-laws land. It's the same work you'd do in March, compressed.
• Supply and labour disappear at the same time. Merchants close, concrete plants shut, the cabinetmaker's on leave, and your subbies are gone from the week before Christmas. The one week you most need a part is the week nobody can get you one.
• Cash goes missing for six weeks. Work you invoice in mid-December on standard terms falls due while everyone's accounts department is on leave. Realistically you're looking at late January or February before it lands — and January has no revenue in it.

The classic failure is starting a job in the second week of December that needs one more supplier delivery to finish. The merchant shuts, the client's house is pulled apart over Christmas, and you spend the break fielding calls about it. Three jobs left open like that is a ruined January and a reputation dent you didn't need.

Work backwards from your last day

Pick your last working day now — properly, on the calendar — and plan back from it. Everything else in this article follows from having that date.

The most valuable line in that table is the six-week one. Once you know that a bathroom needs four weeks and you shut on the 20th, the answer to "can you fit us in before Christmas?" stops being a guess and becomes a date you can defend.

Deciding what to say yes to

A rush is the one time of year you get to be selective, and most tradies waste it by saying yes to everything and then working nights. Sort the enquiries rather than queueing them:

• Genuinely urgent — no hot water, no power, a leak, an aircon dead in a heatwave. Take these; they're why you keep a bit of slack in the diary.
• Wants it before Christmas but doesn't need to — a deck, a repaint, a new splashback. Book it for February. Most people say yes if you're straight with them in November; almost nobody says yes on the 18th of December.
• Won't finish before you shut — decline the timing, not the job. Quote it, take a deposit, and put it in the diary for the new year.
• Existing clients pushing to be squeezed in — worth more than a new enquiry, but the same rules apply. A rushed job for a good client is how you lose a good client.

Booking February work in November is the single most useful thing you can do in the rush. It fills the dead patch, it takes the pressure off December, and a deposit taken in November is cash in the account before the quiet weeks — not after them.

Supply, subbies and site shutdowns

Your business isn't the only one closing, and the ones closing around you cause more disruption than your own break does.

1. Get every supplier's closure and delivery cut-off in writing. Not just when they shut — when their last delivery run is, and when they reopen. Those are usually different dates, and the reopening one is often later than the sign on the door suggests.
2. Order and stage materials early. Everything for every booked December job, ordered by early December. If storing it is a problem, that's a smaller problem than a half-finished bathroom over the break.
3. Confirm subbies in writing with dates. Sparkies, plumbers and tilers are being asked by everyone. A verbal yes in November is worth very little on the 15th of December — get the date locked and check in a fortnight out.
4. Check the site shutdown dates on commercial work. Many commercial and larger residential sites close for a set period over Christmas and you can't get on them regardless of your own plans. Confirm the dates with the builder early — they drive your schedule, not the other way around.
5. Sort your team's leave properly. If you employ anyone, annual leave over a shutdown has rules — including when and how you can direct someone to take it. Check the current position with Fair Work or your award rather than assuming last year's arrangement still applies.

Getting paid through the quiet weeks

This is the part that actually hurts, and it's mostly fixable with timing. Money you invoice on the last day of work in December is money you see in February. Money you invoice progressively through November and early December is money that lands before the break.

• Invoice the day each job finishes, not in a batch at the end of the month. In December that difference is worth weeks.
• Bring progress claims forward on anything long-running so a stage falls due before the shutdown rather than during it.
• Chase outstanding invoices in the first week of December, while there's still someone in the office to pay them. After about the 18th nothing moves until late January.
• Take deposits on new-year bookings — this is the money that carries January.
• Work out what January actually costs you — the finance, insurance, phone, software and wages that run whether or not you're on the tools — and make sure that's sitting in the account before you stop.

If January is regularly tight, the cause is almost never December's workload. It's that December's work was invoiced too late, and the deposits that would have covered the gap were never asked for.

Actually stopping

The plan only pays off if you take the break. Decide before you finish what you're contactable for and tell people, rather than leaving it vague and answering everything.

• Set the voicemail and the out-of-office with your return date and, if you have one, an emergency number.
• Decide what counts as an emergency. For most trades that's safety, water or no power — not a quote request.
• Arrange cover if you offer emergency work, and pay whoever's covering properly. A reciprocal arrangement with another operator in your area works well and costs nothing.
• Leave every job in a state a client can live in — water on, power on, nothing structural open, and a clear note of what's happening when you're back.
• Put the return week in the diary as a soft start. Coming back to a full first day back is how the break gets undone in about six hours.

If you can't take a fortnight off without the business stopping, that's worth looking at in the new year — it's usually a sign that too much of the operation lives in your head rather than in a system anyone else can pick up.

Frequently asked questions