Your Phone System Over Christmas: 2026 Checklist

The 2026 to 2027 Calendar

The shape of this particular run matters, because it determines how many genuinely confusing days there are.

Date	Day	What it is
Friday 25 December 2026	Friday	Christmas Day
Saturday 26 December 2026	Saturday	Boxing Day, falling on a weekend
Monday 28 December 2026	Monday	Substitute public holiday in most states and territories, because Boxing Day fell on a Saturday
Tuesday 29 to Thursday 31 December	Tue to Thu	Ordinary working days, on which many businesses are closed anyway and customers cannot tell
Friday 1 January 2027	Friday	New Year's Day
Monday 4 January 2027	Monday	First ordinary working day of the year for most businesses

Load your own state's official list rather than a default

Australian public holidays vary between states and territories, and substitute days in particular are declared separately by each jurisdiction. South Australia and the Northern Territory also have part-day arrangements on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve that catch out businesses configuring a single national calendar. If you operate in more than one state, set holidays per location rather than nationally. The day you discover a missing holiday is always the day you are closed and the phone is not.

The awkward part is the middle: Tuesday 29 to Thursday 31 December are ordinary working days on which a large share of Australian businesses are shut, and customers genuinely cannot tell who is trading. That is the window where a clear message is worth the most, because it is the window in which people are actively guessing.

Why October and Not December

Three reasons, and the third is the one that changes behaviour.

The decisions take longer than the configuration. Working out who is on call, what counts as urgent, and whether you are actually closed on the twenty-ninth requires conversations with people, and those conversations are slower in December when half of them are already on leave. The configuration itself is twenty minutes.

Customers need telling before they need to know. A closure notice that appears on 22 December reaches the people who ring on 22 December. A notice that goes out in late November reaches the people who were going to ring in the second week of December and would rather sort it out beforehand, which is a materially better outcome for both sides and often brings work forward.

Whoever knows how to configure it will be on leave. This is the practical one. In most small businesses exactly one person understands the phone system, and there is a decent chance they finish on the nineteenth. Doing it in October means the work is done by the person who knows how, calmly, and can be tested twice.

Four Questions That Decide Everything

Answer these before touching any settings. Everything else follows from them.

Question	Why it matters
1. Are you actually closed, or just quieter?	These need completely different configurations. Reduced hours with two people is not a closure, and telling customers you are closed when somebody is in fact working costs you the calls you could have taken.
2. Who is genuinely available, on which days?	Get names and dates, not a general sense that people will be around. A rotation with real names is the difference between an on-call arrangement and everybody feeling vaguely on duty for a fortnight.
3. What counts as urgent?	If you cannot define it, your customers will define it for you, and their definition will be broader than yours. See the section below.
4. What do customers need to know before you close?	Usually: the last day for orders or bookings, the reopening date, and what to do if something goes wrong. Say all three in November.

If You Are Closing

A proper closure has four parts, and most businesses do the first one only.

An exact reopening date. "We will reopen in the new year" is not a date, and it is the single most common failure in Christmas messaging. Say "we reopen on Monday the fourth of January". A customer who knows the date will wait. A customer who does not will ring somebody else, because they have no way of knowing whether you mean the fourth or the nineteenth.

A defined path for urgent matters. Even a business that genuinely closes has some category of call that cannot wait a fortnight. Name it, and say what happens.

Something better than a mailbox. An AI answer that takes details, answers the common questions and books a time in January genuinely deals with the caller. A mailbox nobody will open until the fourth deals with nobody, and it is worse than an honest recorded statement because it implies somebody is listening.

An owner for the backlog. Whatever accumulates while you are closed needs a named person and a stated time on the first working day. Deciding this on the fourth of January, when there are already sixty things to do, is how the eleventh happens before anybody rings the seventh caller back.

If You Are Busier, Not Closed

For a good share of Australian businesses this period is the busiest of the year: retail, hospitality, venues, tourism, emergency trades, veterinary, aged care, roadside and anyone whose customers are at home rather than at work. The planning is the opposite shape.

Do this	Why
Set holiday hours as their own schedule	Trading on a public holiday with different hours is a specific configuration, not an absence of one. Set it explicitly rather than leaving the system to guess.
Widen the ring groups temporarily	The people who normally answer are partly on leave, so add people who normally would not take those calls. This is a two minute change that prevents most of the missed calls.
Take the repetitive calls out	Are you open, what are your hours today, do you have this, where do I park. An AI answer or a good greeting handles a surprising share of December volume without touching a person.
Plan for the spike, not the average	Holiday demand is spiky rather than high. Look at the busiest hour last year, not the busiest day.
Give people a callback option	Holding is tolerated even less at this time of year, and a callback that keeps their place converts a hang up into a customer.

Defining Urgent, and the On-Call Rotation

Vagueness here is what makes an entire team feel like they are working through their break. Two things fix it.

Define urgent with a specific question the caller answers. Not "if this is urgent, press 1", which every caller believes applies to them. Instead: "if you have no hot water or a burst pipe, press 1". "If a patient needs to be seen today, press 1". "If your site has stopped, press 1". A concrete description sorts calls accurately, and it does so without anybody feeling they were turned away.

Run a real rotation with names and dates. Written down, agreed in November, with each person knowing exactly which days are theirs. Four things belong in it: who is on, for which days, what they are expected to respond to, and what they are being paid or given in lieu. An informal arrangement where everybody keeps half an eye on the phone means everybody is on call for two weeks and nobody actually is.

Never divert the business number to a personal mobile

It is the reflex answer and it creates three problems that outlast the holiday. There is no record of what was said or agreed. The customer saves that number and rings it directly for the next three years, at times nobody has agreed to. And there is no way to hand over when that person is genuinely unavailable, so the arrangement depends entirely on one individual's phone being charged and in range. Route to the on-call person through the system instead, so the business number stays the business number and the record exists.

The Wording

Short, specific, and containing an actual date. Three examples covering the common situations.

Situation	Wording
Closed, with an urgent path	"Thanks for calling Harper Plumbing. We are closed from Friday the eighteenth of December and we reopen on Monday the fourth of January. If you have a burst pipe or no hot water, press 1 and you will reach our on-call plumber. For anything else, leave your name and number after the tone and we will ring you back on the fourth."
Closed, no urgent path, AI answering	"Thanks for calling Fairfield Design. Our office is closed from Wednesday the twenty-third of December and we reopen on Monday the fourth of January. Stay on the line and our assistant can answer questions, take your details or book you a time in January."
Reduced hours	"Thanks for calling Northline Supplies. Between Christmas and New Year we are open from nine until two, with a smaller team than usual, so we may take a little longer to answer. Stay on the line and someone will be with you."

Three rules for whatever you write. Give the actual reopening date, in words, not "the new year". State the last working day as well as the first, because customers planning their own December need both. And record it in the voice of somebody who still works there, which sounds obvious and is one of the more common Christmas embarrassments.

The Configuration, Step by Step

About ninety minutes including the decisions, twenty minutes if the decisions are already made.

Step	What to do
1. Load the public holidays	Twelve months, from your state's official list, per location if you operate in more than one. Include the substitute day on Monday 28 December.
2. Add your own closure dates	The shutdown days that are not public holidays. This is the category that always gets missed, and it is the one covering 29, 30 and 31 December.
3. Record the messages	Closure, reduced hours, and the urgent path, as separate recordings so you can switch between them without re-recording anything.
4. Build the urgent route	A specific option, routing to the on-call rotation through the system, with at least two people in the group.
5. Define the end of the line	AI answer, or callback commitment, or a transcribed mailbox with a named owner. Never an unbounded ring.
6. Set the reopening date in the system	So normal routing returns automatically on the fourth rather than depending on somebody remembering while still on holiday.
7. Test it by moving the clock	Most systems let you preview a date. If yours does not, ring on the first day and be ready to fix it.
8. Test it again in mid December	Ring your own number and listen to the whole thing. Things drift, and somebody usually changes something.

Say the Same Thing Everywhere

The phone message is one of at least six places that need to agree, and the ones that disagree are the ones that generate calls asking which is right.

Phone

Greeting, after hours message, and the urgent path.

Digital

Website banner, Google Business Profile hours, and your email auto reply.

Direct

SMS auto reply on your business number, and a note to customers in late November.

Google Business Profile holiday hours are worth ten minutes on their own, because a large share of people checking whether you are open never ring at all: they look at the search result, see nothing to say otherwise, and either turn up to a closed door or go elsewhere. Setting special hours there is free and it takes about five minutes per location.

The January Restart

For most businesses the first working day back is the busiest inbound day of the quarter, and it is entirely predictable, which makes it the easiest peak of the year to prepare for.

Prepare	Detail
The backlog has an owner and a time	Decided in December. Somebody works through the accumulated messages and callbacks first thing, before starting anything else, and is not also expected to answer the live phone.
Widen the ring groups for the first three days	Everybody who can answer, answers. Narrow them again on the Thursday.
Turn the holiday message off before you open, not after	A closure message playing on the morning of the fourth sends away the people who waited for you specifically.
Answer the oldest first	The person who rang on the twenty-ninth has waited longest and is closest to going elsewhere.
Look at what came in	The holiday messages are an unusually honest sample of what customers want when you are not available to shape the conversation. It is worth half an hour in the second week of January.

Seven Ways This Goes Wrong

Failure	Prevention
"We will reopen in the new year"	Give the date. This is the most common failure and the easiest to fix.
A mailbox nobody opens until the fourth	Transcription, a named owner, or an AI answer that actually deals with the caller.
The business diverted to somebody's personal mobile	Route to the on-call person through the system. The number stays yours and the record exists.
The holiday message still playing on 6 January	Set the reopening date in the system so it reverts automatically.
A public holiday missing from the calendar	Load twelve months from the official state list, including substitute days.
An unbounded ring on the twenty-ninth	Every path gets a defined end. This one is silent and expensive.
Everybody vaguely on call, so nobody is	Names, dates, scope and compensation, agreed in November.

By Type of Business

Type	The specific thing to get right
Trades and services	Define urgent concretely (burst pipe, no power, no hot water) and pay for the on-call roster properly. Vague urgency plus an unpaid roster is how you lose your best person in February. See our note on on-call and the right to disconnect.
Medical, dental and allied health	The message must state where to go instead, specifically, including the after hours service and when to call 000. This is a patient safety matter rather than a customer service one.
Retail, hospitality and venues	You are busier, not closed. Holiday trading hours per day, widened ring groups, and Google Business Profile special hours are worth more than anything else on this page.
Professional services	Tell clients the last day for anything with a deadline, in November. Most of your December calls are people trying to get something finished before a cut off you have not published.
Property management	Urgent repairs do not observe public holidays and the obligations do not pause. A defined path and a named rotation, published to tenants in advance.
Wholesale and distribution	Publish the last order date and the first dispatch date early, and put both in the phone message. Roughly half your December calls are asking exactly that.
Aged care, disability and community	Continuity obligations do not change. Rosters, escalation and record keeping need to work through the period exactly as they do the rest of the year.

How We Help With It

Uniden Voice handles holiday scheduling as configuration rather than as a paid feature: public holidays by state, your own closure dates, separate holiday recordings you can switch between, an urgent route to a named on-call group, and an automatic return to normal routing on your reopening date. None of that requires anybody to be in the office on the twenty-ninth.

Practically, the thing that helps most is doing it early with somebody who has seen it go wrong. We run the Christmas setup with customers from October, test it by previewing the dates, and check it again in mid December, because in every business something changes between those two points. If you want the after hours calls genuinely handled rather than collected, the AI answer takes details, answers the questions people actually ask in December, and books January times while you are not there.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the public holidays over Christmas 2026 and New Year 2027 in Australia?

Christmas Day falls on Friday 25 December 2026 and Boxing Day on Saturday 26 December 2026. Because Boxing Day lands on a weekend, most states and territories observe a substitute public holiday on Monday 28 December. New Year's Day is Friday 1 January 2027, and the first ordinary working day of the new year for most businesses is Monday 4 January. Two cautions. Australian public holidays vary between states and territories, and substitute days in particular are declared separately by each jurisdiction, so load your own state's official list rather than relying on a system default or a national calendar; South Australia and the Northern Territory also have part-day arrangements on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve that catch out businesses configuring one set of hours for the whole country. If you operate in more than one state, set the holidays per location. The other thing worth planning around is the middle of the run: Tuesday 29, Wednesday 30 and Thursday 31 December are ordinary working days on which a large share of Australian businesses are closed, and customers genuinely cannot tell who is trading. That is the window where a clear, specific phone message earns the most, because it is exactly when people are guessing.

What should a Christmas closure phone message say?

Four things, and most businesses include only the first. The exact reopening date, in words, because "we will reopen in the new year" is not a date and is the single most common failure in Christmas messaging; a customer who knows you reopen on Monday the fourth of January will wait, and a customer who does not will ring somebody else because they have no way of knowing whether you mean the fourth or the nineteenth. The last working day as well as the first, because customers planning their own December need both. A defined path for urgent matters, since even a business that genuinely closes has some category of call that cannot wait a fortnight. And something better than a mailbox at the end, because a mailbox nobody opens until the fourth deals with nobody and is arguably worse than an honest recorded statement, since it implies somebody is listening. A workable example: "Thanks for calling Harper Plumbing. We are closed from Friday the eighteenth of December and we reopen on Monday the fourth of January. If you have a burst pipe or no hot water, press 1 and you will reach our on-call plumber. For anything else, leave your name and number and we will ring you back on the fourth." Record it in the voice of somebody who still works there.

How do I define what counts as an urgent call over the holidays?

Define it with a specific, concrete question the caller answers, rather than asking whether the matter is urgent. "If this is urgent, press 1" sorts nothing, because every caller believes their situation qualifies, and they are not being unreasonable: from where they sit it usually does. Concrete descriptions sort accurately and, importantly, do so without anybody feeling they were turned away. "If you have no hot water or a burst pipe, press 1." "If a patient needs to be seen today, press 1." "If your site has stopped, press 1." Pair that with a real rotation rather than an informal arrangement. Write down who is on, for which days, what they are expected to respond to, and what they are being paid or given in lieu, and agree it in November rather than the week before. An informal understanding where everybody keeps half an eye on the phone means everybody is on call for a fortnight and nobody actually is, which is both worse for customers and the arrangement most likely to cost you a good staff member in February. Australian employees can also refuse unreasonable contact outside working hours, which is far easier to honour when the roster is explicit.

Should I divert the business phone to my mobile over Christmas?

No, and it is the reflex answer precisely because it feels like the easy one. It creates three problems that outlast the holiday. There is no record of what was said or agreed, so anything arranged over the break exists only in somebody's memory, which matters when a job, a price or a deadline is disputed in February. The customer saves that number and rings it directly for the next three years, at times nobody agreed to, and no amount of publishing the business number afterwards undoes it; that is the mechanism by which a business's phone identity slowly migrates into one person's private handset. And there is no way to hand over when that person is genuinely unavailable, so the whole arrangement depends on one individual's phone being charged and in range, with nothing behind it. The alternative is to route to the on-call person through the phone system, with at least two people in the group. The business number stays the business number, outbound calls still present it, the record exists, and when the first person cannot answer the call goes somewhere rather than nowhere. It takes about the same amount of setup time as configuring a diversion.

When should I set up my phone system for the Christmas period?

October, and it takes about ninety minutes including the decisions, or twenty minutes if the decisions are already made. Three reasons. The decisions take longer than the configuration: working out who is on call, what counts as urgent, and whether you are genuinely closed on the twenty-ninth requires conversations with people, and those conversations get much slower in December when half the participants are already on leave. Customers need telling before they need to know, since a closure notice appearing on 22 December only reaches people who ring on 22 December, while a notice going out in late November reaches the people who were going to ring in the second week of December and would rather sort things out beforehand, which is better for both sides and often brings work forward. And the practical one: whoever knows how to configure the phone system will probably be on leave. In most small businesses exactly one person understands it, and there is a decent chance they finish on the nineteenth. Doing it in October means the work is done calmly by the person who knows how, and can be tested twice, once by previewing the dates and again in mid December when things have inevitably drifted.

What should businesses that stay open over Christmas do differently?

The planning is the opposite shape, and it applies to retail, hospitality, venues, tourism, emergency trades, veterinary, aged care, roadside assistance and anyone whose customers are at home rather than at work. Set holiday hours as their own explicit schedule, because trading on a public holiday with different hours is a specific configuration rather than the absence of one, and leaving the system to guess produces the wrong answer. Widen the ring groups temporarily, since the people who normally answer are partly on leave, so add people who would not usually take those calls; it is a two minute change that prevents most of the missed calls. Take the repetitive calls out, because are you open, what are your hours today, do you have this and where do I park make up a surprising share of December volume and can be handled without touching a person. Plan for the spike rather than the average, since holiday demand is spiky rather than uniformly high, so look at the busiest hour last year rather than the busiest day. And offer a callback that keeps their place, because holding is tolerated even less at this time of year. Setting special hours on your Google Business Profile is also worth ten minutes, since many people check without ringing at all.

How do I handle the backlog when we reopen in January?

Decide it in December, because deciding it on the fourth of January when there are already sixty other things to do is how the eleventh arrives before anybody has rung the seventh caller back. For most businesses the first working day back is the busiest inbound day of the quarter, and it is entirely predictable, which makes it the easiest peak of the year to prepare for. Five things. Give the backlog a named owner and a stated time, and do not also expect that person to answer the live phone. Widen the ring groups for the first three days so everybody who can answer does, then narrow them again on the Thursday. Turn the holiday message off before you open rather than after, because a closure message playing on the morning of the fourth sends away exactly the people who waited for you specifically. Answer the oldest messages first, since the person who rang on the twenty-ninth has waited longest and is closest to going elsewhere. And spend half an hour in the second week reading what came in, because holiday messages are an unusually honest sample of what customers want when you are not there to shape the conversation.

What are the most common Christmas phone system mistakes?

Seven, and all of them are preventable in October. Saying "we will reopen in the new year" instead of giving the date, which is the most common and the easiest to fix. Leaving a mailbox that nobody opens until the fourth, when transcription, a named owner or an AI answer would actually deal with the caller. Diverting the business number to somebody's personal mobile, which destroys the record, hands your customers a private number permanently, and depends on one phone being charged. Leaving the holiday message playing on the sixth of January, which is prevented by setting the reopening date in the system so normal routing returns automatically. A public holiday missing from the calendar, particularly the substitute day on Monday 28 December, which is why you load twelve months from your own state's official list. An unbounded ring on the twenty-ninth, which is silent, expensive and invisible in every report because from the system's point of view nothing happened. And everybody being vaguely on call so that nobody actually is, which is fixed by writing down names, dates, scope and compensation in November. Also worth checking: whether the after hours message is still recorded by somebody who left two years ago.

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