How to handle client holidays without losing track
Client holidays are a scheduling problem and a billing problem at once. Handle both with one habit: record the holiday, and let it pause walks and invoices together.
One event, two failure modes
A client holiday can go wrong in two directions: you keep the walks in the diary and turn up to an empty house, or you remember to skip the walks but the old schedule leaks onto the invoice anyway. Both come from recording the holiday in one place (your head, a text thread) and running the business from another (the diary, the invoice).
Set a notice rule and tie it to your policy
Ask for 48 hours' notice for holidays and make it part of your cancellation policy: holidays flagged in time are free, walks dropped last-minute are late cancellations. This is not about charging people for going to Cornwall. It is about being told before you have planned your week around their slot.
Pause walks and invoices together
The holiday record should do all the work: remove those walks from the schedule, keep them off the invoice and put the client back on the round automatically on the return date. If any step of that is manual, it will eventually be missed, usually in August, when half the round is away at once.
Plan for the summer dip
Holidays cluster. Know roughly what August looks like by June (how many client-weeks away, what that does to revenue), and decide in advance whether to backfill with one-off bookings, take your own holiday the same weeks, or simply budget for the dip. The walkers who get hurt by summer are the ones surprised by it.
Let clients log holidays themselves
The best version of this admin is the version you never see: the client records their own dates, the schedule and billing adjust, and you find out via a tidy notification instead of a voicemail. That needs client self-service (a portal) rather than a message thread you have to transcribe.
How BearWalk helps
Clients record holidays in their portal (or you add them in seconds), and BearWalk pauses the affected walks and keeps them off invoices automatically. Away dates are visible on the client's record and on the schedule, so nobody drives to an empty house.
FAQ
Should I charge a retainer to hold slots over long holidays?
For a normal one-or-two-week holiday, no: goodwill matters more. For a month or longer, a half-rate retainer to hold a prime slot is fair and clients understand it.
What notice should I require?
48 hours works for most walkers: enough to replan your round, short enough that clients actually comply.