How to take a week off when the business is you

When you are the business, time off costs twice: what you do not earn while you are away, and what you spend catching up when you return. Both are plannable, and the reason most self-employed people do not take a break is that neither ever gets planned — the week is simply postponed until it becomes a problem.

The money, first

1. 1Work out what a normal week earns you after costs. That is the number the week off costs.
2. 2Divide it by the weeks you work in a year and set that aside monthly, the same way you would any annual expense.
3. 3Do the same for the second week, if you want two. A fortnight is not twice as hard to fund if it is funded monthly.
4. 4Keep it separate from tax money. Every self-employed person who has borrowed from the tax pot has done it for a holiday.

What to tell clients, and when

Three weeks' notice, in the same message that offers them the appointment before or after. Most people simply move; the ones who cannot are the ones you want to know about early. Say the dates and the date you are back — not "limited availability", which reads as maybe.

Put an autoresponder on the inbox with the return date and one line about what to do if it is urgent. Then decide honestly whether "urgent" means anything in your line of work, because for most it does not.

The week before

• Invoice everything outstanding before you go, not after. Payment terms keep running while you are away.
• Pay anything that falls due while you are gone.
• Order stock that would arrive during the week — a delivery nobody is there for is a week of delay, not a day.
• Write down where you left everything: the half-finished job, the client who is waiting on a quote, the thing you promised on Friday.

Coming back

Keep the first day back clear of appointments. Not because there is that much to do, but because the day you land back into a full diary is the day the break stops counting. An empty first day is what turns a week off into a rest rather than a delay.

Then look at the numbers for the week you were away, once, and note what it actually cost. It is almost always less than the figure you were carrying around, and knowing that is what makes the next one easier to book.