Conquering Workflows & Systems For Bookkeepers & Accountants | with Alyssa Lang (Workflow Queen)

How to Creating a Stress-Free Holiday Closure for Bookkeepers & Accountants

• Alyssa Lang • Season 1 • Episode 97

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In this solo episode, Alyssa Lang dives into the details of holiday closures, offering insight on efficiently managing your bookkeeping or accounting firm during this time of the year. Alyssa explains the importance of prepping your clients, effective implementation of holiday pay policies, and using downtime for strategic planning and personal projects, ensuring a smooth and beneficial break for you, your team and clients.

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • What to do to prepare your firm for a smooth holiday closure
  • How to handle team pay fairly during time off and holiday closure
  • Why holiday downtime benefits you and your team
  • What you can do during holiday closure to recharge and move the needle forward

Resources mentioned in this episode:

💻 Breakthrough for Bookkeepers & Accountants 💻 Effortless Client Requests for Bookkeepers & Accountants

☎️ Book a 15 minute consult call to discuss what program is the right fit for you and your firm

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Alyssa:

Are you planning to take some well-deserved time off for the holidays, but feeling really unsure about how to actually prepare your firm for a smooth closure, or maybe you're wondering if closing your firm is even an option because your services that you provide in today's episode, I'm walking you through everything that you need to know to confidently shut down your firm for the holidays or manage your workload. If staying open is a must. We'll cover how to inform your clients about the closure, managing projects and deadlines prior and during the actual closure, and even how to handle your team's pay during the holiday. Plus, I'll share how I use this time to work on personal projects, reflect on the year and plan ahead all while creating space for family and rest. Whether you're closing your doors or finding ways to balance critical client needs. With time off this episode is packed with practical strategies to help you navigate the holiday season with ease. Let's dive in. Are you thinking about shutting down your firm for the holidays, but really unsure how to actually make it happen and without dropping the ball on client work, or maybe you're wondering if taking time off is even an option because maybe you offer some sorts of services. That may be potentially don't allow for you to shut down in today's episode, I'm going to be sharing it. How exactly I prepare my firm for a full holiday closure from December 21st to January 1st from informing our clients to managing work and projects during downtime, and even how we actually handle the team pay during that time off. Whether you're planning your time off, or just really curious how others make this happen. This episode is jam packed with actionable strategies to help you step away from your firm without sacrificing professionalism or peace of mind. And so let's dive in. So the reason I like to bring up this topic more towards the end of the year is because during this time of the year, I have these questions come up a lot, especially in our Facebook communities, especially in breakthrough. Actually, it's a big topic of conversation conversation right now. And it's mostly because a lot of people are like, do I shut down? Should I not shut down? Maybe it's not possible. Maybe they just like, it just can't happen. And so because of that, I was like, you know what, maybe this is a really great episode for other people to hear as well. So for me, I genuinely love, and I've been doing this for almost four years now. I genuinely love shutting down my company. So as a reminder, I own workflow queen here, but I also own my own firm called Magnetic Profits. So at both companies, I actually shut them both down during the holidays. So that way we can rest recharge and I can work on my life stuff and things that I want to do. And so I just really wanted to share this with you guys so that you can understand. The importance of doing something like this. I will caveat that it might not be possible for everybody mostly because it depends on the different services that you offer. But don't worry in this episode, whether you have the ability to shut it down, like right now, or wait till next year, at least you can get this process down or you can kind of hear some ideas of what you can do. Even if you offer certain services that will require you maybe to bill pay or run payroll, that there are ways for you to actually still. Temporarily shut down the company. During the holiday period, it made me minimize the work. So we're going to talk about that today. But in my firm, we actually fully closed down. We do not do anything. There is no work that is performed. It is all on the client's hands. If they want something. Up to speed up to date, which we'll talk about here in just a minute, but for me. So, this is such a crucial period for me, especially me as the business owner, I need a lot of space and like, it just makes a lot of sense for me to be able to give the team some space and to really shut down the companies and be able to give everyone the time off that they need to spend with family so on and so forth. And so for me, it didn't make sense for us to shut down on December 24th and all the way until, January 2nd. But however, we decided to shut down as of December 21st, which happens to be a Saturday. There's no way that I was going to have my team coming for one day on that week. That just wouldn't make sense. That's why we chose to shut down from December 21st. Till January 1st and then everybody comes back to work on January 2nd. So the reason I share that with you guys is because every year. Depending on where Christmas falls is, what we determine, how long everybody gets off some years. It's one and a half weeks. Sometimes it's been one week. It just depends on when Christmas falls and then also when the new year falls as well. And so for me, like I'm currently working on a lot of house projects. I'm currently actually rebuilding a pantry. Wall that's in my kitchen. So right when you walk through my front door on the right side, I've just been going crazy, not having a pantry. It's been driving me nuts and my dad kept promising that he'd come over and help me out with it. And I thought it'd be like a fun father daughter project, but I bought my house almost a year ago. January will be a year and he still hasn't come by. So I'm not waiting any longer. So I was just like on a kick this past weekend. So that's something that I plan to really focus and finish off. I want to paint it and do everything. I also have some other house projects that I want to work on. Plus, I will say that during this time off, the beautiful thing is I love the idea that nobody is expecting me. I don't have emails to check. I don't have to listen to the slack and the team asking me questions or anything like that. I actually do plan to do a little bit of deep work on some high level projects within both companies. But the best part is it's like at my own leisure, I don't have any like deadlines. It's like what I truly want to work on. And during this time of the year, it's actually a great time for me to reset my personal priorities. I love setting my new year's resolutions. I love that kind of stuff. And it's just really helped me overall to like get reenergized for the new year coming up. So I just wanted to kind of share why it's so as special for me and why it might be something that you want to consider. Even if you don't do a full closure, you can always do like. Uh, small closure. Like you don't have to do it like where you have to work your whole entire normal hours, but you can like maybe potentially just do the clients that you do have to run payroll for. You do have to run AR for whatever that makes sense for you. Right? So one of the big reasons why I absolutely love taking this time off and really why I'm going to recommend. That you guys potentially consider this. It might be too last minute. If you aren't rolling this out. To be going to your client and be like, Hey, we're closing. But at the same time, like we just sent our email today. Usually I like to send it weeks in advance, but we kind of forgot. I know I've dropped the ball to guys. I totally dropped the ball and I forgot to tell the team to get that ready for us. So it was totally my bad. But anyways, the reason why is what I'm sharing, this is that you could technically send out an email literally this week and be like, we're shutting down. That's what we did. So. I feel like I should have given them way more time, which we'll talk about here in just a minute. So one of the bigger reasons why I love to take this time off is not only for myself, but also for my team. So. I love my team. I want them to also feel like they aren't bombarded by work. Enjoy the time with their family, be able to relax and do whatever they want and whatever they need without having to also worry about losing out on money, because that's the other big component, which I'll talk about who we pay on the team for the time off and who we don't, because it depends on if they're an employee or contractor, but we'll get into that a little bit later. But for me, I didn't want them to also lose out that just because I decided to shut down the business. I didn't want them to be out money because like, it is the holiday seasonings guys. I just don't want my team to like, be out cash just because I decide to shut it down. So it's a chance for us to rest and recharge the team. Build trust with our clients by setting clear boundaries when it comes to holiday time off what that actually looks like for them. And it also fosters a positive team culture that, like I said, gives them the well-deserved time off, enjoy it with the family. I don't want them to have to worry right now and just get through the year. Finish it off and then I'll see them at the very beginning of 2025. So I want to talk about the four steps that I actually implement in order to shut down the company for holiday. If it is not going to be a full closure guys, don't worry that there are some tips in here for those of you who are maybe doing a partial close. But I'm going to share a lot of these tips here in just a second. So the four steps to actually closing down for holiday closure or doing a partial closer is step one, informing your clients about the closure. Step two is using the closure for deep work or personal projects, really, whatever you're working on. And then also managing client work and team projects prior and during to closure. So that's step number three and step four is to determine your holiday pay for team. So I'm going to break out each of these and just kind of give you some tips and insight for each of these steps. So step number one is to inform your clients about your holiday closure. Like I said, It is recommended to try to do this at least two, three, or maybe even four weeks in advance to send out an email, like some sort of a formal email to your whole entire client list. Just letting them know that like, Hey, we're going to be shut down for this time period. Like I said, I literally had a send this email this morning, which I'm recording today as a December 16th. So we're literally closed in like five days and I totally, I dropped the ball on this. We didn't have a task for it. It was totally my bad. And I had my operations manager go ahead and send it out. So. You can do it a little bit later. I can definitely tell you that, but I just wanted you guys to know that even I was a little bit late to the game. So Two to four weeks in advance would be ideal in the future. But what I want you guys to do is update your email auto responder as well. So if you haven't already, if you plan to take time off. During the vacation period, I would really recommend that you have some sort of an auto responder or even changing your, and updating your voicemail to let people know of the closure dates, or even if like you want to preempt people. The bottom of your email signature, you can always say like, we will be closed during these times. So that way, like it's on every email leading up to the actual closure. So just to preface to you guys in my firm, we don't do anything that would require us to physically have to be here to maybe process certain tasks or payroll. We are going to run the payroll right before we close for all of our clients and any of our clients. They just know that they have to submit all the time sheets for that day, by the end of the day. So that way we can fully process it. So I just wanted you guys to know that for us, we're able to do a full closure, but essentially within this email, we're literally telling them, Hey, these are the dates that we're actually closed down. Here's why we're closing down. It's pretty much let them know that to relax, enjoy the holiday seasons. Seasons or loved ones, stuff like that. But we also let them know that here's what you can expect is not happening for you during this time. So for example, we say we won't be performing bookkeeping tasks, responding to emails or handling other day-to-day services, but we will pick up right where we left off when we return. So we kind of like, let them know that, Hey, these are the things that we're not doing during this time, but we will pick it back up. So one of the big things that we like to also say is like, we kind of like to make it known to our clients that like, don't worry, like, no one's going to die if we don't do this stuff. So like, we let them know like rest assured, like this brief pause will not impact the quality of our services and what we provide. And we pretty much state. All bookkeeping. We'll be continued as usual in the new year and we'll respond to any emails that were sent during this time period within 24 to 48 hours of reopening, which is going to be. Wednesday, January 2nd, 2025. And then I pretty much leave off with the very end. It says, we understand that the end of year can be a busy time for financial planning. If there's anything that you'd like us to prioritize or handle, before we break, before we leave off for this break, please don't hesitate to reach out. We're happy to help you. It's just pretty much letting them know that, like, we're not still going to do it. If you need something or you need some help. And it's really only about a week and a half plus everybody's so prioritizing like holiday that it really doesn't matter to a lot of people. But I do like to just let them know that like, Hey. You know, we're not going to be here to answer. So the next thing that you're also gonna need to do is make sure to have an auto responder set up. So ours is already ready to go. So that way, as of Saturday, we'll send an auto response to all of our clients. I also recommend that if you do use some sort of a phone within your business to change your voicemail, to let them know that, Hey, we're currently closed, but we were coming back as this date and time. If you need to have some sort of an emergency contact, please make sure to include a guys within those emails. For us, we don't have anything that would necessarily be some sort of an emergency. And so that's why we won't even offer like an emergency contact. We have no details or information that says email us twice in a row to let us know it's an emergency. I'm not checking emails at my teams, not checking emails. So to be honest, we don't have that in ours. However, like I said, every firm is ran different. You might have things that they actually need you to be available, or if there's some sort of an emergency, if you are going to allow people to call you or contact you as some sort of emergency, you need to be very clear, very. Very very clear guys and setting these boundaries to let your clients know what an emergency is. An emergency might be something like payroll didn't process or whatever that might look like for you guys. If it's like some sort of a bill that the client contemporarily pay while you're gone. Then have them pay it, just make sure to create that clear boundary in your email auto responder. This is the auto responder that we're going to set from December. Whenever we're taking the time off that week and a half, we're going to have an auto responder that pretty much lets people know that, Hey, we're currently closed. Thank you so much for your email. We're going to be responding within 24 to 48 hours of reopening on January 2nd. Thank you so much. I hope all is well and that you're having the most happy holidays. And so I really recommend guys. I can't tell you how many times, like, because I'm someone over here who has a really large subscriber list here at Workflow Queen. Any time that we send an email out to you guys. And it's like a newsletter email or something. And it's a mass email. A lot of the times you guys have auto responders set up and I get to see all of your guys's auto responders. And I will say that 90% of you guys have really boring. This is like, I'm saying this in the nicest way, really boring auto responders. And like, what I mean is like, I can't tell you how many times I've like seen auto responders that literally just say we are out of office X date to X date. That's it like literally period. There is no personality in there. There is no here's where you can go to get more information about us. You guys are missing so many opportunities on ways to upsell people, to get people, to get on a call with you. Like, if you did not fluff up your auto responder email, this is your reminder to do it. Like I said, I see your guys as auto responders all the time. And a lot of them are very basic and very generic in my auto responder when we're closed and out of office, it literally says if you are a current prospect and you want to potentially get on a call and ask about our services, please use this link here to book it. That is prime real estate, to be able to pitch your services, to let your clients know that you're good to also infuse some personality in there and your brand voice. So as my reminder to you, not just for the holiday, but just in general, fix up your auto responders guys, because some of y'all's all auto responders. Sponsors are really boring. So you're going to want to make sure to send out that email in advance, we'll let them know the closure set up your auto responder, change your voicemail. And then what I want you guys to do, too. If you want to, you do not have to do this, but you can always post on social media or post on your website. Maybe you have like a banner on your website that just pretty much says, Hey, we're closed from this date to this date. Social media just allows you guys to say happy holidays. I hope you have a great time, but we're going to be temporary shutting down. So we're going to come back and respond to your guys's. Posts and whatever it is that they're sending you messages about. Right. So, what I recommend is a pro tip is to add a gentle reminder in the weeks leading up to the closure. So last minute client requests are minimized. So maybe one week prior to the closure sending yet another email, just to remind them that that's up to you, it's up to you. How many times you want to email your clients about it. But for me, it's really important. Your workflow queen. Uh, since we don't work with like clients and projects, we don't have to do. A mass email list telling you guys that we're shutting down. Instead, what we do is we have our auto responders set up and then we tell all of our Facebook groups. So all of our paid communities, we let them know that, Hey, we're going to be shut down. We're not doing any coaching calls or any support during this time. So we're going to be out of office, but we're going to get back to you later. So step number two is to use a closure for deep work or personal projects. If you're doing a full closure, if you're doing a park closure, You could still get this part done. So you can really take this time guys to reflect on the year and maybe plan for the next one, finalize your own books to get them ready for the year. It really just depends. Like I said, this year, I'm actually working on a couple of business related stuff, so I'm not going to be fully unplugged for this holiday, mostly because I really enjoy when like, no one's in slack to ask me questions. I don't have to check email. I can just focus on what I want to. So during this time of the year, it's actually a really prime time for me to get what I need done. I like to catch up on personal projects. Like I said, I am like literally rebuilding a full pantry wall in my kitchen. I'm also, then once that gets built, I'm going to be building out a coffee. It's going to be like a coffee mocktail. Cause I don't drink alcohol, but friends do, but I do like mocktails. So like I will have some wine and stuff over there, but there'll be like coffee cocktail movie snack, like little area. That's like this little cubby. It's kind of hard to explain without you guys visually seeing it. But I'm going to be building that out as well. And just working on some, like other stuff, like, I've just got some other things, like I've been wanting to take care of personally, and I want to do some workouts and really look at my goals for myself personally, for the year. And so my recommendation is just decide, what do you want to do during that time? I do recommend taking some time to relax. Maybe go get a massage, maybe just chill out, like spend time with family. It doesn't really matter if you're really curious what I'm working on. I've loved sharing my house projects that I work on. I love DIY and it's so funny. It's not even for like the money savings. Like a lot of people think I do it for like money savings and truly, it's not that it's because I genuinely love sledgehammering walls. I love putting up DIY projects. So like one of my favorites, it's very therapeutic for me. And after a long day of work, it allows me to just like kind of let loose and my creativity can fly. Because I get to like design things. And if you ever want to, and you're very curious as to what I'm working on at my house, you can always follow me on my personal Instagram, I kind of keep them separate from workflow queen. Sometimes I'll reshare what I'm doing at like my house, my DIY stuff on workflow queen. But a lot of times I don't this past week I did when I was building out my pantry. Cause I got like a. Just an itch to build it, but you could go on Instagram. It's at, Hey Alyssa Lang. And you can find me on there and you can follow me along on my house projects and just life things. I love snow. I love off-roading. If that kind of stuff resonates with you guys. Zero business tips on there. 100%. It's just all about like what I do and like life, my DIY stuff and all that fun stuff. So another thing I'm working on too, with some marketing resources and initiatives for magnetic profits. So my firm. One big thing that we're doing in 2025. Is just really like ramping up the way that we're doing our marketing and the things that we have, our resources, ways that people are finding us. And so one of them is a couple of really cool audio series series that we're doing. So I just want to like, kind of finalize those audio series and get those recorded and stuff like that for magnetic. So. During this time, I just recommend as a pro tip. Take the time. What do you want to do? Like do you just want to chill out and it's okay. If you just want to chill out, I'm not going to be mad at myself. If I go through this week and a half. Of holiday off and I just decide, you know what? I don't feel like doing anything that's business-related and that's cool. It's just, I have no obligation to anybody which makes me super, super happy. So step number three for preparing for holiday closure is to manage client work and team projects prior to the closure or during the closure, especially if you are someone who has to maybe. Potentially keep the business open because maybe you offer a specific service. So for the firms that are actually going to close down during that time, my recommendation is to wrap up any outstanding projects before the actual closure date push any deadlines into the new year. So for example, Uh, thankfully month end for all of us, doesn't start till like January 1st. So like us starting on January 2nd is not going to be a problem for our team. They're okay with that. I do know some other firms who prefer not to do this because they feel like they're slammed. Cause there's also year-end and 10 90 nines. And. Just a lot of stuff is going on. Right. So set up workflows to resume projects immediately after reopening. So we just reset all of our tasks. And right now my operations manager is actually working on all that stuff to make sure that their reset. Any clients that are currently signing on to be onboarded, we just have an email that's pretty much letting them know that. Typically, we try to onboard you within two weeks, but we are shut down and we will resume your onboarding as of X date. So for those of you that are actually going to stay open, or maybe you provide essential services. That you can't do a full closure. My recommendation is to assign key team members to critical services, or for me. I genuinely want my team to take time off. Like I really do. But at the same time, I understand that like not all of my team would be paid for the holiday closure. And I'll get to that later in this episode. But for those of them that still want some projects. There's a lot of stuff behind the scenes that can be done, that they don't need to respond to clients too. So if you choose to maybe potentially give your team an option to still work, but you're not going to respond to them and they can't respond to the clients and you're still closed front facing, but your team still wants to work on backend stuff. For me. I don't care. I'm more than happy. There's so many things around the business. That my team can work on. Like it's insane. And so because of that, like, I don't mind, but at the same time, if you do offer something like payroll, maybe AP or AR that you do actually need to physically be there. To do some of these things. Cause it's a promise to a client. You have a couple options. Option number one is you tell the client that during that week and a half period, they actually have to handle it. then you just knock off a fee, like a charge or give them some sort of a discount for the next month. Or you can just do it and just not work on anything else. So you would just pop in real quick, do payroll pop in real quick, do AR or have your team do it? Whatever makes the most sense. My recommendation is to create an emergency plan for unexpected situations. So if you do have something in your email or your voicemail or wherever, you're going to tell your clients that you are closing down. If you let them know that during that close, they can reach out for emergencies, create those boundaries, but also how would you handle those emergencies? So step number four and getting yourself ready for your holiday closures to determine holiday, pay for your team. So I'll share my approach, but it's really, truly up to you guys. And you have to do your own research to make sure that this is HR compliant, but this is how I've approached paying my team. During this time off, like I said, we do a full closure. If any of my team members who might not be a part of this list, I'm about to give you. That get paid. Then they are more than welcome to do projects behind the scenes, but I am not going to be there to answer questions. I am not looking at slack. And so they're welcome to start those projects, but they're not going to have handholding and I'm not going to be there. And you know, like any of our other team members, aren't gonna be able to be there to support them. So two people on our team, essentially like two types of people on the team. Essentially get paid for the holiday closure and then one type of person does not get paid. So the two people that do get paid on our team, the two types of people on our team that get paid during the holiday closure are full-time employees and part-time employees, the person that does not get paid time off our contractors. And I've done this because this is an incentive for someone to be an employee for me. And so we actually do this on our job posting. We let them know that during the holiday period, we'll give you guys pretty much either a week or week and a half, depending on when the holiday lands. Lands of paid time off, which is really cool. And it does not count towards their PTO and it is an incentive for someone to work for me. So during that time they do not have to work, but they still get paid. Contractors do not because they're not as like engulfed in the business. They're not as involved in the business. They're not as dedicated as an employee is not saying that their dedication is not there. That's not what I mean. What I mean is a contractor has no obligation to my company. Employee does. And so for me, I like to treat my employees with a little bit extra, to really incentivize someone to be an employee versus a contractor. but when it comes to the employees and paying them, I pay them differently. So full-time employees, they actually get paid time off that doesn't count towards their PTO balance because my team gets up PTO. So they get paid time off. However, we don't knock off PTO from their holiday. It's just given to them. And so full-time employees will get their full-time pay. Paid to them during that time off that doesn't affect our PTO balance. If someone is a part-time employee with my company, then they get paid time off based off their average weekly hours, and also is not deducted from their PTO balance. So same thing as full-time We do not take away from their PTO. It is given to them. However, the way that we calculate how much we're going to pay them for time off is based off their average weekly hours. So. If, for example, across the whole year, their average hours are like, let's just say it's 10 hours average and we're not giving a timeframe. It's not going to be five to 10 hours. It's like, it's literally average is 10 hours. Then what we're going to do is we're going to pay them the average weekly hours that they typically hold. And then that's what we're gonna pay them. So we pay them 10 hours. So maybe you have a team member who averages around eight hours. Maybe one month they spent 15 hours, but the next month it's eight the month before a seven. But the average happens to be eight. Then we are going to pay that team member, the average weekly hours of eight hours. And then also not deducted from their PTO. And so, like I said, contractors, don't get paid time off. If they want to do side projects are welcome to, but however, I'm not answering questions, they can not respond to clients front facing. And, their projects can not go above and beyond what their average weekly hours are. If they're a contractor. So an action step for you guys is to clearly communicate your holiday pay policy to your team ahead of time and ensure payroll is scheduled appropriately, and everything is kind of set in stone depending on how the team is paid. So if they're hourly versus salary is going to change, like how we pay them out. So same thing with full-time. Then we would just pay them like their average weekly, hourly. most of my team is salary. So for us, it's like pretty straightforward and they just continue to get paid. So a couple of things that are going to come up for you guys, as you were starting to roll this out, or just second guessing of this is the right choice for you, as you might be saying to yourself, my clients won't like it. If I close, well, you guys, you know what, at the end of the day, you get to build this business however you want. But if you clearly communicate a lot of this stuff in advance, it's not going to feel like it's going to make a difference. It's truly a week and a half off. Like I said, it really depends on the services you offer. If you are offering payroll runs, you are doing accounts receivable, you are doing accounts payable, whatever that looks like for you guys, depending on how and what services that you're offering will dictate if someone might be frustrated. So like I said, you can determine if you want them to do it and just knock off a discount for that month because you're not doing it. Or you just do it, but then you're not working on the other time. And you can clearly communicate that with your clients and say, Hey, look, don't worry. We're still going to process your payroll. We're still going to pay your bills. We're still going to run. Do your invoicing, whatever that, whatever you want to say, but Jen just say everything beyond that. We are not, we are pausing. So like you get to decide that. And for me, none of our clients are mad. Like every year that I do this, no, one's bad. Like, if anything that happens, they might email us twice in a row and then they realize like, oh crap, they're actually closed. And then they, we come back and no one died and everything's fine. Right? The other thing I want to hear you guys probably say is I can't close because I handle critical services. Like I said, you don't have to do a full closure. If it's not possible, you can create your own like maybe hybrid plan that really helps you to reduce your workload while still meeting client needs. So while running payroll, doing all these different things, So if a couple of different things that can support you in this process, and as you build this kind of stuff out inside of breakthrough, in my group coaching program, we are loving this conversation right now. It's actually a pretty heavy topic for a lot of our students right now. We've had a lot of people submitting this for. They're coaching calls. If you ever need support with this kind of stuff, breakthrough is great for this because at the end of the day, breakthrough is like a hodgepodge of whatever support you need as far as holiday closures. What does that process look like? How can I get my team up to speed? What's the pay structure look like? How much should I pay them? Should I give them bonuses? That's where we're answering a lot of those questions. So I'll drop a link below this episode. And if you're curious, if breakthrough is a right fit for you as we come into 2025, Feel free to hop on a 15 minute consult with me. I'm more than happy to chat through breakthrough and see if it's the right fit for you plus it's deductible. So if you can, if you lock it in, by the end of the year, you're kind of set in stone, which is super exciting. So couple of things to reinforce, what we kind of talked about today is in order to really implement some sort of holiday closure, or some sort of a partial closer is to make sure that you inform your clients about that closure. To actually use that time. What are you going to do with that time that you actually shut down the business? Is it going to be personal stuff? Just hang out family, some deep work on some projects. What is that going to look like for you? Step number three is to manage your client work and team projects prior to the close. Uh, to make sure that you guys don't get bombarded when you return to like ease that coming back. And also if during the, time closure. You actually need to actually do some work, then feel free to do so. Then I want you guys to determine holiday pay for your team. If you do have team members, if you align with the structure that I have in place. And don't forget this episode, that's coming out. It's going to be coming out this Thursday. Cause we're having double episodes this week. Our next episode is going to be all about how to streamline client onboarding using automation. And this is actually going to be with one of my biz besties. It's a conversation that me and her are going to have, like, as if you're sitting at the coffee shop with me and her, her name is Brooke Swan. And we're going to talk all about how we've automated our onboarding and help to streamline our clients when they get onboard into our software. We're going to be covering the key differences between onboarding and cleanup and why you should be separating them. Also how to automate things with different softwares to make onboarding faster and easier. Real life, examples of how we've overhauled our onboarding systems to save time. Improve client communication and build trust and a sneak peek at our new program, effortless client requests that is going to go live on December 20th. I'm very excited about it. And it's going to go live with, can give you all the tools, templates, strategies for a very specific software that we absolutely love that makes getting information from our clients really easy. So don't forget to not to miss that episode. And I hope you guys enjoyed this one. If you have any follow-ups or any questions, feel free to reach out to us.