How to Post Holiday Hours for a Small Business (Checklist)

By Cedar & Ledger

Holidays are when customers are most likely to check your hours, and most likely to find old ones. A customer who drives to a locked door, or calls a number that goes to voicemail all week, may not try you again. Posting holiday hours takes about 20 minutes if you do it in one sitting, in every place people look, a week or two ahead.

The business, dates and hours below are a made-up example to show the steps, not a recommendation for how you should open. This is general information, not legal or business advice.

Quick checklist

• ☐ Decide your holiday hours for the whole season at once
• ☐ Write one short notice you can reuse everywhere
• ☐ Update your Google Business Profile with special hours
• ☐ Update your other listings (Bing, Apple Maps, social pages)
• ☐ Add a notice to your website above your regular hours
• ☐ Change your voicemail greeting and email auto-reply if you'll be away
• ☐ Put a sign on the door or truck if customers visit in person
• ☐ Set a reminder to remove the notices when the holidays end

The steps below walk through each one.

Step 1: Decide the whole season at once

Sit down once with a calendar and decide every day that's different from normal, from Thanksgiving through New Year's. Doing it in one pass means one round of updates instead of five.

Example (made up): a cleaning company with regular hours of Mon–Fri 7 AM–6 PM and Sat 8 AM–12 PM.

Everything else stays on regular hours.

Step 2: Write one short notice

Write it once and paste the same words everywhere, so nothing disagrees.

Example notice: "Holiday hours: Closed Thu Nov 26. Fri Nov 27, 8 AM–12 PM. Thu Dec 24, 7 AM–12 PM. Closed Fri Dec 25. Thu Dec 31, 7 AM–3 PM. Closed Fri Jan 1. Regular hours all other days."

Keep it to dates and times. Skip long holiday messages; people are scanning.

Step 3: Update your Google Business Profile

Your profile has a place for special hours on specific dates, separate from your regular hours. Add each date from your table there instead of changing your regular hours, so they switch back on their own. If you haven't set up a profile yet, How to Put Your Business on Google Maps for Free (Steps) walks through it.

Step 4: Update your other listings

Check anywhere else your hours show up: Bing Places, Apple Business Connect (Apple Maps), Facebook or Instagram pages, Yelp, and any booking page. Paste the same notice or the same special hours. This is the step people skip, and it's where wrong hours stick around.

Step 5: Add a notice to your website

Put one short line above your regular hours, rather than editing the regular hours themselves. That keeps your normal schedule correct and makes the change easy to undo. If your site has an hours table, a single line like the example notice above it is enough. If you're also tidying up the rest of your site, How to Write Your Small Business Website Text (Examples) covers the hours and contact section.

Step 6: Voicemail, email and in-person signs

• Voicemail: "You've reached [business]. We're closed today for the holiday and back [day] at [time]."
• Email auto-reply: the same line, plus when you'll reply.
• Door or truck sign: the notice from Step 2, printed large.

Step 7: Set a reminder to take it all down

Old holiday notices in February look careless. Put a reminder on your calendar for the first workday after the last holiday date to remove the website line, the auto-reply and the sign. Special hours on Google end on their own, but check that they did. Small Business Website Launch Checklist (Before You Share) has a quick look-over list that works here too.

Common snags

• Changing regular hours instead of adding special hours. Then you have to remember to change them back.
• Different hours in different places. Paste the same notice everywhere.
• Posting the day before. Many people plan holiday errands a week or more ahead.
• Forgetting the phone. Callers don't see your website notice.

If you need a simple website for it

You can post holiday hours on any site. If you don't have one yet, the One-Page Local Business Website Template ($12, HTML/CSS) is a single page for local service businesses with an hours and service area section, tap-to-call and tap-to-email buttons, and a README for free hosting on Netlify Drop, GitHub Pages or Cloudflare Pages (details). It's a static file you edit by hand, not a drag-and-drop builder, and it has no contact form backend.

Honest note: I make these templates and sell them under Cedar & Ledger, so I'd earn from a purchase. General information only, not legal or business advice.

Related template: read about the html business template template

See all Cedar & Ledger templates

Try the free profit and loss calculator →