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For some businesses, the festive and summer season is their really busy period, while for others it is the time of the year when work slacks off and they can take a well-deserved holiday.

If you choose to take a break, it's critical that you manage this professionally and effectively so that you don't compromise your business. What's appropriate for some businesses is not appropriate for others, so you will need to decide what's right for you. These pointers might help.

• Communicate your intentions
  Let customers, suppliers, contractors and others you deal with regularly know well in advance from when you will not be available, and give a date for your return. Prompt them to contact you well beforehand if they need your assistance before you take your break.
   
• Put arrangements in place
  If you need some aspects of your business to continue running while you are away, there are a variety of options you might like to consider. These include leaving existing staff in charge, employing someone to "babysit" your business on a full or part-time basis, referring urgent calls to a partner, contractor or colleague, or engaging a live-operator answer service to filter incoming calls and deal with them appropriately.
   
• Make technology your ally
  Leverage your time and keep your costs down by using technology to help manage your business in your absence.

If the office is officially closed, you may have decided to answer only calls from specific people (if you have caller display), or return only urgent calls. During the time you have chosen not to be accessible, change the message on your landline and mobile phone, stating your reduced business hours or your anticipated date of return. If you may need to deal with some urgent queries, specify a number you can be contacted at and the types of call that should be made to this number (for instance, "If you are experiencing difficulty with such-and-such a product, please call etc.") Reassure customers that you will return all calls when you are back in the office - and do so promptly. Consider using call forwarding or redirection if you want to be accessible but will not be at your usual number - and don't forget to cancel it when you get back!

Set up filters and folders to deal with your email. Some junk mail can be discarded automatically, some can be filtered so you keep regular publications separate from your customer queries, and so on. Use your ISP's holiday messaging service if available in much the same way as your answer phone, to communicate when you will be away, when you are returning, and where correspondents can reach you if the matter is urgent. If you receive orders via a web site, you may need to automatically forward these to someone to process in your absence.

Publishing some information on your web site might mean customers or suppliers can access the kind of information they would be ringing you for themselves. Your email and phone messages could specify that this information could be found on your site, and give your web address. Using auto-responders can help you automate information handling even more.