Taking vacations is important when you run a work-at-home business. It’s your time to use the money you’ve earned to take a break to really enjoy yourself and recharge so that you can come back fresher and more positive.

There’s a big misconception that being self-employed gives you more freedom. In reality, it’s actually much harder to take time off for yourself. Because you’re responsible for every aspect of your business, it involves a lot more than just handing in a vacation request. You’ll need to plan for the interruption in revenue and let existing and potential clients know where you’ll be so that you can enjoy your time off, worry-free.

Here are some tips to help you plan for a stress-free vacation.

1. Budget for Your Break

To make sure that your time off doesn’t get in the way of paying your bills on time, you’ll need to plan ahead. Remember that you will need to earn enough money to fund not only your vacation expenses, but also the period of time when you will not be making any money. You can start setting aside chunks of your revenue for your vacation budget, as well as put more hours into working to increase your productivity and revenues before your trip.

2. Take Care of Business

Make sure to tie up any loose ends before you leave your work behind.

Notify your clients early

• Call your most important clients
• Post an auto-response in your e-mail with your vacation dates
• Leave a message on your voicemail
• Post a message on your blog
• Send a message on Facebook and twitter
•Send a newsletter or e-Newsletter

Finish projects early

Write down all the projects you are working on and prioritize your work. Decide which projects can wait until you get back. If a deadline for a project coincides with your vacation time, make sure you meet the deadline, even if that means putting in more working hours to finish your contracts early. If you’re certain there’s no way that you’ll be able to complete the scheduled tasks in time, try and renegotiate the due dates with your clients as soon as possible. The more notice you provide your clients, the more likely they will be open to negotiations.

Cut back on the projects you accept

When handling new clients, make it clear that you have a prior commitment and will be unable to start on their projects until after a specific date. Your client will appreciate your honesty, and you won’t have to increase your workload unnecessarily.

3. Additional options

It’s possible to keep your business going while you take a break. Here are two options.

Share or outsource your work

If you’re lucky enough to know someone you can trust who has work ethic and values aligned with yours, you can exchange services so that you cover each other when you’re on vacation or when you need to take time off.

If you don’t have anyone like this around, you can turn to freelancers, virtual assistants, and people who provide temporary services or work on per project basis for situations like this. If you go the outsource route, make sure to try out the service before you go on vacation to make sure that the person you hire can handle the job.

Use Technology

• If you use WordPress as your blog hosting site, schedule your blog posts so that they will be published automatically while you’re gone.
• Use HootSuite to schedule posts to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Just a few scheduled posts throughout your absence will keep your accounts looking active.
• Use tools like Constant Contact to schedule email marketing campaigns in advance.

Taking time off for yourself is necessary for your mental and physical health. As long as you plan and prepare yourself for your vacations ahead of time, you’ll be able to enjoy them without stress.

By Cathy Lau

Tags: Time Management