May bank holiday rush: same-day booking rules that protect your diary

The days around a bank holiday bring a particular kind of call. Guests are coming, the family is home, and the thing that has been broken for a month has to be fixed today.

Some of that is good work at a good rate. The trouble starts when every same-day yes pushes a booked customer back.

A few fixed rules let you take the best of it without wrecking the week.

• Set a cut-off: same-day requests in by 10am, or they go to the next working day.
• Hold one or two slots a day for them. When they are gone, they are gone.
• Only take same-day jobs you can finish with what is on the van.
• Leave a gap after each one. Rushed jobs overrun.
• Booked customers keep their slots. Always.

Without a cut-off you spend the whole day deciding. Every call at 2pm becomes a negotiation with yourself.

Pick a time and put it everywhere: voicemail, website, the first line of your reply. "Same-day requests before 10am" is enough.

After the cut-off the answer is not no. It is "first thing Tuesday", which most people accept when it comes with a time.

If the diary is full to the edges, every same-day job has to push something else.

Keep one late-morning slot and one mid-afternoon slot empty on the days before a bank holiday. If nobody has taken them by the cut-off, pull a booked job forward or use the time for admin.

An empty slot is not lost money in a week like this. It is the room that stops one overrun wrecking the afternoon.

Trade counters close early before a bank holiday and many are shut on the day. A same-day job that needs a part you do not carry is a two-visit job.

Ask for a photo before you say yes. If you can see the part and you have it, go. If not, book it properly.

It is worth restocking the van on the Thursday with the parts behind your most common urgent jobs.

Same-day work costs you something: a reshuffled route, a skipped lunch, a later finish. It is reasonable to charge for that.

Keep it simple: a flat same-day charge on top of the usual rate, stated before you agree to come.

Customers who need it today will pay it. Customers who do not will happily take Tuesday.

• Choose your cut-off time and add it to your voicemail.
• Block two slots a day on the working days either side of the bank holiday.
• Restock the van.
• Write your same-day charge down, so you say the same figure every time.

Before the cut-off:

I can fit you in today between [time] and [time]. Same-day visits carry a £[amount] charge on top of the job. Can you send a photo so I can check I have the part on the van?

After the cut-off:

Today's same-day slots have gone. I can be with you on [day] at [time], with no same-day charge. Shall I book that in?