Holiday phone cover for vet clinics: a December rota plan

By the Tilly editorial team · Updated October 7, 2026

This article is for veterinary clinic teams. If you're worried about a pet right now, call your vet or nearest emergency clinic.

December closures leave gaps in a vet clinic's phone cover, and callers notice them first. A good holiday plan takes four steps: confirm your emergency partner's hours, publish your own hours everywhere callers look, staff the phones for the busy days around each closure, and test the path on every closure day. This guide gives you a timeline, a rota template you can copy and a test-call checklist.

The short answer: confirm, publish, staff, test

1. Confirm. Two weeks before your first closure, get your emergency partner's holiday hours in writing.
2. Publish. Put the same hours on your website, your Google Business Profile, your voicemail greeting, your phone menu and your reminder messages.
3. Staff. Put more people on the phones on the days before and after each closure.
4. Test. On each closure day, call your own number and check that a caller hears the right message and can reach the right place.

The rest of this guide takes each step in turn. If you haven't measured your call pattern yet, a one-week phone audit shows you when your busiest hours are. Use last December's call log too, if your phone system keeps one.

Two weeks before: confirm your emergency partner's holiday hours in writing

When your clinic is closed, callers with a possible emergency need to reach someone fast. For most clinics that means an emergency partner hospital, an on-call vet, or both. December is when that path is most likely to break, because partners change their hours too.

This step is front-desk process, not clinical guidance. Your veterinarians decide what the front desk may say about a pet's health. The front desk's job is to stop booking, put the caller through to a named person, or give the emergency partner's details when you're closed.

Two weeks before your first closure:

• Ask your emergency partner for their holiday hours in writing. An email is enough. Ask about every day you'll be closed, not just the main holidays. Ask whether they expect to be busier than usual, and whether they want you to call ahead.
• Check the details you give callers. Confirm the partner's name, phone number and address exactly as callers should hear them.
• Have a second option. If your usual partner closes or reduces hours on any day, agree a second one with your veterinarians and write it into the rota.
• Confirm your on-call cover. If one of your vets is on call, write down who, on which days, how to reach them and who backs them up.
• Tell the team. Everyone who answers the phone, and everyone who might set up the voicemail or the phone menu, should have the same written list.

Keep the written confirmation with your rota. If something changes in the last week, update every place you published it, not only the one you remember.

Publish your hours everywhere callers look

Callers look for your hours in several places, often in a hurry. If one of them is out of date, they may drive to a closed clinic or call a number that doesn't help. List every place your hours appear and update them all on the same day.

• Your website. Put holiday hours at the top of the home page and the contact page, with your emergency partner's details for closure days.
• Your voicemail greeting. Record a holiday greeting that gives your reopening date and time and your emergency partner's name and number. Keep it short and say the number slowly.
• Your phone menu. If callers choose from options, check that each one leads somewhere useful on closure days.
• Your practice software's reminders. Reminder and confirmation messages that go out in December should show the right hours. Check whether your software adds closure notes automatically or needs a manual change.
• Social media and your clinic door. A short post and a printed sign at the entrance help clients who don't search online.

Setting holiday hours on Google

Google lets you set special hours for holidays without changing your regular hours. In your Business Profile, open the hours, find "Special hours", choose the date, mark it open or closed, and enter the times if you're open. Google's help page notes one condition worth checking:

Google also says special hours are meant for closures of up to six days in a row. For a longer closure, its help page suggests marking the business as temporarily closed instead.

Use the same wording everywhere

Pick one sentence and repeat it. "Closed December 25. Open again December 26 at 8 a.m. For emergencies, call [partner name] at [number]." Consistency helps clients trust what they read.

Staff the days before and after closures

Clients plan around closures. Many call the day before to book, collect a refill or ask about hours. The first morning after a closure often looks like a Monday, with calls stacked up from the days you were shut. Our guide to phone coverage explains how to read these peaks.

Plan for them:

• Add a second person on the phones for the morning before each closure and the first two hours after reopening.
• Move non-urgent callbacks away from those blocks where you can.
• Clear the voicemail and the message list first thing on each reopening day, and decide in advance who does it.
• Keep lunch cover on the busy days, when it's tempting to let the phone ring.
• Remind clients early. A message in early December about holiday hours and booking ahead spreads some of the load across the month.

If you use overflow or after-hours cover, such as an answering service or an AI front desk, tell it about every closure and test it the same way you test your own line.

Holiday rota template

Copy this table into a spreadsheet or print it. Fill one row per day from mid-December to the first week of January. A phone rota names who answers in each block, who backs them up, and where calls go when both are busy.

Add a row at the top with your emergency partner's written confirmation date and a row at the bottom with the name of the person who checks the published hours.

Test call checklist for each closure day

A plan only works if the phone does what you expect. On each closure day, and on the first evening of any reduced-hours day, someone makes a test call from a mobile phone that isn't on the clinic's system.

• Does the line answer? Count the rings. Check the call doesn't ring out or hit a full mailbox.
• Is the greeting right? It should be the holiday greeting, with the correct reopening date and time.
• Is the emergency partner correct? The name and number should match the written confirmation. Call the number to check it connects.
• Does every menu option work? Try each one.
• Does on-call cover work? If an on-call vet is reachable through the phone system, check the route with them beforehand rather than with a live page.
• Does your cover service know? If an answering service or AI front desk takes calls, check it gives the holiday hours and the right emergency details.
• Do the website and Google show the same hours? Look at both on a phone.
• Record the result. Write the time, who tested and what they found in the notes column of the rota.

If anything is wrong, fix it at once and test again.

How Tilly handles holiday closures

If your clinic uses Tilly, public holidays load automatically, and you can add your own closures and special hours in a few clicks. Tilly answers when you're closed, including evenings, weekends and holidays. When a caller describes a possible emergency while you're closed, Tilly gives your emergency partner's name, number and address and texts them to the caller. It never gives medical advice. You still confirm your partner's holiday hours, and you still run the test calls. Read more about after-hours answering.