Prepare your business for seasonal peaks and holidays

Holiday seasons are vitally important to small businesses but bring additional work and risks. 

For most hospitality and retail businesses, holiday seasons are an exciting but busy period of the year. If you're in retail, the buzz of gift-buying is electric. If you're in hospitality, it's time for parties, themed menus and seasonal decor at your venue. The holidays bring in large crowds and that means more trade. For most small businesses, holiday periods are vitally important and the earnings you make in these times represent a disproportionately large income for the year.

But they can also bring some minor headaches, including taking on inexperienced part-time or casual staff who may be new to the industry, plus extended trading hours.

Can I protect my business and insure seasonal stock better?

Some policies automatically cover for seasonal increase periods, which includes any time during the period of insurance when your business' sales or stock turnover is 30% higher than your average (in December, for example). If your business is insured with AAMI, you don’t have to nominate these periods in your policy, but you may need to provide details of your turnover.

Review your business policy to see if the insured amount in respect of stock is increased – AAMI generally increases the amount by 35% during a seasonal increase period. You can call a trusted AAMI professional on 13 22 44 for more information.

The lead-up to a holiday period is a good time to consider cover for any new equipment that has been bought and/or installed to help deal with the increased traffic through your business. It might also be a good time to consider an employee dishonesty insurance policy to protect you against the risk of having a large number of temporary staff on the payroll.

AAMI has insurance options that can cover increases in the contents value of your business, and you can get a quote in under 3 minutes. 

Insurance is issued by AAI Limited ABN 48 005 297 807 AFSL 230859 (AAI) trading as AAMI. Read the relevant Product Disclosure Statement before buying this insurance. This advice has been prepared without taking into account your particular objectives, financial situations or needs, so you should consider whether it is appropriate for you before acting on it.