Christmas shutdown: keep HubSpot catching leads

To keep HubSpot catching leads over a Christmas shutdown, set it up in November, then run through it again on your last day. Put every user's leave into HubSpot as out of office so nothing gets assigned to an empty desk, and change your chat, form thank you messages and website banner to say exactly when you are back. Pause sequences and any workflow emails that would go out while nobody is reading the replies, and build one list of everything that comes in over the break so it gets answered in the first week of January.

The break is longer than it looks. Christmas Day 2026 is a Friday, Boxing Day is a Saturday with an extra public holiday on Monday 28 December in most states, and New Year's Day 2027 is a Friday. A team that finishes up on Thursday 24 December and comes back on Monday 4 January is away for 11 days in a row, and buyers keep filling in forms and opening chats the whole time.

Every setting below is already in a standard HubSpot portal. The work is deciding who covers what, then testing it before the office empties.

What are the Christmas shutdown 2026 public holiday dates in Australia?

These are the dates from the Fair Work Ombudsman's 2026 and 2027 public holiday lists, checked on 5 November 2026:

• Christmas Eve, Thursday 24 December. A part-day public holiday in Queensland from 6pm to midnight, and in South Australia and the Northern Territory from 7pm to midnight. South Australia and the Northern Territory do the same on New Year's Eve.
• Christmas Day, Friday 25 December. Every state and territory.
• Boxing Day, Saturday 26 December. Most states add a public holiday on Monday 28 December because it falls on a weekend. South Australia calls the day Proclamation Day. Tasmania lists Boxing Day as Monday 28 December only.
• New Year's Day, Friday 1 January 2027. Every state and territory.

That leaves 29 to 31 December as ordinary working days. If your customers are spread across states, plan around where most of them are.

Whether you can direct staff to take annual leave over a shutdown is an employment question, covered by the Fair Work Ombudsman's shutdown guidance, and outside this post.

What should visitors see while you're closed?

A visitor on 30 December wants to know two things: did my enquiry go through, and when will someone reply? Answer both in three places.

• A site banner. One line at the top of every page: "We're closed from 24 December and back on Monday 4 January. Enquiries are still received and answered in order from the 4th." Schedule it to go live on your last day and come down when you return.
• Form thank you messages. In the form editor, open On submit, then the Options tab, and edit the thank you message. Say you have the enquiry, give the return date, and point urgent support customers to the right place.
• Chat. In Settings, go to Inbox & Help Desk, then Inboxes, edit your chat channel and open the Availability tab. Outside working hours, HubSpot lets you show the return time, show an away message or hide the chat launcher.

Be careful with chat. If it follows user availability and everyone is on leave, HubSpot says visitors can't send messages at all. For the break, switch to chat operating hours with an away message that gives the return date, or let an AI agent take it. Those settings take recurring days and times only, so diary 4 January to switch them back.

Support customers emailing your help desk need the same answer. Our guide to auto-replying to support tickets on Australian public holidays walks through the ticket workflow. Extend its holiday dates to cover your whole shutdown.

Who gets the leads when everyone is on leave?

This is where enquiries go cold: a form fill gets rotated to a rep at the beach, and nobody else knows it exists.

Put everyone's leave into HubSpot. In Settings, go to Users & Teams, open the user, then the Preferences tab and Working hours, and add the dates under Out of office. While a user is out of office, HubSpot sets them to Away and skips them for automatic assignment in the inbox and help desk. If you use the Google or Outlook calendar integration, tick the box to sync out of office events both ways.

Check your rotation workflows. The Rotate record to owner action has an "Assign to available users only" option for leads and tickets. With it on, nobody who is Away gets assigned. If every user in the pool is away, the owner is left blank, so someone needs to watch unassigned records. HubSpot's documentation does not show this option for contacts or deals, so check the action if you rotate those. Our lead routing guide covers the full setup.

Close your scheduling pages for the break. HubSpot blocks booking against calendar events marked Busy, and against Out of Office events in Outlook. Put a Busy or Out of Office block across the shutdown in each rep's calendar, then open each scheduling page and confirm the first bookable day is 4 January.

Decide one thing before anyone leaves: who, if anyone, is on call. A single person checking the unassigned view for 20 minutes on 29 and 31 December catches the large enquiry that won't wait until January.

What keeps sending over the break, and what should you pause?

HubSpot does not know you are closed. Anything automated keeps running unless you tell it otherwise, and the risk is an email that asks for a reply nobody will read for 11 days.

Workflows. Open the workflow, click Settings, then Timing. "Don't run actions on specific dates" pauses actions on the dates you choose, and you can set them to repeat every year. Records still enrol and move through delays on those dates, then wait at the next action. When the pause ends, HubSpot runs the waiting actions together in a 15 minute window at the earliest available time. So if 300 contacts queue up behind a nurture email over the break, all 300 emails go out in the first window on your first working day.

Internal notifications. Workflows that email a rep or create a task for them still fire. Point them at someone who is working, or at a shared inbox someone checks.

Sequences. By default, sequence emails only send on business days, and delays count business days. HubSpot's sequence documentation treats Monday to Friday as business days and says nothing about public holidays, so assume a step due on Monday 28 December or Friday 1 January will send. The cleaner fix is to pause. Each rep pauses their own, because a pause only covers the contacts that rep enrolled. When they resume, the sequence carries on from where it stopped, including any delay it was part way through.

Marketing emails. Go through anything scheduled between 24 December and 4 January. A newsletter on 23 December that ends with "reply to this email" or "book a time" sets up replies and bookings for nobody. Send it earlier, or hold it until mid January.

Should an AI agent answer enquiries while you're away?

If you get regular questions over the break, such as opening dates, order status, pricing ranges or how to log a support request, HubSpot's Customer Agent can answer them in chat and email using the content you give it.

What HubSpot's documentation says:

• Who can use it. Accounts with Marketing, Sales, Service, Data, Content, Smart CRM or Revenue Hub at Professional or Enterprise.
• What it costs. 50 HubSpot Credits per resolved conversation on text channels. HubSpot counts a resolution when the agent answers from a content source or completes an action and the visitor does not ask for a human within 72 hours, or when it marks a lead qualified, partially qualified or not qualified. First-time setup includes 14 days of free access.
• When it works. You can set the agent's working hours per channel, so it answers only when your team is off. When it hands a conversation over, it goes back to your team in the help desk or the conversations inbox.

Size it before you switch it on. If the agent resolves 40 conversations over the break, that is 2,000 credits. Set a feature credit limit on the agent so a busy fortnight can't run past your budget. Our guides on what HubSpot's AI agents cost to run and how to cap your HubSpot AI credit spend cover the pricing and the limits.

Set it up by early December, so you have two weeks to read its answers and fix what it gets wrong.

This video from our YouTube channel covers setting up the Customer Agent without credit overages.

What to set in HubSpot, where, and by when

Here is the whole list, with dates for a team that closes on Thursday 24 December and returns on Monday 4 January 2027.

On 18 December, fill in your own form, start a chat and book a meeting, and check what each one sends and who it reaches.

1. Friday 13 NovemberClosing and return dates agreed, and who is on call.
2. Friday 4 DecemberOut of office in for every user. Customer Agent hours and credit limit set.
3. Friday 11 DecemberRotation, scheduling pages, workflow pause dates and marketing emails sorted.
4. Friday 18 DecemberTest run: a form, a chat and a booking, checked end to end.
5. Thursday 24 DecemberLast day. Chat away message on, sequences paused, banner live, held-over list built.
6. Monday 4 January 2027Back. The held-over list is split across the team by 10am.
7. Wednesday 6 JanuaryEvery enquiry from the break has had a reply.

Dates for a team that closes on Thursday 24 December 2026 and returns on Monday 4 January 2027, as in the table above.

What should happen in the first week of January?

The enquiries that arrived over the break are your warmest January leads, and they are already a fortnight old. Answer them before any new outreach.

• Build the list before you leave. A saved view of contacts created from Thursday 24 December onwards, plus tickets from the same date. Add a second view filtered to no owner, for anything rotation could not assign.
• Assign it on Monday 4 January. Split the list across the team by 10am. Aim to have every enquiry answered by Wednesday 6 January.
• Reply as a person. Acknowledge the wait, answer the question, and offer a time to talk. A template helps, but write the first line yourself.
• Undo the break settings. Take the banner down, reset form thank you messages, switch chat back to normal hours, resume sequences and check what the paused workflows sent on the 4th.
• Note Australia Day. Tuesday 26 January 2027 is a national public holiday. Plan January campaigns around it.

If you are also planning a HubSpot build over summer, our post on going live on HubSpot before Christmas covers what fits before the break and what belongs in January.

Frequently asked questions

When is the Christmas shutdown period in Australia in 2026? There is no set national shutdown period. Each business picks its own dates. The public holidays are Christmas Day on Friday 25 December, Boxing Day on Saturday 26 December with an extra holiday on Monday 28 December in most states, and New Year's Day on Friday 1 January 2027.

How do I set out of office in HubSpot? Go to Settings, Users & Teams, open your user, then Preferences and Working hours, and add your dates under Out of office. HubSpot sets you to Away for those dates and skips you for automatic assignment in the inbox and help desk.

Do HubSpot sequences send on public holidays? Sequences send on business days by default, meaning Monday to Friday, and HubSpot's documentation does not mention public holidays. Pause your sequences before a shutdown and resume them when you return.

Can HubSpot pause workflows over Christmas? Yes. In a workflow's Timing settings, "Don't run actions on specific dates" pauses actions on the dates you choose and can repeat each year. Waiting actions run together at the earliest available time once the pause ends.

What should a Christmas shutdown notice on a website say? The date you close, the date you are back, and that enquiries are still being received and will be answered in order. Put the same wording in your form thank you messages and chat away message.

Sources

• 2026 public holidays, Fair Work Ombudsman, for December 2026 dates by state.
• 2027 public holidays, Fair Work Ombudsman, for New Year's Day and Australia Day 2027.
• Direction to take annual leave during a shutdown, Fair Work Ombudsman, for the employment side of a shutdown.
• Public holidays, NSW Government, for the Boxing Day additional day.
• Public holidays, Queensland Government, for the Christmas Eve part day.
• Manage user out of office hours for inbox and help desk, HubSpot Knowledge Base, for out of office and assignment.
• Connect and customize a chat channel in the conversations inbox, HubSpot Knowledge Base, for chat availability.
• Create and customize forms, HubSpot Knowledge Base, for thank you messages.
• Assign and rotate record owners using workflows, HubSpot Knowledge Base, for assigning to available users only.
• Troubleshoot calendar availability for meetings, HubSpot Knowledge Base, for how calendar events block bookings.
• Manage your workflow settings, HubSpot Knowledge Base, for pause dates and rescheduled actions.
• Create and edit sequences, HubSpot Knowledge Base, for business day sending.
• Pause or resume your sequences, HubSpot Knowledge Base, for pausing and resuming.
• Understand the customer agent, HubSpot Knowledge Base, for eligible hubs and what counts as a resolution.
• Scale 24/7 support, HubSpot Knowledge Base, for the agent's working hours and handoff.
• HubSpot Product and Services Catalog, HubSpot, for the Customer Agent credit rate.

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Tell Matt when your team closes, how enquiries reach you today and who usually picks them up. He will talk you through how we set HubSpot up so the leads that arrive over Christmas are still warm in January. See our RevOps and HubSpot work, or get in touch.