Keeping your number: why you divert instead of advertising a new one

When your receptionist is created, it comes with its own Australian mobile number. It's a real number: you can ring it the minute it's live and hear your greeting. It's the same kind of number whether you're in Perth or Hobart, so there's no local-prefix lottery and nothing to re-register if you move.

That number is the receptionist's. It is not meant to replace yours.

You keep your number, your provider and your branding. You tell your phone to send calls to the receptionist's number, and your callers never know the difference: they ring the number they've always rung, it rings for a moment, and your receptionist answers in your name.

Three ways to do it, and switching between them is one dial code each way:

• Everything. All calls go to the receptionist. For the one-person business whose office is the passenger seat.
• Only the ones you miss. Your phone rings first; after about twenty seconds with no answer, the call goes to the receptionist. For a desk that answers most calls and wants the rest caught.
• After hours. Divert when you close, undo when you open.

The codes for Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and NBN phones, and the sick-day switch, are in the divert guide. The ring time on a no-answer divert is your carrier's setting, which is why we say "about twenty seconds" rather than a number of rings.

You can. Some businesses starting from nothing do, and the receptionist's number works fine on a website. But think about the day you leave: every ad, listing and magnet now carries a number that isn't yours. Diverting means leaving is one code and your number is untouched. We'd rather tell you that before you choose than after.

If you do advertise the receptionist's number and later want to keep it, porting it out is supported. We don't hold numbers hostage.

Most Australian mobile plans include call diversion, and a diverted call to an Australian number is usually charged as a call to that number from your plan's included minutes. Check yours; we can't see your plan. The receptionist's side costs nothing extra: your Giday plan is flat, whatever path the call took to reach it.

Ring your own number from another phone and don't answer. After the ring time, your receptionist should pick up with your greeting. If it answers immediately, you've set divert-all; if it rings out to voicemail, the divert didn't take and the code needs another go. The front-desk backup page is the no-answer version in full.