No-shows and cancellation policy

Your cancellation and no-show rules live under Settings → Booking Settings. They decide how much of a deposit a customer gets back when they cancel, and how much you retain when they don’t show. Refund amounts are always a percentage of the deposit — so these policies only take effect once you require deposits.

Deposits require online payments. If Stripe isn’t connected yet, you can still set these policies now — they take effect once online payments are active. See connecting Stripe and deposits.

Require a deposit first

1. Open Settings → Booking Settings.
2. Under Deposit, turn on Require deposit for bookings.
3. Choose a Deposit Type — Percentage of the booking total, or a Fixed Amount.
4. Set the Payment Window — how long a customer has to pay before an unpaid booking is auto-cancelled.
5. Click Save Settings.

Until deposits are on, the cancellation and no-show controls stay greyed out — there’s no deposit to refund or retain.

Set your cancellation refund rules

Under Cancellation Policy, you build a refund ladder: the more notice a customer gives, the higher their refund.

1. Click Add Rule.
2. Set Cancel ≥ [hours] hrs before → refund [percent]% of deposit.
3. Add more tiers as needed. The highest tier a cancellation qualifies for is the one that applies.

A live preview shows exactly how the ladder reads to a customer, for example:

• Cancel 48h or more before → refund 100% of the deposit
• Cancel 24–48h before → refund 50% of the deposit
• Cancel less than 24h before → no refund

You can also add a Policy Description — free text shown to customers during booking. If you leave it empty, no cancellation-policy notice appears on your booking pages. You can also toggle Restore package session on cancellation so a session used on the appointment is returned to the customer’s balance when they cancel (only when the cancellation still earns a refund).

The refund itself is issued when you cancel the appointment. See refunds for the money side, and calendar and appointments for how to cancel.

Set your no-show handling

Under No Show Policy, decide what happens when a customer simply doesn’t turn up.

1. Turn on Enable no-show policy.
2. Set Keep [percent]% of deposit — the share of the deposit you retain for a no-show.
3. Optionally turn on Restore package session on no-show to return a used session to the customer.

To mark an appointment as a no-show, open it and click Mark as No Show, then confirm — your keep percentage is applied automatically. Anyone with the Appointments permission can do this. See calendar and appointments for that flow (a no-show is a flag, not a status).

If the no-show policy is off, marking a no-show moves no money — nothing is refunded and nothing extra is kept; any payments stay exactly as they are. The appointment is simply flagged.

Deviating from the policy for one appointment — keeping a different amount or refunding more or less than the policy says — requires the Refund Overrides permission or a one-time override code from a manager, plus a reason, which is recorded on the appointment. The same applies to overriding refund amounts when cancelling.

Booking rules that affect changes

The Booking Rules section on the same tab also controls how customers can change bookings:

• Reschedule / cancel window — customers can’t reschedule or cancel online within this many hours of the start time; they’re asked to contact you instead.
• Booking window — how far ahead customers can book.
• Min booking lead time — how soon before a slot’s start a customer may book it.

These shape which appointments customers can self-manage; see availability for how the booking window and lead time gate the slots that appear.

Related

• Deposits — requiring and collecting deposits.
• Refunds — how refunds are calculated and issued.
• Calendar and appointments — cancelling and marking no-shows.