Cancellations

Cancelling appointments

You can cancel an appointment from the edit sheet on your dashboard. Click the appointment, then click Cancel.

When cancelling a paid appointment, you’ll be asked how to handle the refund:

Option	What happens
Full refund	Client receives 100% of the payment back
Apply cancellation policy	Refund calculated based on your refund policy tiers
No refund	No money is returned to the client

You can also provide an optional reason and note for your records.

Tip

The client is always notified by email when you cancel their appointment, regardless of the refund option chosen.

Cancellation reasons

When cancelling, you can select a reason from a preset list:

• Schedule conflict
• Client requested (phone/in-person)
• Illness
• Emergency
• Other

These reasons are tracked and appear in your cancellation analytics.

No-shows

If a client doesn’t attend their appointment, you can mark it as a no-show from the edit sheet. The “No-Show” button only appears for appointments that have already passed.

No-shows are tracked separately from cancellations and appear in:

• The appointment card (with a red “No-Show” badge)
• The client’s risk profile
• Your cancellation analytics

Note

No-show marking is permanent and cannot be undone. The client is not notified when you mark a no-show.

Refund policies

Refund policies let you define time-based refund tiers that automatically calculate how much to refund when an appointment is cancelled.

Creating a policy

1. Go to Availability → Settings tab
2. Scroll to Refund Policies and click Add Policy
3. Give it a name (e.g. “Standard”, “Strict”, “Flexible”)
4. Add tiers — each tier has a hours before threshold and a refund percentage
5. Click Create Policy

Example: Standard policy

Hours before appointment	Refund
More than 48 hours	100% (full refund)
24–48 hours	50%
Less than 24 hours	0% (no refund)

Assigning policies

Policies can be assigned at two levels:

• Default policy — applies to all services unless overridden. Set via Set as Default on any policy.
• Per-service policy — override the default for a specific service. Set when editing a service in Services → edit → Refund Policy dropdown.

When a cancellation occurs, the system checks: service-level policy first, then the professional default. If no policy is set, no automatic refund is given — the client is asked to contact you directly regarding refunds.

Tip

To ensure clients receive automatic refunds when they cancel, create a refund policy and set it as your default in Availability → Settings → Refund Policies.

Tip

The refund badge on cancelled appointments shows which policy was applied (e.g. “Refunded £30.00 (50%) · Standard”).

Refund policy diagram

When a refund policy is assigned, clients see a visual diagram of the refund tiers on:

• The booking page (if “Show on booking page” is enabled)
• The manage appointment page

The diagram uses colour-coded segments — green for high refund, amber for partial, red for no refund — so clients understand the policy at a glance.

Visibility settings

Control where your refund policy information appears:

Setting	Location
Show on booking page	Displays the refund policy diagram on your public booking page
Include in client emails	Appends refund tier text to appointment confirmation and reminder emails

Both are enabled by default. Toggle them in Availability → Settings → Refund Policy Visibility.

Per-service cancellation notes

Each service can have its own cancellation note — freeform text shown to clients instead of your default cancellation policy note for that specific service. Set it when editing a service in Services → edit → Cancellation Note.

How notes are resolved

The system uses this priority order to decide which note clients see:

1. Service-specific note — if the selected service has a cancellation note, it is shown
2. Default note — your general cancellation policy note from Availability → Settings
3. Nothing — if neither is set, no note is displayed

What clients see on the booking page

• Before selecting a service — the default cancellation policy note is shown (along with the default refund policy diagram, if enabled)
• After selecting a service — if that service has its own cancellation note, it replaces the default. The heading updates to show the service name (e.g. “Cancellation & Refund Policy — Deep Tissue Massage”) so clients know the policy is specific to that service.

The same resolution applies to refund policy diagrams: if the service has its own refund policy assigned, its tiers are shown; otherwise the default policy tiers appear.

What clients see in emails

When Include in client emails is enabled, the resolved note for the booked service is included in confirmation and reminder emails — service-specific if set, otherwise the default.

Client self-service cancellation

Clients can cancel their own appointments using a manage link included in every appointment email (confirmation, reminder, payment confirmation, and update emails).

How it works

1. Client clicks the Manage your appointment link in their email
2. They see their appointment details and any applicable refund information
3. Clicking Cancel Appointment shows a reschedule-first prompt — encouraging them to reschedule rather than cancel
4. If they choose to proceed, they confirm the cancellation with an optional reason
5. The refund is calculated based on your cancellation policy and processed automatically via Stripe
6. You receive a notification that the client cancelled

Note

The reschedule-first prompt helps reduce cancellations by steering clients toward rescheduling. If they want to reschedule, they can email you directly from the prompt.

Client cancellation reasons

Clients see a different set of reasons than professionals:

• I have a scheduling conflict
• I’m not feeling well
• I no longer need this appointment
• I found an alternative
• Cost concerns
• Other

Client risk profiles

Booker tracks each client’s cancellation and no-show history to help you identify unreliable clients.

Risk level	Combined rate	Indicator
Low	Less than 10%	No indicator
Medium	10–25%	Amber dot on client card
High	Over 25%	Red dot on client card

You can see detailed stats (total appointments, cancellations, no-shows, and rates) on each client’s detail page.

Analytics

The Analytics page gives you an overview of cancellation patterns.

Available metrics

Metric	Description
Cancellation rate	Percentage of appointments cancelled in the selected period
No-shows	Count and rate of no-show appointments
Revenue lost	Total value of cancelled appointments
Refunded	Amount actually refunded to clients
Cancelled by	Breakdown of professional vs client cancellations
Reasons	Which cancellation reasons are most common

Use the 7d / 30d / 90d buttons to change the date range.

Timezones

All appointment times are shown in your timezone (displayed on the Availability page and booking page). Clients on your booking page and manage link see the timezone label (e.g. “BST”, “GMT”) so they know which timezone the times refer to.

Resending appointment details

If a client needs their appointment details resent (e.g. they lost the email), click the mail icon in the appointment edit sheet. This resends the full confirmation email including the manage link.