Your cancellation policy

A client who books over the phone doesn't turn up on Saturday. Nothing about the chair being empty is different because the booking didn't come through your website — but what the product can do about it is, and that difference is the whole of this screen.

What it covers

Settings → Cancellation policy is one set of numbers, and they are worked out for every appointment — booked online, taken at the desk, added by a stylist on the calendar. When a visit is cancelled late or marked a no-show, the fee is calculated and recorded as a charge on that appointment's sale.

What changes with how it was booked is whether the fee collects itself. That needs two things, and it needs both:

• a card on file for the client, and
• the client having agreed to your policy.

Booking online is one way to get both in one step. It's not the only way — the client's own portal page asks for a card and the agreement together, so a regular you booked over the phone can be made chargeable before they come in. A card on file is the walk-through.

Miss either and nothing is lost, but nothing is automatic: the fee sits on an open sale for you to take at the desk, and a task is raised so it isn't a line in a log nobody reads. Where tasks come from covers those.

Two numbers that sound alike

• Self-service cutoff (hours) is about permission. Inside it, a client can no longer reschedule or cancel on their own — they have to ring you. Set it to 0 and they can change things right up to the appointment.
• Late-cancel window (minutes) is about money. A cancellation inside it counts as a late cancel and carries the late-cancel fee.

Most salons set both to 24 hours. They don't have to match, and the case for splitting them is real: a cutoff of 24 hours with a window of 12 means the last day is yours to manage by phone, and only the last half of it costs anybody anything.

Where the fee comes from

Deposits and no-show protection walks the fee basis and the worked example under it — the short version is that Share of the service prices a $500 colour and a $30 trim differently, and the panel shows you exactly what your live numbers charge on both.

Two things about that calculation are worth knowing here.

It's worked out line by line, not on the total. A booking with three services is three separate sums added together, each on that service's own booked price. That is what makes the next part possible.

A service can opt out or set its own. On any service, under Cancellation fee:

• Use the salon's policy — the default.
• Set a different fee — its own late-cancel and no-show percentages. Leave one blank to keep the salon's for that outcome.
• No cancellation fee — this service never contributes, even when it's booked alongside ones that do.

That's the answer for a menu where one three-hour service is the entire problem and a fringe trim is nobody's, and for the toddler's first haircut you were never going to charge for.

The button that says why not

Can I charge these? sits beside the fees, and it's the least obvious useful thing on this screen.

Pressing it checks your live setup rather than guessing. If you're ready it says so in a line. If you're not, it lists what's missing with a tick or a warning against each, a link straight to the screen that fixes it, and a short walk-through of the order to do them in.

Almost always the answer is the same one — card payments aren't connected yet, so a fee can be recorded but never taken. Knowing that from this screen, rather than discovering it the first Saturday somebody no-shows, is the point.