A cancellation policy clients accept is short, said before they book, and plainly fair: one notice window based on how long you need to refill the time, one fee that applies inside it, the fee waived whenever you fill the slot anyway, and every reasonable way of cancelling counted as notice. Most clients have no quarrel with that. What they resent is a rule they first hear about when it is used against them, or a fee that obviously costs more than the empty hour did.
This guide is about the cancellation rule itself. Whether to take deposits at all, and how much, is covered in no-shows and deposits.
Set the window from your refill time
The notice window should be the time you need to have a real chance of filling the slot. Look back over a few months. When a client cancelled two days ahead, did the time get rebooked? A day ahead? Three hours ahead? For most salons the answer is that two days is usually enough, one day is sometimes enough, and the same day is rarely enough unless you keep a waitlist.
Long services need longer. A 20-minute brow wax can be filled from a Saturday morning queue. A three-hour colour or a full set of lashes needs someone who can give up half a day, and those clients book ahead. Many salons settle on 24 hours for short services and 48 hours for anything over two hours. Two windows is the most you should have, or nobody will remember which applies.
One fee, and when you waive it
Choose one consequence for a cancellation inside the window: a fixed amount, half the service price, or the deposit kept. Then add the rule that makes the whole policy feel fair: if you fill the slot, the fee is waived. A fee exists to cover a loss. When there is no loss, waiving it costs you nothing and earns a great deal of goodwill.
A no-show, someone who never cancels at all, is a separate case and can carry the full price. Keep it separate in your wording, so a client who did the decent thing and rang late is not lumped in with one who simply stayed away.
In Australia, a fee that was not made clear before booking, or that is out of proportion to what the late cancellation really cost you, can be challenged under consumer law. If you are unsure whether your wording is fair, check with the ACCC or your state consumer affairs body before you print it.
Count every reasonable kind of notice
Clients cancel by phone, text, voicemail, email, social media message and booking page, at all hours. Say that any of these counts, and that notice runs from when the message was sent, not when someone at the salon read it. A 10 pm text about a 3 pm appointment two days later gives 41 hours of notice, and a fair policy says so.
Then make cancelling early easy. A reminder sent three days before a long appointment, rather than one, gives clients the chance to cancel while the slot can still be filled. A line inviting them to reply to the reminder if they need to change anything does more than any fee.
Decide your exceptions in advance
Some reasons come up again and again: a sick child, a sudden illness, a car accident, a funeral. Decide now what you will do for genuine emergencies, so the call is not made in the moment by whoever answers the phone. Many salons waive the fee for a first genuine emergency and say so. Whatever you decide, apply it evenly.
Decide too what moving an appointment counts as. Most salons treat a move made with good notice as no cancellation at all, and a move inside the window as a cancellation unless the new time is within the next week.
A worked example
Moth and Marigold is a beauty salon with two therapists, doing facials, brows, waxing and lash lifts at an average of $110 a visit across about 380 appointments a month. Last quarter it averaged 14 cancellations a month inside 24 hours. It refilled 5 of those slots, so 9 a month stayed empty: $990 a month of lost time, with no rule to lean on.
The salon wrote a policy: 48 hours' notice for anything over an hour and 24 hours for everything else, half the service price for a cancellation inside the window, waived if the slot is filled, and the full price for a no-show. It began sending reminders three days before every long appointment and added the rule to each confirmation text.
The next month, cancellations inside the window fell to 8, because many clients who would have cancelled late now cancelled early. Of those 8 late slots, the waitlist filled 5. The 3 left empty cost $330, and the fees on them, at half of $110 each, came to $165. Lost time went from $990 a month to a net $165, and only 3 clients paid a fee.
Mistakes to avoid
- A paragraph instead of a sentence. "Cancellations inside 48 hours for services over an hour, or inside 24 hours for others, are charged at half price unless we fill the slot" is as long as it should get.
- Hiding it. The rule belongs in the confirmation text and on the booking page, not only on a sign the client sees after they have already booked.
- Charging the regular who never cancels. The policy is a backstop. A client who cancels late once in five years and apologises is a judgement call, and the judgement should be kind.
- Fees that outrun the loss. Charging a full $250 for a cancellation you refilled within the hour is how a policy turns into a bad review.
- Different answers from different people. Write the exceptions down so the junior and the owner give the same reply.
If clients often ring to cancel while you are with someone, put the rule in the notes of your answered line so it is stated the same way every time. On Glow Line that is one sentence on the Receptionist page; see change what the assistant knows.
What to do this week
- Look back three months and count late cancellations and how many you refilled.
- Set your notice window, or two at most, from those numbers.
- Choose one fee, and write down the waiver for a filled slot and your emergency exceptions.
- Write the rule as one sentence and add it to confirmations, reminders and the booking page.
- Read the late cancellation entry for what should count as notice.