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Taking bookings
Cancellations, reschedules and no-shows
What a customer can do themselves, what only you can do, which emails go out, and why a reschedule is not a single action.
A booking has five states: pending, confirmed, cancelled, completed and no-show. Most of what follows is about who can move a booking between them.
What the customer can do
Every confirmation email carries a link to manage the booking. What that link offers depends on your cancellation window β the number of hours before the appointment after which self-service cancellation stops.
- Outside the window: the customer can cancel themselves. You get a notification and the slot frees up immediately.
- Inside the window: they are directed to contact you instead.
Set the window to zero and customers can cancel right up to the appointment. Set it to 24 and the last day is yours to manage.
A reschedule is a cancellation plus a new booking
There is no single "move my booking" action for customers. Rescheduling means cancelling and booking again.
This has one consequence worth knowing: the customer does not receive a "rescheduled" email. They receive a cancellation for the old time and a fresh confirmation for the new one. Your team gets a reschedule notification.
If you move a booking yourself in the calendar, the customer is not automatically told the time changed β tell them.
Pending versus confirmed
With auto-confirm on, bookings arrive confirmed and the customer is told so.
With it off, bookings arrive pending and the customer is told nothing is agreed until you accept. This is the right setting when you need to check whether you can actually do the job, and the wrong one if nobody is watching the dashboard β a pending booking is a customer waiting.
No-shows
You mark a no-show yourself, from the booking's status in the calendar. It is a record, not an automation: nothing is charged, and no email goes to the customer.
Use it if you want the history. A customer's no-show count is visible on their record.
Which emails go out
| Event | Customer gets | Your team gets |
|---|---|---|
| New booking | Confirmation | Notification |
| Customer cancels | Cancellation | Notification |
| You cancel | Cancellation | β |
| Reschedule | Cancellation + new confirmation | Reschedule notification |
| No-show marked | Nothing | Nothing |
Staff notifications are per-person preferences, so two people in the same business can want different things.
There is a master switch that pauses all customer emails for a business. It stops confirmations and reminders alike, so it is for genuine pauses, not quiet periods.
Worked example
A salon with a 12-hour cancellation window.
- A customer books Friday 14:00 on Wednesday. They get a confirmation.
- Thursday morning they cancel through the email link β outside the window, so it goes through. The slot reopens instantly and the stylist is notified.
- Another customer cancels at Friday 09:00 β inside the window. The page tells them to ring the salon. The receptionist cancels it from the dashboard, and the customer gets a cancellation email.
Limits
- No customer-facing reschedule. It is cancel and rebook, with the two emails that implies.
- Moving a booking in the calendar does not email the customer.
- No-show marking charges nothing β there is no card on file, because Bookodile does not process payments.
- The cancellation window is one number for the whole business. It cannot differ per service.