Prevent Last Minute Cancellations

Modified on Fri, 30 Sep, 2022 at 3:17 PM

Once you have allowed clients to request services online through the Client Portal, you also have some settings to limit when clients can request services and cancel services online, called "Booking Restrictions". The "Company Cancellation Restriction" setting prevents clients from cancelling services online within a given number of “hours before the service start time” or “days before the service date”.

You can set up booking / cancel restrictions in three places:

at company level (shown here)
“service item group” level and
“service item” level

Tip: When using "Hours" the restriction is on a rolling 24-hour clock. For example, if the "Company Cancellation Restriction" is set to 24 hours, at 4 pm today your clients would NOT be able to cancel a service scheduled for 3PM tomorrow. However, "Days" resets at midnight, so if the "Company Cancellation Restriction" is set to 1 day, your client has until 11:59PM today to cancel a service scheduled for any time tomorrow.

The coordinating setting, Service Cancellation Cut Off Time, overwrites the standard midnight cutoff and so you can set own cutoff time for cancellations, for example 9PM.

How do I allow clients to cancel online?

You will need to toggle Cancel Services to ON to enable clients to cancel bookings online. You can turn the settings ON and OFF at any time. Adjusting the settings either provides clients with a "Cancel" services button when they log into the portal or removes it, preventing them from cancelling services.

Note: With Booking & Cancel Restrictions, the more specific restriction overrides the more general restriction, so the "Service" level setting overrides all other settings, the "Service Item Group" level overrides "Company". If you want the same Booking Restriction for ALL Services, only set the "Company" Booking Restriction and remove other settings.

However, if you have some services for which you'd prefer more notice for requests and cancellations (for example Boarding or Overnights), you can override the Booking & Cancel Restrictions for those services at the "Service Item Group" or "Service Item" level, leaving the rest of your services to be controlled by your "Company" Booking Restriction settings.

How Can I Prevent Clients from Canceling Last Minute with Cancellation Restrictions?

Navigation: Admin > Settings > Service Request Settings > Restrictions

In "Company Cancellation Restriction", enter a number, then select “hours" or "days”.
- “Hours” prevents Online Service Cancellations within a number of hours before service start time.
- “Days” prevents Online Service Cancellations within a number of days before service start time.
Click "Update."

Set a restriction on when clients can cancel bookings in the Portal in dog daycare software

With “Company Cancellation Restriction” set to “1 day before cut off time”, below is an example that shows the Cancel button is greyed out when the client attempts to cancel a “same day” service.

The Portal stops a client cancelling when the company cancellation restriction is set in dog walkers software