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Managing Your Booking & Cancellation Settings

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Your Booking & Cancellation Settings control how clients schedule, reschedule, and cancel sessions across your practice. Configuring these settings thoughtfully up front helps your calendar run the way you want, with less manual back-and-forth.

In this article:

Accessing Booking & Cancellation Settings

Navigate to My Schedule > Booking & Cancellation Settings, or go to All Settings & Preferences > Bookings & Cancellations.

After making changes to your settings on this page, click Save Changes near the top-right to conserve your updates.

Session Notifications

Keep clients informed and reduce no-shows with automated session reminders. Enable Send session reminders for upcoming sessions to activate this feature. Depending on your plan, you can send up to three reminders per upcoming session.

Reminders can be sent by email, text (SMS), or both. You also have the option to send yourself an email reminder for each session.

Optionally enable sending confirmation and reminder notifications to clients who don’t have an active client portal. By default, confirmation and reminder notifications are not sent to uninvited clients.

Enable this option to pre-select the "Send confirmation and reminder notifications" checkbox when scheduling sessions.

💡Tip: The Session Booked confirmation email to clients contains an .ics file for clients to easily save the session details in their calendar of choice.

SMS Text Reminders

On the Pro Plan and higher, you can send SMS reminders in addition to, or instead of, email reminders. Under Delivery method in the Add/Edit Reminder popup, select one of the following:

  • Text messages (SMS) and email: Both a text message and email are sent to your client.
  • Text messages (SMS) only: Practice Better attempts to send a text to the mobile number on file. If delivery fails, an email reminder is sent instead.

Learn more about Managing Text (SMS) Reminders in Practice Better → 

Sending Reminders Manually

Go to My Schedule > My Bookings, then select Send reminder from the More Options menu (3 dots) next to the session.

Availability Options

These toggles control how your availability interacts with client requests and your external calendars.

  • Request sessions outside of regular availability (one-on-one sessions): Allows clients to book on days where you haven't set up availability. On those days, Practice Better displays a default 9 AM to 5 PM window.

     
  • Request sessions regardless of conflicting events in external calendars: By default, connected Google or Apple calendar events marked "Busy" block client bookings. Enabling this option lets clients book over those events.

The following two options will appear when “Request sessions regardless of conflicting events in external calendars” is toggled off:

  • Exclude external calendar all-day events: By default, all-day events marked "Free/Available" don't block bookings. Enabling this excludes all-day events from availability regardless of their status.

     
  • Add buffer time to events in my external calendars: Reserves time before and/or after external calendar events so clients can't book directly adjacent to them. Set Buffer time before and Buffer time after independently.

📍 Note: For example, if your buffer is set to 30 minutes before and you have an external event from 10 AM to 11 AM, clients won't see any slots between 9:30 AM and 11 AM.

Availability Display

These settings control how available times are presented to clients on your Bookings Page.

  • Show one-on-one availability in increments of: Sets the interval between displayed time slots (e.g., 60 minutes, displayed as 9:00 AM → 10:00 AM → 11:00 AM).

Rolling Start Times

Enable Display rolling start times to show overlapping start times rather than fixed blocks. 

For a 30-minute service with 15-minute increments, clients would see:

  • 10:00 to 10:30 AM
  • 10:15 to 10:45 AM
  • 10:30 to 11:00 AM
  • 10:45 to 11:15 AM

📍 Note: Rolling start times may reduce the total number of visible slots if a client selects a time in the middle of your availability period.

Limiting Gaps Between Bookings

For one-on-one sessions, Practice Better can recommend times adjacent to your existing events to minimize gaps in your schedule.

  • Limit gaps between bookings (one-on-one sessions): Turns this feature on and displays the options below.
  • Recommend times adjacent to personal events: Prioritizes slots next to your Practice Better calendar events.
  • Recommend times adjacent to external events: Prioritizes slots next to events in your connected Google calendar.
  • Maximum preferred gap between sessions: Sets the largest gap Practice Better will try to close (e.g., 0 minutes). You can choose from 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, or 30 minutes in this drop-down. 

Learn more about Limiting Gaps Between Bookings →  

Make Me Look Busy

Enable Make me look busy (one-on-one sessions) to limit the number of available slots shown to clients on a given day.

  • Percentage of available slots to display: For example, if 10 slots are available and this is set to 20%, only 2 slots are shown. Select a percentage from 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, or 90 in this drop-down. 
  • Minimum available slots to display: Guarantees at least this many slots are visible, even after the percentage is applied. Select a number from 1-10 in this drop-down. 
  • Distribute slots: Choose whether the visible slots are pulled from earlier times, later times, or spread evenly throughout your availability window.

📍 Note: If Limit Gaps Between Bookings is also enabled, slots adjacent to existing events are prioritized before the distribution rule applies.

Booking Restrictions

Use booking restrictions to control how early or how far in advance a client can request a session. These options apply globally to services set to Use Default booking options within the service’s settings. To understand how these options work with team members and shared services, review the section below.

Restrict Clients From Booking

This dropdown sets the minimum notice required before a session. 

Options range from:

  • No restriction (any time before) — the default.
  • Less than 1, 2, 3, 6, or 12 hours before.
  • Less than 1 day before.
  • Less than 2, 3, 4, or 5 days before.
  • Less than 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 weeks before.

📍 Note: For example, if you set this to 3 hours and it's currently 1:00 PM, Practice Better presents time slots starting at 4:00 PM.

Allow Clients to Book

This dropdown sets how far in the future a client can book. 

The options are:

  • Anytime in the future.

     
  • Within a rolling date range: Reveals a Number of rolling days field where you can enter a numeric value (up to 4 digits).

📍 Note: For example, if you set this to 7 days and it's currently January 1, clients can't book after January 7.

Setting Different Booking Restrictions per Practitioner on a Team Plan

On a Team Plan, booking restriction fields on a shared service, such as advance notice, booking window, and availability increments can be configured in two ways. The approach you choose determines whether team members share the same restrictions or each apply their own. 

Any booking restriction field set to a static value applies to all team members with access to that shared service. Setting a specific advance notice period, buffer time, or other restriction at the service level overrides individual practitioner settings for everyone on that service.

To give each team member their own effective booking restriction settings, set restriction fields within Service settings to Use Default rather than a static value. 

When set to Use Default, each practitioner's own global defaults apply, so two practitioners sharing the same service can have different advance notice periods. Practitioners set their own global defaults in My Schedule > Booking & Cancellation Settings > Booking Restrictions.

  • Use Default: Each practitioner's individual global settings apply. Two practitioners sharing the same service can have different effective restrictions.
  • Static value: The value set on the service applies uniformly to all team members with access to it, overriding their individual defaults.

To give each team member their own effective booking restrictions, set the relevant fields to Use Default on the service, then have each practitioner configure their own global defaults.

Setting a Service Field to Use Default

  1. Go to My Practice > My Services and Edit the service you want to update.
  2. Locate the Booking Options section.
  3. For each restriction field, such as Restrict clients from booking or Allow clients to book, select Use Default from the dropdown.
  4. Click Save Changes.

📍 Note: If you update a field on a shared service, a warning will appear letting you know the change applies to all team members with access to that service. You can still save; this is a reminder, not a restriction.

Setting Individual Global Booking Defaults

Each practitioner on your team sets their own global defaults separately. These defaults apply wherever a service field is set to Use Default.

  1. Log in as the individual practitioner.
  2. Go to My Schedule > Booking & Cancellation Settings > Booking Restrictions.
  3. Configure the preferred advance notice, buffer time, and booking window settings.
  4. Click Save Changes.

✅ Once each practitioner has saved their own global defaults, and the service's settings are set to Use Default, clients booking that shared service will see availability and restrictions based on each practitioner's individual configuration.

Session Limits

Session limits control how many one-on-one sessions clients can request within a given hour, day, week, or month. These limits apply to self-booked sessions only; they don't apply when you book on behalf of clients from your portal.

Daily Session Limits

Set an overall cap using the Maximum sessions per day dropdown. Options range from No restrictions to 1 through 20 sessions per day. This limit applies across all services.

Service-Specific Limits

Check Enable session limits per service to open the Add Session Limit popup, where you can configure:

  • Label: A name for this limit (e.g., "Follow-up 2 per hour").
  • Select services: One or more services this limit applies to.
  • Per hour, Per day, Per week, Per month: Enter any combination of these values.

Click Done, then Save Changes at the top of the page. Use the Add another button to create additional limits.

📍 Note: Both confirmed sessions and pending session requests count toward your limits.

Bookings Page Options

  • Require a phone number when clients book online/video chat sessions: Enable this option to make the phone number field in your public booking pages mandatory when clients book virtual telehealth sessions. When the session delivery method is “phone” the phone number is required by default. For in-person sessions, the phone number field is not required.

     
  • Hide referral and note to practitioner questions: Removes the "How did you hear about us" and note-to-practitioner fields from your Bookings Pages.

     
  • Allow clients to book on behalf of family members: With this enabled, clients see an optional "I'm booking for a family member" checkbox during the Contact Information step in your Bookings Pages. Disable this to hide it.

     
  • Redirect URL: Customizes the page clients land on after completing a booking request. This can also be set individually per service, package, program, or custom bookings page. Learn more about How to Use Redirect URLs in Practice Better → 

Calendar Options

Hide Personal Event Details When Team Members View My Calendar

When enabled, team members with read-only access to your calendar see your personal events displayed as "Busy" only, without any additional details. Team members who have permission to create sessions and events on your behalf will still see full event details regardless of this setting.

Enable One-Click Bookings From My Calendar

When enabled, you can book a session directly from an open slot on your calendar with a single click, as an alternative entry point.

Jump to Week View When Selecting Days in Mini Calendar

When enabled, clicking a date in the mini calendar (the small calendar widget used for navigation) automatically switches your main calendar to Week view centered on that date.

First Day of Week

Sets which day your calendar treats as the start of the week. The default is Sunday.

Default Calendar View (Web Portal)

Sets the view your calendar loads into by default when you log in to the web portal. The default is Week, and you can select from Agenda, Day, Week, or Month. Team accounts also have Team (1-day) and Team (3-day) views.

Auto-Scroll to Time

Sets the time your calendar automatically scrolls to when it loads. The default is 9:00 am. Leave this field empty to auto-scroll to the current time instead.

Calendar Time Increments

Sets how finely your calendar grid is divided. Options are 10, 15, or 30 minutes. The default is 30 minutes.

Session Naming Convention

Controls how sessions and session requests are labeled in your calendar. 

Options are:

  • Session and client initial (e.g., Initial Consultation (M. Smith))
  • Session and client full name (e.g., Initial Consultation (Mary Smith))
  • Session only (e.g., Initial Consultation)
  • Client full name and session (e.g., Mary Smith (Initial Consultation))
  • Client initial and session (e.g., M. Smith (Initial Consultation))
  • Client full name only (e.g., Mary Smith)
  • Client initial only (e.g., M. Smith)

Default Task Color

Set the color used to display tasks on your calendar. Click the color swatch to choose a custom color, or enter a hex code directly. The default is #ffa500.

Cancellation Options

Setting a Cancellation and Rescheduling Policy

  1. Check Display a cancellation policy when clients cancel or reschedule sessions. This reveals a text field for your policy copy.

     
  2. Enter your policy text. This field has a 500-character limit.
     
  3. From the Prevent clients from cancelling or rescheduling dropdown, choose one of the following:
    • Always — blocks all cancellations and rescheduling.
    • Don't prevent — allows cancellations and rescheduling at any time.
    • Hours before session: Any value from 1 through 12.
    • Days before session: Any value from 1 through 7.
       
  4. Click Save Changes at the top of the page.

📍 Note: This policy applies to both the Client Portal and session-related email notification links. When a client hits a restriction, they'll see "Updates cannot be made to this session," along with your policy text if one is set.

Learn more about Setting Up a Cancellation Policy → 

Enabling a No-Show Fee

Check Enable cancellation charge for no-show sessions, then select a fee type:

  • Fixed Fee.
  • Percentage of Session fee.

Enter the amount or percentage, then click Save Changes at the top of the page. A payment processor, such as Practice Better Payments, is required to process this fee.

Learn more about Marking Sessions as No-Shows →

Out-of-Office Notification

Set a message that appears on your Bookings Page when you're unavailable, so clients stay informed without you needing to manually disable booking access.

Learn more about Setting an Out-of-Office Notification →

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