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Setting up a Cancellation Policy

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Practice Better gives you several tools to establish and enforce your cancellation policy, helping you reduce last-minute cancellations, late rescheduling, and no-shows. You can use any of the following options individually or in combination.

In this article:

Setting Up a Disclaimer or Terms & Conditions

A disclaimer or Terms & Conditions statement appears on your booking page. Clients must acknowledge your terms before they can finalize a booking request, making this a lightweight way to set expectations before a session is even confirmed.

  1. Go to My Practice > Disclaimers and click the Fast Action Button in the bottom-right to create a new disclaimer with your cancellation policy text.

     
  2. Go to My Practice > My Services and click Edit on the service you want to configure.
     
  3. Locate the Terms and Conditions field and select your saved disclaimer from the dropdown.

     
  4. Click Save Changes.

📍 Note: You must create at least one disclaimer under My Practice > Disclaimers before it will appear as a selectable option in a service's Terms and Conditions field.

Learn more about Requiring Clients to Accept Terms & Conditions Before Booking →

Setting Up a Waiver That Requires a Signature

For stronger acknowledgment, you can create a form that includes your cancellation policy and requires a client signature before submission. This form can be attached directly to your booking pages, sent automatically after a booking is confirmed, or sent manually at any time.

  1. Create a form that includes your cancellation policy language, and add a required signature field. Clients must sign and submit the form to complete it.
    Learn more about Working with Forms → 
     
  2. Attach the form to your services so clients encounter it automatically in your booking flow.
    Learn more about Requiring Forms During the Booking Process → 

Restricting Clients from Canceling and Rescheduling

You can limit your clients' ability to cancel or reschedule sessions, either completely or within a defined window before the session time. When a client attempts to make a change within your restricted period, they'll see a notice stating "Updates cannot be made to this session," along with any policy details you've written.

📍 Note: Cancellation and rescheduling restrictions are always controlled together. You can't set a different time window for one without applying the same window to the other.

Setting a Global Restriction

Your global cancellation and rescheduling policy applies to all services by default.

  1. Go to My Schedule > Booking & Cancellation Settings and locate the Cancellation Options section.
     
  2. Click the checkbox to enable Display a cancellation policy when clients cancel or reschedule sessions.

     
  3. Enter your policy text in the Cancellation policy field.

     
  4. Select your preferred time frame from the Prevent clients from canceling or rescheduling dropdown:
    • Don't prevent — allows cancellations and rescheduling at any time.
    • Always — blocks all cancellations and rescheduling.
    • Hours before session: any value from 1 through 12.
    • Days before session: any value from 1 through 7.
       
  5. Click Save Changes.

📍 Note: The cancellation policy text field has a 500-character limit. Your cancellation notice is visible to clients in both the Client Portal and session-related email notification links.

Setting a Service-Specific Restriction

You can override the global policy for individual services. This is useful when certain services require stricter or more lenient terms than your default.

  1. Go to My Practice > My Services.
  2. Click Edit on the service you want to configure.
  3. Scroll to the Booking Options section.
  4. Uncheck Use my default cancellation and rescheduling restrictions.
  5. Set the cancellation and rescheduling period and enter a custom policy message for that service.
  6. Click Save Changes.

📍 Note: Service-level settings take precedence over your global policy for that service.

Processing a Cancellation Fee for No-Shows

To charge clients a fee when they don't show up for a session, you'll need an active payment processor connected to your Practice Better account. Practice Better Payments supports this feature.

You can collect payment proactively by requiring payment at booking, or by saving a client's billing information on file to charge later. If payment wasn't collected at booking, you can create an invoice and process the fee after the session.

Learn more about Marking Sessions as No-Shows → 

📍 Note: If a client has already paid in full for a session, a refund is not processed automatically when a no-show fee is applied. How you handle that situation is at your discretion as a practitioner.

Enabling a No-Show Fee

  1. Go to My Schedule > Booking & Cancellation Settings.
     
  2. Under Cancellation Options, check Enable cancellation charge for no-show sessions.

     
  3. Select the fee type: Fixed Fee or Percentage of Session fee.

     
  4. Enter the amount or percentage in the field.

     
  5. Click Save Changes.

Once this is configured, you can apply the fee when marking individual sessions as no-shows.

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