Set Cancellation, No-Show, and Deposit Fees

When To Use This#

Use this when your business wants to charge a deposit to hold a booking, set a cancellation deadline, or charge a fee for late cancellations or no-shows on a specific service.

Before You Start#

• You need an account with the services-management permission.
• Deposits, no-show fees, and cancellation fees are Pro features of your business's

Hello Sniff subscription. While your business is still in its free trial these features are already included, so you can turn all three on. Only a business on the Starter subscription is blocked, and a save there returns an upgrade prompt. This is not a setting on the service itself and has nothing to do with the service plans and memberships you sell to customers — one subscription upgrade unlocks fees on every service. A cancellation deadline on its own (with no fee) saves on Starter, Pro, or during an active trial — only turning on an actual fee needs Pro or a trial. The one exception: if your trial has ended or your subscription was canceled, all changes are paused until you choose a plan, so even a fee-free deadline won't save until then.

• Decide your amounts and rules before you start — Hello Sniff charges exactly what you

set here, so the policy your customers experience is the one you enter.

• On a boarding service you may also see a Reservation add-ons panel on the same

service card. That panel sets the prices of the extra services families can add to a stay, and whether a category of them is required for every stay date. It is a separate setting from the deposit and fee editors covered here.

Steps#

1. Open Services and choose the service you want to configure.
2. Open the deposit, cancellation-policy, or no-show-fee editor for that service.
3. For a deposit, turn on Collect a deposit when a booking is confirmed, choose a

fixed dollar amount or a percentage of the service price, and set the refundable window — how long before the booking a deposit can still be refunded.

1. For a cancellation policy, set the Free until window — how many hours before

the booking start a customer can still cancel for free. You can pick one of the quick windows (48h, 72h, or 1 week) or type your own. Optionally turn on Charge a fee after the deadline and set a fixed amount or a percentage of the service price. There is also a Boarding 1 week · 50% preset that fills in a one-week window with a 50% fee in one tap.

1. For a no-show fee, turn on Charge a no-show fee, then pick the same two

Fee type choices offered by the other editors — a fixed dollar amount or a percentage of the service price — and enter the amount or percent.

1. Save. A confirmation appears. What you just saved starts applying at different points

depending on the setting:

• A deposit applies to bookings of that service confirmed from now on. Bookings

already confirmed are not charged a deposit after the fact. The refundable window is different: it is judged against whatever window is active at the moment a booking is cancelled, so changing it changes whether a deposit already collected on an existing booking comes back to the family or is kept.

• A cancellation deadline or a no-show fee applies to any booking of that

service going forward, including ones already on the calendar. Bookings customers already have are read against whatever policy is active at the moment they cancel or are marked a no-show, so setting a deadline for the first time, or moving it further out (a larger Free until number), can remove the self-cancel option from existing bookings right away.

What Happens Next#

The path depends on the charge type:

• Deposits are collected up front. When a booking is confirmed, the deposit charge

is created and charged to the family's saved card right away — it does not wait in the billing review step. If there's no saved card or the charge can't be captured, the deposit is left for staff to collect on the normal billing rail. A deposit you are still holding is credited against that booking's bill rather than added on top of it, so the family pays the remainder.

• The cancellation deadline controls whether a customer can cancel on their own. Once

the booking is inside the Free until window, the customer can no longer self-cancel from their portal — the cancel option is hidden and staff must handle any change. This applies whether or not you also charge a fee, so you can use a deadline on its own to stop last-minute self-cancellations.

• Cancellation and no-show fees route based on your business's automatic-fee-charge

setting. When that setting is OFF (the default), the fee is created and appears in the billing review step so staff can confirm it before the family is billed. When it's ON, the fee is confirmed automatically and runs on the normal autopay rail without a review step. A cancellation fee is applied when staff cancels a booking that is past the deadline.

• Only a confirmed booking can incur a cancellation fee. If a booking is still a

request that staff has not approved yet, cancelling it is always free, no matter how close to the start time it is.

• A deposit and a cancellation fee are not collected on top of each other. When the

service collects a deposit and the booking is cancelled too late for that deposit to be refunded, you keep the deposit, and that kept amount counts toward the late-cancellation fee. If the fee comes to more than the deposit you kept, only the difference is charged; if the deposit covers the fee, nothing further is charged. When the booking is cancelled early enough for the deposit to be refunded, the deposit goes back to the family and the cancellation fee is assessed on its own terms.

Troubleshooting#

• If the editor is missing, confirm you have the services-management permission and that

you opened the right service.

• If a save shows an upgrade prompt, there are two possible reasons. Either your business

is on the Starter subscription and turning on an actual fee needs Pro — in that case a cancellation deadline with no fee still saves, and the upgrade happens once for the whole business, with nothing to change on the service card itself. Or your trial has ended, or your subscription was canceled, and changes are paused until you choose a plan — in that case no service change saves, including a deadline with no fee, until you pick a plan. A business still in an active trial has these features and won't see either prompt.

• If an amount won't save, confirm a fixed amount is greater than $0 (or a percent is

greater than 0) when enabling the fee.

• If a customer says they can't cancel a booking themselves, check whether it is past the

service's Free until deadline — after that point, only staff can make the change.

• If you turned on a no-show fee and it never appears, check whether this service's

attendance no-show pricing already charges for a no-show. When it does, that existing charge stands on its own and the no-show fee you set here is skipped, so nothing extra is added.