---
title: Appointment statuses, cancellations and no-shows
slug: appointment-statuses-explained
category: Appointments & Scheduling
url: https://alaga.io/help/article/appointment-statuses-explained
audiences: all
updated: 2026-09-13
source: Alaga Help Center
---

# Appointment statuses, cancellations and no-shows
Every appointment sits in one of six statuses: **Pending**, **Confirmed**, **In Progress**, **Completed**, **Cancelled** or **No Show**. On the calendar's status filter, Pending is labelled Unconfirmed.

## Moving an appointment forward

The buttons you see depend on where the appointment is:

- Pending — **Confirm** or **Cancel**
- Confirmed — **Start** or **Cancel**
- In Progress — **Complete**
- Completed, Cancelled, No Show — no forward action; these are end states

Two guards catch people out:

- You cannot confirm an appointment that has no staff member assigned.
- You cannot start a grooming appointment until the grooming card is filled in. The error lists exactly what is missing.

**Complete** opens the completion screen so you can add retail products to the visit before closing it out.

## Undoing a status change

Business owners, and anyone granted the "undo status changes" permission, get reverse actions: **Undo Check-In** (back to Confirmed), **Reopen** (a completed appointment back to In Progress), **Undo No-Show** and **Reinstate** (a cancelled appointment back to Confirmed).

Reopen disappears once the appointment has been paid — reopening paid work would desynchronise the invoice.

## Cancelling

Cancelling always asks for a reason: client requested, client no-show, staff unavailable, scheduling conflict, weather, pet illness, emergency, or other, plus optional detail. The reason is what makes the Cancellation and No-Show report useful.

When an appointment is cancelled, Alaga automatically looks at the waitlist for that slot and offers it to waiting clients. See [Using the waitlist](/help/article/managing-the-waitlist).

**Cancellation fees apply to reservations, not appointments.** The Cancellation Policy under Business Settings, Facility Settings governs boarding and daycare cancellations. Cancelling an appointment does not charge a fee.

## No-shows

Two routes:

- **Automatically.** Every 30 minutes Alaga looks for appointments still marked Confirmed whose end time passed more than 30 minutes ago, and flips them to No Show.
- **By hand.** Edit the appointment and set the status to No Show.

There is no separate "mark no-show" button — it is a status like any other.

## Recurring series

An appointment that is part of a series gets a **Series** menu with: modify the recurrence schedule, confirm this and all future appointments, cancel future appointments, or cancel this and all future. Changing one occurrence on its own is just a normal edit.