Rescheduling, cancelling and no-shows
Updated
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Sidebar: Calendar or Appointments. Both open the same appointment; the calendar is faster for moving one, the list is faster for finding one.
Rescheduling
Drag the appointment to its new slot on the calendar, or open it and edit the date and time.
Two things to know:
- Reminders already sent are not sent again. Alaga records each reminder once per appointment, so moving a booking after its 24-hour reminder has gone out does not trigger a replacement. Tell the client yourself.
- Moving is not cancel-and-rebook. The appointment keeps its history, its notes and its place in any recurring series. Cancelling and creating a new one loses that, so drag rather than recreate.
Cancelling
Open the appointment and cancel it. The slot is freed immediately and the booking stays on the record with a cancelled status — it is not deleted, so your reports still show it happened.
Whether the client is told depends on your notification settings under Business Settings → Notifications. If cancellation emails are off, cancelling is silent and you need to contact them.
Late-cancellation fees
Set these under Business Settings → Payment Settings → Booking Policies. You choose:
- Whether fees are on at all
- A cancellation window in hours — cancellations inside this window are late
- The fee: a flat amount, a percentage of the booking, or the daily rate
The window is the number of hours before the appointment starts. A 24-hour window means a 9:00 am Tuesday appointment becomes chargeable from 9:00 am Monday.
Charging the fee is a decision you make, not something Alaga does to your clients automatically. Set the policy, then apply it when you judge it appropriate.
No-shows
Mark a no-show from the appointment itself. Alaga does not detect no-shows for you — nothing is marked automatically, so an appointment nobody attended sits as confirmed until someone changes it.
That matters more than it sounds:
- Your no-show numbers in reporting are only as good as your habit of marking them.
- An appointment left as confirmed still looks like completed business in the day's view.
Get into the habit of clearing the day at closing: complete what happened, no-show what did not.
What each status means
| Status | Means |
|---|---|
| Pending | Booked but not yet confirmed |
| Confirmed | Going ahead |
| In progress | The pet is with you now |
| Completed | Done — this is what feeds revenue |
| Cancelled | Called off, by either side |
| No-show | The client did not arrive and did not tell you |
Only completed appointments count as delivered work. If your revenue looks low, the usual cause is a day that was never completed rather than anything wrong with the figures.
Recurring appointments
Cancelling one appointment in a series affects only that one. To change or end the whole series, use the recurring options on the appointment — see Recurring and standing appointments.