Sometimes cancellations can't be avoided. Even with the best systems and communications in place, clients who become unwell at the last minute or realise they have double booked themselves can happen.

As these are common issues practices face every day, we have created this guide to share some helpful ways to manage appointment cancellations when they occur.

This article includes the following:

1. Appointment cancellation rules

2. Calendar

3. Waiting list

4. Reports

5. Add Ons

6. Charge cancellation fee for online bookings

Cancellation Rules are a great way to reduce admin time spent on cancellations. With cancellation rules, you can automatically generate an invoice for a cancelled appointment and/or notify staff of the cancellation.

We have an in-depth, step-by-step guide on the Appointment cancellation rules.

Cancelling an appointment:

For reporting purposes, you must mark an appointment as cancelled in the calendar appointment so that the information will appear in your reports.

​1. Double-click on the appointment to edit

2. Check Cancel

3. Select a cancellation reason, and add notes as required

4. Click Save and then Save

5. The appointment will move out of the calendar into Changed Appointments

💡 Notes can be added alongside every cancellation reason, this option is ideal if you want to capture more detail about the cancellation

Here is a step-by-step guide on cancelling an appointment

Rescheduling an appointment:

Sometimes, a client cancels on short notice, and they will often ask to reschedule. We recommend you do this accurately in coreplus to ensure your data and changed appointment log is accurately maintained and your client receives their SMS reminder for their rescheduled appointment.

Here is a detailed help guide on how to Reschedule an appointment

While some last-minute cancellations won't allow you to fill in the appointment slot within such a short time frame, some will.
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The waitlist is a great way to fill in these appointment slots quickly.
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Here is a step-by-step guide on setting up your waitlist

There are also quick and easy ways to contact your waitlist

Knowing how many cancellations you have in the previous month and identifying any trends that may be occurring is a great way to begin to combat the issue.
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The Cancellation Report is a great way to get insight into any initiatives you and your team could implement to ensure clients commit to and attend their appointments.

Last minute cancellation due to illness? Your client can't make it into the practice?
coreplus now has its own telehealth solution that allows you to have video conferences online with your clients, Telehealth by coreplus!
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Here is a full breakdown of how to enable and set up Telehealth by coreplus:
​Getting started with Telehealth by coreplus

It can be very frustrating when a client makes a booking online and then cancels it on short notice or no-show, making it difficult to seek compensation. With our Pin Payments add-on, you can now request the credit card details of clients at the time of booking.

The Pin Payments add-on allows you to add a field called 'Credit Card' in the booking form of your client portal. You can make this field mandatory so that whenever a client books an appointment via the client portal, they'll have to enter their credit card details, which you can later charge if they cancel on short notice.

Please, see here how to take cancellation fee for bookings via the Client Portal

You may also be interested in the following:

📝 Features of Telehealth by coreplus
📝 Cancel, no show, or delete an appointment
📝 Scheduling client appointment reminders