No show without deposit
M
Melissa OShea
Hi,
I am contacting you following advice from the support line, as I would like to suggest an improvement to the Phorest system.
Numerous times this year, we have encountered an issue when a client who has agreed to our cancellation policy fails to attend an appointment. We have their card details securely stored on file and, in accordance with our cancellation policy, we need to charge the no-show fee. However, when no deposit was initially taken against the booking, the No Show option does not appear.
At present, our only option is to process the appointment as though the client attended and charge the card that way. This creates a problem because the client can then receive correspondence such as a “Thank you for your visit” receipt and potentially a request to review their service, despite never having attended.
Our long-term clients are familiar with our cancellation policy, and we feel it is important that we can enforce it consistently. However, we are currently faced with an awkward choice: either charge the client knowing that they may receive completely inappropriate correspondence, or absorb what can sometimes be a significant cost ourselves to avoid the possibility of the client receiving the wrong communication and subsequently leaving negative feedback on Google or elsewhere.
Would it be possible to develop a No Show charging option that is available even when no deposit was taken at the time of booking? Ideally, the appointment could simply be marked as a no-show, the agreed cancellation/no-show charge processed against the card on file, and the system would then prevent any “thank you for your visit” or review-request communications from being triggered.
It seems like a fairly basic but really important functionality for a salon software system, particularly when so many businesses operate with cancellation policies and card details stored securely on file.
This is something we have encountered repeatedly this year, and it would make a genuine difference to both the smooth running of the salon and the client experience.
There are a number of other areas I feel similar improvements could be made to the software, and I would be very happy to share further suggestions if there is a suitable channel for submitting them.
I would really appreciate it if this could be passed to the relevant product/development team for consideration.
Many thanks,
Melissa @ The Beauty Room
C
Caitlin Kelly
We also do not take deposits at our salon so for cancellations or no shows, we create a whole new ticket for the client on the purchase screen on the left side and we have a service called "Cancellation Policy Charge" and we create the ticket with that service and delete the original service they were down for and manually type in the amount due and run it like normal. Then we cancel the appointment on the schedule and type in that it was cancelled/no showed. It doesn't stop the email being sent but then it shows up as a cancellation as the service instead of the original service and it opens the space back up on the schedule. Then on the client's profile there is record that there was a cancellation and the original service appointment they were down for.