How to set up booking and cancellation policies for your business?

Ever had a client cancel at the last minute or not show up? Want to control how close to a session clients can book or cancel—or automatically cancel classes with no bookings? With Fitli, you can set customizable booking and cancellation policies to save time and keep your operations running smoothly. These policies apply to client actions only—your business can always book or cancel clients as needed.

Fitli allows you to set up 5 pre-set business policies:

• Class Booking: Booking policy for group sessions/classes

• Class Cancellation: Cancellation policy for group sessions/classes

• Appointment Booking: Booking policy for private sessions/appointments

• Appointment Cancellation: Cancellation policy for private sessions/appointments

• Automatic Class Cancellation: Automatically cancels group classes with no bookings within a set timeframe (default: 24 hours before a session starts)

By default, all these policies are disabled unless you opt to turn them on.

Configuration Overview:

You'll notice that each booking policy has a "start" and an "end", or as we call it, a booking "window". This way, you can be very specific about when your clients can/can't book and/or cancel.

To control the booking window, click “Edit” beside the policy. On the + Edit Policy modal, enter an amount of time in the "From" section, and an amount of time in the "To" section. Or, if you leave these blank, the booking option will default to unlimited booking.

Example 1 - Let's say you wanted to limit clients to ONLY be able to cancel an appointment MORE than 24 hours before the appointment starts.

To do this, set the policy as "active", click “Edit”, enter 24 on the cancellation window field, make sure that hours is selected on the pulldown then hit SAVE.

This way, a client can ONLY cancel greater than 24 hours before the session starts.

Example 2 - Let's say you wanted to set the appointment booking window to only allow clients to book MORE than 24 hours in advance, but LESS than 96 hours.

To do this, set the policy as "active" and enter the "FROM" window to 96 hours, and the "TO" to 24 hours.

To do this, set the policy as "active", click “Edit”, enter 96 on the "FROM" field and 24 on the “TO” field, make sure that hours is selected on the pulldowns then hit SAVE.

This way, a client could ONLY book between 24 hours and 96 hours prior to the appointment. (Or greater than one day, and less than 4 days).

These policies will NEVER impact your ability as a business to book and/or cancel clients out of classes or appointments. You can override the policies, set a late cancellation fee or allow your clients to cancel during the cancellation period without refunding their session credit. You can also set custom booking policies by service as well.

Here are some helpful guides:

What Options are there to Handle Late Cancellations?

How to Set Custom Booking & Cancellation Policies by Service?

To know more about Automatic Class Cancellation policy, click HERE for a detailed guide.

That's about it! Any questions? Chat with us or send us an email to support@fitli.com.