Marking a no-show and what happens next

When a patient does not turn up, mark the appointment as a no-show so the record is right and the follow-up machinery can do its job.

Marking it

1. Click the appointment on the Calendar.
2. In the drawer, set Status to No show.
3. Press Save changes. The appointment is hatched and shows a red No show label.

What follows automatically

• The booking reservation fee is kept. If the patient paid one when they booked, it stays with you: nothing is refunded automatically. Nothing else is charged to the patient's card.
• Day status is cleared. Any Arrived or Ready marker is removed.
• The slot can go to your waitlist. With Automatically offer freed slots to the waitlist switched on (on the Waitlist page), the freed time is offered to matching waitlist patients with a claim link. Very short-notice slots are skipped: the Don't offer within (hours) setting on the same page decides how close to the start is too close. See Waitlist auto-fill and claim links.
• A no-show follow-up message. If the automation and its channel are enabled, a follow-up can send between two and 26 hours after the appointment starts, subject to the patient's messaging preferences. See Reminders and lifecycle messages.
• Repeat no-shows are flagged. An alert is added when the patient reaches your clinic's missed-visit threshold within the last 12 months. The default is two missed visits, and several treatments in one visit count as one visit.
• Bookings that relied on this visit are flagged. If your clinic enforces a prerequisite and the missed appointment was a consultation that another booking needed first, an alert is added to the patient asking you to check before that visit. Nothing is cancelled for you.

Marked in error?

If the patient appears after all, restore any incorrectly marked treatment to Confirmed and press Save changes; after treatment, use Mark appointment completed to complete the visit. Their booking reservation fee comes off the bill as usual.