Letting patients change or cancel their own appointment

If your appointment email includes Manage your booking, a patient can use that link to move or cancel their appointment without needing a password. Patients signed in to their account can also manage eligible bookings. You decide how much notice they must give, and whether cancelling online is allowed at all.

Where the settings live

As the clinic owner, go to Settings, Clinic, Online booking policy. Press Save booking policy after any change.

• Reschedule notice (days) and Cancellation notice (days). Inside that window the buttons disappear and the patient is asked to call you instead. Both start at three days.
• Let patients change their own appointment time and Let patients cancel their own appointment. Both are on to begin with.
• Changes allowed per booking. After this many moves, that patient is asked to call you rather than moving it again. The default is two.

These settings also cover patients signed in to their account, so switching one off takes it away from patients who may already be using it.

Should you allow cancellations online?

A cancellation made in good time can leave a future slot you can refill. If waitlist auto-fill and its messaging are enabled, eligible freed slots can be offered to matching patients. A no-show recorded after the appointment starts cannot usually be offered that way.

What happens when a patient changes something

• They can only pick times you are genuinely free, exactly as with a new booking, so your shifts, buffers and minimum notice all still apply.
• The old time can be offered to matching waitlist patients when auto-fill and the move follow-up are available and enabled.
• If move notifications are available and enabled, the patient can receive the old and new times. Appointment moved email and Appointment moved (SMS) start off and are enabled separately under Settings, Messaging. Patient messaging preferences still apply. A clinic move email also needs your contact email.
• Future reminders use the new date. Check with the patient if a reminder has already gone out, especially when moving the appointment earlier.

Things it will not do

• A visit with more than one treatment moves as one. The patient picks a new start and the whole visit moves together, so the treatments stay back to back. The one exception is a visit that includes a consultation which must come a set number of hours before the rest: that cannot be moved online, and the patient is asked to call you. They can still cancel the whole visit.
• Cancelling never moves money by itself. If your fee-return rule is enabled and the patient cancelled with enough notice to earn their booking reservation fee back, the page tells them you will return it, we try to notify you, and it appears on your Finance page until you have. The refund itself is always yours to issue, from your own Stripe dashboard. Check the amount shown: a fully prepaid visit can have more to return than its reservation fee.
• An unpaid booking cannot be changed. If someone is midway through paying, the page says it is waiting for the payment to go through and asks them to wait for the confirmation email, or to call you if they think they have already paid.

Making sure you hear about it

Fill in Your clinic's contact email in the same section. We email you there when an online booking is made or changed, and it is also where patient replies to your appointment emails go. Leave it blank and new-booking and move notices will not reach your inbox. Patient cancellations can still be emailed to your active clinic owners.