Booking cancellations and refunds

Summary

When a booking is cancelled, Torqueflow handles the money and the diary for you. Cancel from the booking itself and the deposit is refunded according to your policy, back to the card the customer paid on. The slot is released straight away, and every step is recorded.

You can also let customers cancel themselves, from their portal or from a link in their confirmation email. They see exactly what refund they will get before they confirm anything.

Two extras reduce no-shows. A day-before reminder gives the customer one easy way to say they cannot make it. And a late cancellation can turn the deposit into a credit towards a new booking instead of losing it, which gives the customer a reason to move the slot rather than simply not turn up.

Deposits and the booking page itself are covered in Online booking.

Prerequisites

1. You are signed in as an Owner or Manager.
2. Online booking is set up. See Online booking.
3. To refund a deposit automatically, your garage has a connected Stripe account. See Online payments.

Steps

Set your cancellation policy

Your policy decides how much of the deposit comes back, based on how close to the appointment the customer cancels.

1. Go to Settings > Booking widget.
2. Find the cancellation policy section.
3. Set your non-refundable window. This is the period immediately before the appointment where the deposit is no longer refundable. A customer cancelling outside that window gets the deposit back in full.
4. Write a short line explaining the policy in plain English. Customers see this when they book and again when they cancel.
5. Save.

The policy is applied automatically every time a booking is cancelled, whoever cancels it. You do not calculate anything by hand.

Let customers cancel themselves

This is off until you turn it on.

1. Go to Settings > Booking widget.
2. Turn on Self-service cancellation.
3. Save.

With it on, a customer can cancel in two places: from their booking in the customer portal, and from a link in their confirmation email. With it off, the confirmation email tells them to call you instead, and the portal shows no cancel option.

Turning this on does not change your refund policy. It changes who is allowed to press the button, not how much money comes back.

Turn on the day-before reminder

1. Go to Settings > Booking widget.
2. Turn on the day-before reminder.
3. Save.

Each day, Torqueflow sends a reminder to customers whose appointment is tomorrow. Each customer gets exactly one message, on the best channel available to them. It tries WhatsApp first, then a text message, then email, and stops at the first one it can use.

Allow a deposit to roll over to a new booking

When a customer cancels late, their deposit would normally be partly or wholly non-refundable. You can offer to hold it as a credit towards a new booking instead.

1. Go to Settings > Booking widget.
2. Set the consecutive move limit. This is how many times in a row one customer may carry a deposit forward.
3. Save.

Set the limit to zero and the option is never offered. Set it to one and a customer may move a booking once, after which a further late cancellation follows your normal policy. The customer is warned on their last available move, so a refusal is never a surprise.

The limit only applies to moves made back to back. A customer who cancels late, rebooks and turns up starts again from zero.

Cancel a booking yourself

1. Open the booking in the scheduler.
2. Choose Cancel booking.
3. Check the refund shown. Torqueflow works it out from your policy and the time remaining before the appointment, and tells you why it reached that figure.
4. Confirm.

The refund goes back to the card the customer paid on. The slot is released immediately, so it can be rebooked. The customer is told automatically.

If you need to depart from the policy on a particular booking, you can override the refund amount before confirming.

What your customers see

A customer who wants to cancel has two routes.

1. From their portal. They open their booking and choose to cancel. A confirmation box shows the refund they will get and the reason for it. Nothing happens until they confirm.
2. From their confirmation email. The email carries a link to cancel online. The link opens a page showing the booking and the refund. There is no one-click cancel from an email, so a mistyped tap never cancels anything by itself. The link works once and expires.

The day before their appointment, a customer with a booking tomorrow gets a single reminder with a link to manage it. That page offers two choices:

1. I’ll be there. This records their confirmation, and they are not chased again.
2. I can’t make it. This takes them into the same cancellation screen as above, with the refund shown before they confirm.

If a deposit can roll forward to a new booking, that offer appears at this point, alongside the refund figure, so the customer can compare the two before choosing.

Deposits taken because a van was coming

If you require the callout charge as a deposit on mobile bookings, that deposit behaves like any other on cancellation. It follows your existing non-refundable window.

1. With a window set, a customer cancelling inside it forfeits the deposit as normal.
2. With no window set, it is fully refundable. That is worth knowing before you rely on it: the callout deposit covers a wasted trip, not a cancellation, unless you have set a window.

A forfeited or carried-forward deposit is visible to staff on the invoice side. See Sales invoices.

Expected Outcome

• Cancelling a booking refunds the deposit according to your policy, with no manual card work.
• The slot is released as soon as the cancellation is confirmed.
• Customers only see a cancel option if you have turned self-service cancellation on.
• Customers always see the refund amount before anything is cancelled.
• Each customer receives at most one day-before reminder per booking.

Notes

1. Automatic refunds cover deposits paid by card through Stripe. A deposit taken any other way is flagged for you to refund by hand, so the money is never quietly forgotten. Deposits taken through TakePayments are not part of online booking yet.
2. Every cancellation and refund is recorded against the booking, including who cancelled it, what the policy decided, and any override you applied.
3. The deposit is always settled one way or another when a booking is cancelled. It is refunded, kept under your policy, or held as a credit. It is never left in limbo.
4. A customer who has run out of moves can still cancel. They simply fall back to your standard policy for that cancellation.
5. The day-before reminder is separate from your ordinary appointment reminders. It exists to make cancelling easier than not turning up.