Rescheduling, Cancellations & Waitlist

Bookings change — clients move appointments, cancel late, miss visits entirely, or want into a session that's already full. Ready Practice handles every one of these from a single place: the appointment details drawer, the panel that opens when you click any appointment on the Calendar. From it you can reschedule into genuinely open slots, cancel with the client automatically notified, flag late cancellations and no-shows (with fees, if your policy charges them), and refill a freed slot from the waitlist instead of losing the revenue.

This page walks through each of those flows, plus how group sessions with limited capacity behave when clients join and leave.

Reschedule an appointment

Rescheduling in Ready Practice is conflict-proof by design: rather than letting you type any time, the drawer offers only slots that are actually available — inside the provider's working hours, and free of other bookings.

1. On the Calendar, click the appointment to open its details drawer, then click Reschedule. The Reschedule Appointment window opens, pre-filled with the current service, date, and staff.

2. Optionally change the Service — you can reschedule into a different service, and the open times reload for it — then pick a Date. The Available Slots grid fills with every genuinely open time on that day, each labeled with the staff member who's free. If nothing shows, that day is fully booked or outside availability: "No available slots on this date."

3. Click the slot you want, and leave Send calendar update to client ticked (it is by default) so the client gets an updated confirmation with the new time and a refreshed calendar invite.

4. Click Reschedule. The appointment moves, and the change is written to the appointment's Activity History ("Rescheduled from …") so anyone opening it later sees exactly what happened.

Overriding a staff conflict

If the chosen time collides with another booking for that staff member, the window warns you — "Staff conflict detected at this time" — instead of silently double-booking. You can still click Override & Reschedule Anyway when the double-booking is intentional (for example, an assistant covers the overlap), but it's always an explicit choice.

Cancel an appointment — and what the client receives

Cancellation is a status change on the appointment, and Ready Practice distinguishes when the cancellation happens, because your cancellation policy may treat them differently:

• Early Cancel — the client canceled with enough notice. No fee implications.
• Late Cancel — the cancellation fell inside your cancellation window (the "you must cancel at least X hours before" period defined by your policy).

1. Open the appointment's details drawer and click the status control (it shows the current status, e.g. Booked or Confirmed), then choose Early Cancel or Late Cancel. The appointment is canceled immediately and the change is logged in its Activity History.

2. The client is notified automatically: they receive a cancellation email that includes a calendar cancellation file (an .ics attachment — the standard format calendar apps read), so the appointment also disappears from their personal calendar, plus a push notification in the client app. If your policy charges a late fee, the email states the fee amount so there are no surprises.

Undo a cancellation

Canceled by mistake? Set the status back to Booked from the same status menu — the cancellation is reversed and the appointment is restored.

What the client gets back

An Early Cancel automatically returns whatever covered the booking: a package credit or membership allowance is restored to the client, and a "pay later" balance charge is voided so they no longer owe for a visit that won't happen. A Late Cancel forfeits the coverage — the credit stays used and any balance charge stays owed, per your policy. If the client paid by card for the visit, the money is never refunded automatically — refunding is always your decision, made from the client's Payments tab.

Late cancellations, no-shows, and fees

A no-show is a client who simply didn't turn up; mark it by setting the appointment's status to No-Show. Like late cancellations, no-shows can carry a fee — but only if your policy says so.

The policy itself lives on your memberships: each membership's cancellation policy defines the cancellation window (how far in advance a client must cancel) and an optional late cancellation fee. You configure this in Services & Memberships, which means different client tiers can have different rules — say, a premium membership with free late cancellation and a standard one that charges.

For clinics with fees configured, the status menu adds two more options: Late Cancel with Fee and No-Show with Fee. Choosing one cancels/marks the appointment and flags it with a pending fee:

1. Set the status to Late Cancel with Fee (or No-Show with Fee). The appointment's Activity History shows the pending fee.

2. To actually collect, open the charge action on that history entry — the fee-charge window confirms the amount from the client's membership policy before anything is charged. You can also waive it; the history then records Fee Charged or Fee Waived, so the money trail is always explicit.

Disclose fees before you charge them

Only charge late-cancellation or no-show fees your clients have actually agreed to — the fee must be defined on their membership's cancellation policy, and clients should see the policy when they book. A surprise fee is a chargeback and a lost client; a disclosed one protects your calendar.

Fees are never automatic

Ready Practice never charges a client's card on its own. Marking "with Fee" creates a pending fee; a staff member always reviews and confirms (or waives) the actual charge.

The waitlist — fill freed slots instead of losing them

A waitlist is a queue of clients who wanted a time that was full. It's enabled per service (in the service's settings), and once on, it works on both sides:

• Clients join themselves: when a bookable time is full, the client portal and app show Join Waitlist in place of the booking button (with a count of how many are already waiting). Staff can also add a client to a waitlist from the appointment's drawer — under Waitlist, click Add (or Manage when entries already exist).
• Staff fill freed slots: when a booking cancels, the drawer's Waitlist section shows everyone queued for that service and time, in the order they joined.

When a slot frees up, you have two ways to fill it:

1. Assign directly: click Assign next to a waitlisted client to book them straight into the slot — if the event was canceled, assigning restores it in the same step. For a one-on-one service that still has a client attached, you're asked whether to replace the existing client or add alongside them, so nothing is overwritten by accident.

2. Notify and let them claim it: click Notify All (N) to email everyone waiting — the first person in line is notified immediately, and each subsequent person 15 minutes later, giving the front of the queue a fair head start. You confirm before anything sends.

The Calendar also has a clinic-wide Waitlist panel listing every queued client across services, where you can notify individuals (email + push) or book a waiting client directly into an open slot.

Waitlist on canceled events

You can add clients to the waitlist even on an already-canceled event — the common flow is exactly that: a client cancels, the queue is waiting, and you assign the next person, which restores the event with the new client.

Group sessions — capacity, joining, and leaving

A group session is an appointment for a group service — one that allows multiple attendees up to a set capacity (configured on the service). Group sessions behave differently from one-on-one visits in two important ways:

• Joining: clients book into a group session like any other appointment, as long as seats remain. When the session hits capacity, the booking button becomes Join Waitlist — the same waitlist flow described above fills seats as they free up.
• Leaving: when a single attendee cancels, only they are removed from the session — their seat frees for the waitlist, and the session itself keeps running for everyone else. The whole session is only canceled when staff cancel the event itself.

In the appointment drawer, a group session lists all attendees, and each attendee has their own status controls — so you can mark one person as a late cancel or no-show without touching the rest of the group.

Ask Atlas

Atlas can work your schedule for you. Try:

• "Reschedule Maria's Thursday appointment to next week — what slots are open?"
• "Who is on the waitlist for Friday's 6 PM group class?"
• "How many no-shows did we have this month?"
• "What's the late-cancellation policy on the Standard membership?"

Next steps

• Set your cancellation windows and fees → define each membership's cancellation policy in Services & Memberships.
• Control when clients can book at all → set working hours, buffers, and booking rules in Availability & Scheduling.
• Let clients book (and waitlist) themselves → share a self-service page via Booking Links.
• Chart the visit once it happens → write the note straight from the appointment with Clinical Notes & Charting.