Charging a Cancellation or No-Show Fee

15 minutes

Introduction

A client cancels an hour before their appointment, or simply does not turn up. The stylist loses the slot and the salon loses the money. A payment request lets you charge for it. You set the amount, Luminate emails or texts the client a secure link, and the client pays by card.

You can also use a payment request for any other one-off charge, such as a product a client took away without paying for.

Who this is for: Anyone who cancels appointments or marks a client as a no-show. Every role can raise and waive a fee. Only Owners, Admins, Managers and Receptionists can refund one.

What you'll learn:

How to set your salon's fee policy
How to charge a fee while you cancel an appointment
How to charge a fee when you mark a no-show
How to send, resend, waive and refund a fee from the client's profile
Where the money appears in your reports

Time to complete: 15 minutes

Prerequisites

Before you begin:

Your salon must be connected to Stripe. Without it, the fee buttons do not appear at all, because there is no way for the client to pay.
Complete Tutorial 8.1 (Understanding Transactions and Payment Status)
Complete Tutorial 2.2 (Booking and Managing Appointments)

Step-by-Step Instructions

Step 1: Set Your Salon's Fee Policy

The policy decides the amount Luminate suggests. Staff can change it every time, so treat it as a starting point and not a rule.

Go to Settings and open your salon.
Open the Online Booking tab.
Find the Cancellation and no-show fee card.
Choose a fee type:

Type	What it does
No fee	Luminate suggests nothing. Staff can still type an amount by hand.
Fixed amount	Always the same figure, whatever the booking was worth.
Percentage of the booking	A share of what the client was going to pay.

Enter the value. For a percentage, enter the number only. 50 means half the booking value.
Enter the Notice window, hours. Luminate suggests the fee only when the client cancels inside this window. Leave it blank to suggest it for every cancellation. A no-show is always treated as inside the window.
Tick Fee is subject to VAT if your accountant says the fee is taxable. It is ticked by default. Staff type the fee before tax, and the client is charged the fee plus tax. If your salon calls the tax something else, the label follows your own wording.
Tick Pay the booked stylist their usual service commission on fees if you want the stylist compensated for the lost slot. It is off by default.
Save.

A worked example. A 50% policy with a 48-hour window. A client cancels a £60 colour the morning of the appointment. Luminate suggests £30. Another client cancels the same service a week ahead. Luminate suggests nothing, but leaves you the option.

Step 2: Charge a Fee While You Cancel

Open the appointment and choose Cancel Appointment.
The dialog shows a Charge a late-cancellation fee box when your salon can take the payment.
Inside the notice window, the box is already ticked and the amount is filled in from your policy. A line underneath explains the figure, for example "Salon policy: 50% of £60.00 is £30.00." Where your salon charges VAT, it ends "All figures exclude VAT.", because the amount you type is before tax.
Outside the window, the box is clear and a note says the client cancelled with more than the required notice, so no fee applies under your policy. Tick it anyway if you want to charge.
Change the amount if you need to. You can lower it or raise it. Waiving a fee for a good client is normal, so the field is always editable.
Choose how to send it: Email, SMS or Both. Only the ways you can reach the client are offered.
Confirm the cancellation.

Luminate cancels the appointment, creates the charge on the client's account and sends the link.

When you cannot reach the client. The client may have no email address or mobile number, or may have turned off messages. You can still charge the fee. The dialog tells you why the link can't be sent, and that the fee will be saved as unpaid. Confirm the cancellation as normal. The message afterwards says what to do next, for example "Call Jane on 07700 900123 and ask if you can message them", and has a Go to Jane's Billing tab button. See "Send a fee you saved earlier" in Step 5.

The cancel dialog has no links to the client's details on purpose. Leaving the dialog before you confirm would lose the fee.

An empty amount stops the save. Ask for a fee and leave the amount blank, and the field turns red and asks you to fill it in. Nothing is cancelled or marked until you enter a figure or untick the fee. This applies to the no-show dialog too. Salons with no cancellation policy set will meet it most often, because their amount box opens empty.

If the link fails to go out at the last moment, the message tells you: "The fee request was raised, but it could not be sent." This is rare. The cancellation still stands, the client still gets their cancellation message, and the charge still sits on their account. Open the client's profile and press Resend on the request. See Step 5.

If somebody else cancels the same appointment first, your screen says the appointment is already cancelled and nothing else happens. No second charge is raised. Reload the page to see what your colleague did.

When the client paid a deposit, the dialog works differently. The deposit is usually the fee:

Keep the deposit as the cancellation fee — no further charge.
Keep the deposit and request the remaining amount — appears only when your policy asks for more than the deposit covers. Luminate asks for the difference, not the whole fee again.
Refund the deposit — no fee can be charged. Luminate will not hand the money back and then ask for it again.

If you cannot refund deposits, and stylists cannot, the dialog says the deposit will be kept and tells you why. You still get the option to request the remaining amount. Charging a fee and refunding a deposit are separate permissions, so one does not take the other away.

Luminate counts the deposit the client actually paid. Where a deposit was collected short of the amount you asked for, the sum uses the smaller figure, so the fee asks for the real balance.

When the deposit has already gone onto a bill. A deposit put towards a live sale is spent. It cannot stand as the fee as well, so Luminate offers the whole policy fee instead, as a plain Charge a late-cancellation fee box. The dialog still names the deposit the client paid, so you can see what happened to it.

If a deposit arrives while the dialog is open. Luminate refuses the cancellation and asks you to reload the page. Nothing is cancelled and nothing is charged. This keeps the salon from keeping money nobody chose to keep, and from charging the full fee on top of it.

How the difference is worked out. The deposit is money the client has already paid, so it includes tax. The fee you type does not — tax is added on top. Luminate compares the two on the same basis, so the deposit and the new charge together come to exactly what your policy asks for. With a 20% tax rate, a £25.00 policy fee charges the client £30.00. A £20.00 deposit leaves £10.00 to collect, so the option reads Keep the deposit and request the remaining £10.00 and the amount box opens at £8.33 plus tax. Every figure the client sees is the one with tax in it.

The line under the amount explains the figure. With a kept deposit it reads, for example, "Salon policy: 50% of £180.00 is £90.00. The kept deposit covers £37.50, so £52.50 is due. All figures exclude VAT."

Asking for more than the policy allows. Type the higher amount. A box appears: Charge more than the salon policy. It says how far above the policy you are, and what the client pays in total with the deposit. Tick it to go ahead. If you save without ticking it, the dialog asks you to tick it first. Lower the amount back to the policy figure or below and the box goes away. The box appears only when a deposit is kept, because only then does the policy set a limit.

Step 3: Charge a Fee for a No-Show

Open the appointment and mark it as a no-show.
Where your salon can take payment, a dialog opens with a Charge a missed-appointment fee box.
The notice window does not apply to a no-show. The box is ticked whenever you have a policy.
Set the amount, choose a channel and confirm.

Where your salon cannot take payment, marking a no-show stays a single click as before.

If you cannot reach the client, the dialog still opens. It tells you the fee will be saved as unpaid, and the button reads Mark no-show and save fee. Send the link later from the client's Billing tab.

When the client paid a deposit, a no-show keeps it. The dialog says so and asks only for the balance on top, using the same sum as a cancellation. Where the deposit already meets your policy, the dialog tells you there is nothing more to request.

One fee per visit. Cancelling a group booking raises one fee for the whole visit, not one per person. Marking a group as a no-show does not offer a fee — mark the individual appointment instead, or raise the fee from the client's profile afterwards. Cancelling a whole recurring series does not offer a fee either.

Step 4: Send a Fee From the Client's Profile

Use this when the appointment was already cancelled, or when you want to charge for something else entirely.

Open the client's profile.
Choose Request Payment.
Pick a reason: Cancellation fee, Missed appointment or Other. An Other charge needs a short note, which the client sees.
Link it to a recent cancelled or missed appointment if there is one. This is optional.
Enter the amount. Where a policy applies, the suggested figure is already there.
Choose email, SMS or both, and send.

The dialog tells you the total the client will be asked for, including tax.

When you cannot reach the client, the dialog says why and offers the fix:

What the dialog says	Button
The client has no email address or mobile number	Add contact details opens the client's details to edit
The client turned off email and SMS	Turn on messages opens their Communication Preferences
The client has no email address and turned off SMS (or the other way round)	Both fixes, one button each

Luminate does not check the client agreed before you turn their messages back on. That is up to your salon, so always call the client and ask first.

The send button then reads Record without sending. The fee is saved on the client's account, and you send the link later from their Billing tab.

Step 5: Track, Resend, Waive and Refund

Every request appears on a card on the client's profile, newest first, with who raised it and what happened since.

The pill on each row tells you where the charge stands.

Pill	What it means
Pending	Raised and not yet settled. Resend and Waive are available.
Not sent	Saved while the client could not be reached. The client has not been asked for the money yet.
Paid	The client has paid, by card link or in the salon. Refund is available.
Waived	You cancelled the charge. The client owes nothing.
Refunded	The money has gone back to the client. Nothing more to do.

Action	What it does	Who can do it
Copy the pay link	Copies the link so you can paste it into a message of your own.	Everyone
Resend by email or Resend by SMS	Sends the link again. A link older than 30 days is replaced with a new one.	Everyone
Waive	Cancels the charge. The client owes nothing and the debt leaves your reports.	Everyone
View sale	Opens the bill behind the fee.	Everyone
Refund	Returns money the client already paid. The row then reads Refunded.	Not Service Providers

Waiving and overriding are both recorded against your name, so the card always shows who decided what.

Send a fee you saved earlier. A fee saved while the client could not be reached shows Not sent. The row says why, for example "Jane turned off email and SMS." Call the client and ask if you can message them. If they agree, press Turn on messages, turn on email or SMS, then come back to the Billing tab and press Send link. Send link stays greyed out until Luminate can reach the client. You can also Waive the fee, or take the payment in the salon at any time.

You can get back to a Not sent fee two ways: the button on the message you saw after the cancellation, or the Not sent badge on the Accounts Receivable report.

If the client pays in the salon instead, take the payment on the bill as you would any other unpaid sale. The card then shows the charge as Paid, Resend and Waive disappear, and any late card payment through the link is refunded automatically.

If the client pays only part of the fee in the salon, the pay link asks for the rest, not the whole amount again. If a card payment for the old, higher amount arrives anyway, Luminate returns the difference.

If you waive a charge the client is part way through paying online, the payment page closes immediately. Should any money still arrive, Luminate sends it straight back.

Refund the fee in Luminate, not in Stripe. Use the Refund button on the card. If you refund the card charge from your Stripe dashboard instead, Luminate reads it back and marks the fee refunded - but only when that one charge paid for the whole fee. Where the client paid part in the salon and part by card, Luminate leaves the fee as Paid and records a note for your accountant, because the cash, voucher or account credit in the till never went back. Put that part right by hand.

Step 6: Read the Fee in Your Reports

A fee is revenue, so it reaches the reports the same way a sale does.

Report	What you see
Accounts Receivable	An unpaid fee sits against the client's name with its age, from the moment you raise it. Waiving or paying removes it. A Not sent badge marks a client whose fee was saved but never sent; click it to open their Billing tab.
Daily Revenue	A Fees figure beside Services and Products, on the screen, the CSV and the PDF, so the day's columns still add up to the subtotal.
VAT	A taxable fee appears in your net sales and tax. A fee marked not taxable does not.
Staff Performance	A fee never counts as the stylist's revenue. It adds to their commission only where you turned that setting on.
Staff Commission	A Fee row in the breakdown, with the fee commission shown separately from service and product commission.
Payroll	The same. Fee commission is paid, fee revenue is not booked as the stylist's.

Turning the commission setting on or off changes future fees only. A fee that has already been raised keeps whatever you decided at the time, so a payroll period you have already read cannot change under you.

Tips and Best Practices

Tell clients the policy before they book. A fee nobody was warned about loses the client, not just the booking.
Set a notice window you can defend. Twenty-four or forty-eight hours is usual. Pick one and apply it evenly.
Waive generously for good clients. The field is editable for a reason. A loyal client's first late cancellation is rarely worth the goodwill.
Send by email and SMS for a large fee. A text gets read, an email carries the detail.
Charge the same day. A fee raised a week later reads as an afterthought and gets disputed.
Check Accounts Receivable weekly. An unpaid fee is a debt like any other. Resend the link or waive it, but do not let it sit.
Decide the commission question once. Paying stylists on fees is a real cost. Talk to your accountant about the tax setting at the same time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why can I not see the fee options?

Your salon is not connected to Stripe. Without it there is no way for the client to pay, so the options are hidden rather than offered and then failed. An Owner can connect Stripe in Settings.

Can a Service Provider charge a fee?

Yes. Every role can raise, resend and waive a fee. Only refunding money is restricted, and that matches every other refund in Luminate.

Does the client have to pay online?

No. The charge sits on their account like any unpaid bill, so they can settle it at their next visit. The link simply gives them a faster option.

How long does the link last?

Thirty days. The charge itself does not expire — a debt does not disappear because an email went stale. Use Resend to issue a fresh link.

Is the fee taxable?

That is your accountant's call. HM Revenue and Customs generally treats a cancellation charge as part of the supply, so Luminate taxes it by default. The salon setting lets you say otherwise.

Does the stylist earn commission on a fee?

Only if you turn that setting on. It is off by default, so nothing reaches payroll by accident.

The client paid twice. What happens?

Nothing bad. If the charge was already settled in the salon, a late card payment is refunded automatically.

If you then edit the bill on the same day and take the salon payment off, the charge goes back to Pending. The refunded card payment cannot settle it a second time, because that money is already back with the client. Send a fresh link, or take the payment on the bill again.

The client paid a penny short. Does the charge stay open?

No. A penny either way counts as settled, which is the same rule the till uses. A card rounding difference does not leave a live payment link on a charge you have already collected.

What if I cannot reach the client?

Charge the fee anyway. Luminate saves it on the client's account as unpaid and tells you it was not sent. The row on their Billing tab shows Not sent, and the Accounts Receivable report marks them too. Call the client, fix their details or turn their messages back on with their permission, then press Send link.

Do I have to turn a client's messages back on before I can charge them?

No. The fee is saved either way. You only need a way to reach the client before you send the link. Getting their permission to message them is up to your salon; Luminate does not check it.

Can I charge a fee when I cancel a whole recurring series?

Not in one step. Cancel the series, then raise the fee from the client's profile.

Last Updated: September 2026