Your cancellation policy is the most important piece of customer-facing legal-ish copy you'll write. Make it clear, make it fair, and make it visible at checkout, and you'll lose fewer chargeback disputes.
The model: one cutoff, flat fees by party size
Set a free-cancellation cutoff — the number of hours before start when it's still free to cancel. If a guest cancels or no-shows inside that window, a flat fee applies. You can vary that flat fee by party size, so a solo guest and a private-event group can owe different amounts.
There are no refund-percentage tiers. The fee is a flat dollar amount for a given party size, not a percentage of the experience price.
Find it under Settings → Cancellation policy (in the Money group), which opens /settings/cancellation.
You configure two things:
- Cutoff (hours before start). Cancel earlier than this and it's always free.
- Party-size fee brackets. Each bracket is a min party size, a max party size, and a flat fee in dollars. Party sizes that don't fall in any bracket owe nothing.
A common starter policy for public classes:
| When they cancel or no-show | Party size | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| More than 48 hours before start | any | Free — no fee |
| Less than 48 hours before start | 1–6 guests | $25 |
| Less than 48 hours before start | 7+ guests | $75 |
The cutoff is one number (48 hours here) — it's not a set of time tiers. Everything past the cutoff is free; everything inside it charges the flat fee for that party size.
How it appears to the guest
At checkout, before the guest pays, we show the policy in plain English, built from your own settings:
Cancellation Policy Your card won't be charged unless you cancel less than 48 hours before the start of your experience. A $25 fee applies to late cancellations or no-shows for parties of 1–6. A $75 fee applies to late cancellations or no-shows for parties of 7+.
The guest has to tick an acknowledgment checkbox before the Pay button turns on. The checkbox authorizes your business to charge the applicable fee if they cancel late or don't show. The acknowledgment is timestamped and stored with the booking, and checkout is blocked without it.
If you don't charge a fee at all, guests simply see "Cancel any time — no cancellation or no-show fee."
The policy is set once at the operator level and applies everywhere. There's no per-experience override.
No-show handling
ArtistryHost never charges a guest automatically. A no-show fee is always a deliberate action you take from the run sheet — the software backs your policy, and you make the call. (The old auto-no-show cron was removed.)
On the Manifest booking card, open the More ▾ menu and tap Mark No-Show (available only for confirmed bookings). For Card-on-File bookings, that tap is what charges the fee to the saved card, per the bracket the guest falls into — nothing happens until you tap.
If the card declines and you've turned on guest recovery emails, the guest automatically gets a "book again within 24 hours and we'll waive the fee" email — see guest confirmations & comms.
For prepaid bookings, no-shows don't generate a new charge — the guest has already paid. For bookings with no card on file, there's nothing to charge; you mark the no-show for your own records.
Guests can change plans — before the cutoff
Every confirmation email includes a booking-management link where the guest can cancel, reschedule, or change party size on their own before the cutoff. Once they're inside the cutoff window, those self-serve changes are blocked server-side — a guest can't reschedule or shrink their party to duck the fee. You get fewer phone calls; guests get instant answers; your policy holds either way.
The policy is always current
The fee is computed from your current policy at the moment a cancellation or no-show is processed. If you change the cutoff or the brackets, the new terms take effect right away for cancellations and no-shows going forward — there's no snapshot of "the terms the guest agreed to." What we store on the booking is the guest's acknowledgment: a boolean and the timestamp when they ticked the box.
Because the fee always reads your live policy, keep the brackets set the way you actually intend to charge. If you loosen the policy, guests benefit immediately; if you tighten it, that applies to the next cancellation too.
If a guest disputes a charge
If a guest disputes a no-show or late-cancellation fee through their bank, the acknowledgment you captured at checkout — including its timestamp — is recorded on the booking, which is exactly the explicit consent Square looks for. Clear policy language plus a stored, timestamped acknowledgment is your strongest position in a dispute.