Emergency Cancellation

Emergency Cancellation gives a specialist who cannot attend work a fast way to select upcoming bookings, cancel them, and notify each customer. Customers receive a predefined SMS and email. A successful SMS or email is not resent on a later run. A channel that failed to deliver stays in Notification status with Retry notify, so staff can retry only the failed notification without the booking returning to the upcoming list.

This guide is for business owners and administrators responsible for daily operations, and for specialists who need to cancel a day or shift when they cannot work.

What is Emergency Cancellation?

Emergency Cancellation is a Daily operations page in the admin dashboard. It is for unexpected absences, not for a single booking a customer asked to cancel.

Staff choose a date, review the specialist’s upcoming bookings, select the remaining day, the current shift, or individual appointments, then confirm. FullDay cancels the selected bookings and sends each customer the same predefined message by SMS and email when a phone number or email is on file.

The calendar Cancel action still does not notify customers. Use Emergency Cancellation when customers need to be told.

Enable Emergency Cancellation

Organization administrators can enable or disable Emergency Cancellation in Settings → Daily operations. The switch is independent of Opening Flow, Closing Flow, and the Company Handbook.

When it is disabled, the Emergency item under Daily operations is hidden. A direct link shows a disabled message, and administrators can open Settings from that page.

What specialists experience

A specialist opens Emergency under Daily operations, or follows the link from Handbook → SOS / Emergency when both features are enabled.

The page shows upcoming pending and confirmed bookings assigned to that specialist for the selected date. Unassigned calendar bookings, past, completed, and no-show bookings are not listed. The specialist can:

1. Keep today’s date or pick another upcoming date.
2. Select remaining bookings, select the current shift (when they have one), or tick individual bookings.
3. Read the predefined customer message.
4. Confirm Cancel and notify.

You can cancel at most 50 bookings in one confirm. The list can show more than 50. Unchecked bookings stay booked. If the day is busier than that, run Emergency Cancellation again for the rest.

After confirm, the page shows how many bookings were cancelled and the live SMS and email status for each one. Customers without a phone or email are cancelled but marked as skipped for that channel.

What administrators experience

Administrators see the same page, plus a specialist picker. Use that when a colleague cannot log in. The selected specialist’s upcoming bookings are the ones that can be cancelled. Unassigned calendar bookings also appear in that list so an administrator can cancel them.

Customer notifications

Each selected customer can receive:

• An SMS that the appointment is cancelled, with the date, time, reference, and the organization phone number to rebook.
• An email with the cancelled appointment details and the same request to call if they want a new time.

The message is predefined. Staff cannot edit it for a single send. A booking that was already cancelled through this flow and already notified is skipped so customers are not texted or emailed twice. After a successful cancel, the booking leaves the upcoming list and stays in Notification status. If SMS or email fails, staff can retry that send from Notification status without cancelling it again.

SMS still needs your organization’s SMS sender to be configured. Email uses the same sender as other booking emails. Emergency Cancellation does not refund payments.

Best practices

• Enable it before you need it, so a specialist who wakes up sick can open the page immediately.
• Prefer Select remaining today or Select this shift first, then uncheck any booking that should stay. A confirm cancels at most 50 selected bookings. Unchecked rows are left as they are.
• Tell customers to call to rebook. This flow does not offer a new time automatically.
• If a specialist cannot log in, an administrator should run Emergency Cancellation for that specialist so customers are still notified.

Next steps

Continue setting up daily operations with these guides:

• Locations & Organization Settings: Enable Emergency Cancellation in Daily operations and configure organization-wide settings.

• Company Handbook: Add emergency contacts and scenario instructions staff can open during an operational emergency.

• Opening Flow: Configure daily opening checks and opening cash at the start of the day.

• Closing Flow: Configure daily closing checks, closing cash, and stock usage at the end of the shift.

• Booking Management: Review cancelled appointments on the bookings calendar.

For common questions about emergency cancellation, see the FAQ.