Set your booking policy

Owner

Updated 27 September 2026 3 min read

On this page

Your booking policy sets the rules for online bookings: how much notice patients must give, how far ahead they can book, what counts as a late cancellation and what happens to booking fees and no-shows.

Before you start

Only the clinic owner can change the booking policy.
Booking fees and no-show fees need a connected Stripe account. See Connect Stripe to take payments.

Steps

Open the account menu at the bottom of the left sidebar and select Clinic settings.
Under Scheduling, select Booking policy.
Change any of the settings below.
Select Save changes in the Unsaved changes bar.

The settings

Setting	What it does	Starts at
Cancellation window (hours)	A patient who cancels less than this many hours before the appointment has made a late cancellation, and their booking fee isn’t refunded	24
No-show fee (£)	Charged to the patient’s saved card when you mark them as a no-show. Leave blank for none	Blank
Automatically refund early cancellations	Refunds the booking fee straight away when a patient cancels outside the window	Off
Booking lead time (minutes)	The minimum notice for an online booking. With 240, a patient can’t book a time less than four hours away	240
Booking horizon (days)	How far ahead patients can book online, from 1 to 365 days. With 60, your booking page shows free times up to 60 days from today	60
Default buffer after appointment (minutes)	A gap left after each appointment, for admin or clean-up, before the next bookable time. Used when neither the appointment type nor the practitioner sets an appointment buffer	0

How cancellations and booking fees work

Patient cancels late (inside the window): the booking fee is kept, whatever the refund setting says.
Patient cancels early (outside the window) with Automatically refund early cancellations on: the fee goes back to the card they paid with.
Patient cancels early with it off: the patient is told you’ll normally refund and will confirm. The clinic owner needs to issue the refund. See Refund a payment.
Your clinic cancels: the booking fee is always refunded in full.

How the no-show fee works

The no-show fee is charged on top of any booking fee, not taken out of it. It can only be charged when the patient paid a booking fee online, because that’s when their card is saved. If the charge fails, the appointment shows a warning so you can follow up. See Charge no-show fees.

Which appointment buffer applies

Clinicify uses the first of these that’s set:

The appointment type’s Buffer after (min), if it’s more than 0.
The practitioner’s own Default appointment buffer (minutes), under My settings > Availability.
This clinic default.

See Set your working hours, buffers and time off.

Good to know

These settings apply to online bookings. Appointments your team adds from the Bookings page aren’t checked against the lead time or horizon.
Patients see the cancellation window on the cancel screen in the portal, so they know whether their fee will be kept.
Changes apply to cancellations and bookings made after you save.

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