Every booking in your calendar has a status. It's not just a label — changing it can trigger a charge, so it's worth knowing what each one does.
The five statuses
Status | What it means |
Booked | The default. The appointment is in the diary and expected. |
In-progress | The appointment has started. Handy on a busy day for seeing who's already in the chair. |
Completed | It happened. Usually set when you check the customer out. |
Cancelled | It isn't happening, and both sides know. |
No-show | The customer didn't turn up and didn't tell you. |
Each has its own colour on the calendar, so you can read a day at a glance.
Changing a status
Click the booking in your calendar.
Click the current status.
Pick the new one.
Cancelled and No-show can charge the customer
If you've set up late cancellation or no-show fees, changing a booking to Cancelled or No-show asks whether to charge:
"Would you like to charge the customer a 50% (£30.00) no-show fee?"
Yes charges the card on file. No changes the status without charging.
👀 You're asked every time, and the amount is shown before you commit. A regular whose train was cancelled and someone who's missed three appointments running can be treated differently. Nothing is charged unless you say so.
See late cancellation and no-show fees for setting the percentages.
Marking a no-show
This is the step that matters, and it's easy to forget in a busy day.
A customer who doesn't turn up is never charged automatically. Nothing happens until you mark the booking as a no-show. If you don't, the slot stays as Booked, no fee is considered, and your reports will show it as though it went ahead.
💡 Get into the habit of tidying yesterday's calendar each morning. It takes a minute, keeps your reporting honest, and means the fee decision is made while you still remember what happened.
Completed
Checking a customer out is what normally marks a booking Completed — see how to check out clients and process payments.
You can also set it manually for an appointment that happened but wasn't checked out through Styler.
Who can change a status
Two separate permissions apply:
Without Update on bookings, the status can't be changed at all.
Without Cancel on bookings, Cancelled doesn't appear as an option in the calendar — the other statuses still do.
That's deliberate: you can let someone run the diary without giving them the ability to cancel appointments. See adding staff accounts.
Recurring bookings
👀 Status can't be changed on a recurring booking from the status control — it's disabled for a series. Handle the individual occurrence instead.
Everything is recorded
Status changes are written to the booking's history, along with who made them and when — as are creation, amendments (including a price changed at checkout), services removed, cancellations, no-shows and completions. Open a booking and click History to see it. See the booking timeline.
💡 Useful when a customer insists they cancelled in good time, or when you need to know who moved an appointment.
FAQs
❓ Does cancelling tell the customer?
Yes — cancelling sends a Booking Cancelled email. See every email Styler sends.
❓ I marked a no-show by mistake.
Change the status back. If a fee was charged, refund it from the booking's payments — see discounts, part-payments, corrections and refunds.
❓ Should I cancel or delete a booking?
Cancel it. Cancelling keeps the record, tells the customer and preserves the history. That history is what protects you in a dispute.
❓ Can I cancel a booking by removing all its services?
No. A booking always has to keep at least one service — the Hub won't let you remove the last one. To cancel, change the status to Cancelled and leave the services as they are.
❓ Does a cancelled booking free up the slot?
Yes — the time becomes bookable again straight away.