Guests can cancel a room they booked online from their booking page (the link in their confirmation email, or My account). What happens depends on the rate they booked:
- Inside the free-cancellation time → the booking is cancelled at once and the full deposit goes back to their card through the gateway they paid with. You don't need to do anything.
- After that time, or on a non-refundable rate → the guest sends a request. The booking stays in place until you decide on Front Office → Online Cancellations.
Guests whose stay has already started can't cancel online. They speak to reception.
Before you start
- You need the Booking management permission to open Online Cancellations.
- To refund money when approving, you also need the Allow refund / crediting right, the same one needed to lower a cancellation charge. Without it, you can still approve with no refund, or decline.
How the free-cancellation time is counted
A rate that says "free cancellation until 48 hours before arrival" counts back from midday on the arrival day, in your business's time zone. So a guest arriving on Friday can cancel free until Wednesday at midday. A basket with several rooms is free to cancel only if every room is still inside its own time. Otherwise the whole basket comes to you as one request.
Steps — deciding a request
- Go to Front Office → Online Cancellations. Waiting for you lists the requests.
- Each request shows the guest, the booking, the arrival date, the deposit, the rate's terms and the guest's reason.
- To accept it, set Refund to card: the full deposit, part of it, or 0. Whatever you don't refund is kept as a cancellation charge. Add a note for the guest if you like, then click Approve & cancel.
- To refuse it, write a note to the guest explaining why and click Decline. The booking stays as it is.
The guest gets an email either way.
What it does to your books
- The booking's rooms are marked Booking Cancelled, exactly as when the front desk cancels.
- A refund is recorded as a Customer Journal entry, "Payment Is Being Made To Client", from the account the deposit was paid into. The customer's deposit credit is used up by it.
- A kept amount becomes a cancellation charge invoice (item "BookingCancelationCharges", RESERVATION income) on the customer. It is the same charge the front desk's cancel posts.
Tips
- If the automatic refund doesn't go through (for example, the gateway refuses it), nothing is cancelled. The request comes to you instead, with a note saying the automatic refund failed.
- The Cancelled list shows every cancellation, the refund reference, and whether the provider has confirmed the refund.
Common problems
- "Refund failed — the guest is owed …" → the provider couldn't return the money (for example, the card was closed). The refund entry has been removed, so the deposit is back as the customer's credit. Pay the guest another way and record that payment.
- You can't type a refund amount → you don't have the Allow refund / crediting right. Ask an administrator.
- A guest says the cancel button is missing → their stay has started, the booking is already cancelled, or a request is already waiting for you.
- Paystack refunds stay "Pending" → Paystack's later "refund completed" messages for online bookings don't reach the system yet. The refund itself still happens; check it in your Paystack dashboard. Stripe refunds update on their own.