Waitlists & cancellation rules
Two tools that protect your calendar: a waitlist that fills cancelled slots automatically, and per-meeting-type cutoffs that control how close to a meeting clients can still cancel or reschedule.
Turn on the waitlist
The waitlist is per meeting type: edit the meeting type in Booking pages and switch on Enable waitlist.
Once it's on, a client who opens your booking page and finds a day (or a whole month) fully booked sees a short name + email form to join the waitlist instead of a dead end.
The form only appears on days you actually work that are fully booked. Days outside your working hours — or days you've blocked off entirely — never offer the waitlist, so nobody queues for a day you were never available.
The waitlist pairs naturally with activity bookings: when a class or tour sells its last seat, the join form takes over, and a cancellation that frees seats emails the list automatically.
When a spot opens
When a booking for that meeting type is cancelled, everyone active on its waitlist gets a "spot opened" email with a direct booking link. It's first come, first served — the first person to complete the booking gets the slot, exactly like any normal booking.
- Notifications go out on cancellations only — a rescheduled booking doesn't trigger them, since the client still holds a slot.
- Each person is emailed at most once per hour, so a burst of cancellations doesn't spam your list.
- Booking through the link (or any other way, with the same email) automatically marks their entry as converted, so they stop receiving waitlist emails.
Manage your waitlist
Dashboard → Waitlist shows everyone waiting across your meeting types — searchable, filterable by session, with when each person was last notified. Remove an entry anytime. The Booking pages editor shows a small "N waiting" count on meeting types with an active list, and the Availability page carries a summary card with waiting counts per meeting type.
Submitting the same email again leaves the existing entry unchanged, including its name and active or converted status. The dashboard shows active entries only. If a client needs to rejoin after booking, contact support@yourdayschedule.com.
Cancellation and reschedule cutoffs
Separately from the waitlist, each meeting type controls how close to the start a client may still act. In the meeting type editor you'll find two settings:
- Client can reschedule until — and —
- Client can cancel until
Each can be No restriction, Meeting start, or a cutoff from 1 to 72 hours before. Inside the window, the portal's reschedule/cancel buttons grey out with an explanation, and reschedule links from emails fall back to a normal booking page. Even with No restriction, clients cannot cancel or reschedule once the meeting starts. Clients see the policy before they commit, too: the booking page's confirmation step and its "I agree to the cancellation policy" checkbox spell out the cutoffs you chose for that meeting type.
These notice cutoffs apply to clients. On the dashboard calendar, the host's Cancel booking action stays available through exactly 30 minutes after the scheduled start, then disappears. For example, a 2:00 pm booking can be cancelled there through 2:30 pm. Cancellation does not automatically refund a payment; refunds stay in your hands (Bookings → Payment → Refund).
If something's off
- Nobody was emailed after a cancellation — check the entries are still active (booking removes them) and that the cancellation was a true cancellation, not a reschedule.
- A client says they can't cancel — they're inside your cutoff window. Cancel it for them from Bookings if you want to make an exception.
- The join form never appears — confirm Enable waitlist is on for that meeting type and the day is genuinely fully booked rather than blocked or outside your hours.
Still stuck? Email support@yourdayschedule.com — we answer quickly.