Last-minute cancellations: the alert that gets your free slot filled¶
A last-minute cancellation is not just an annoyance: it is revenue evaporating. If a client cancels the 4pm session at 9 in the morning and you find out at 3:45pm, that slot is gone. If you find out at 9:02, you have seven hours to fill it.
Wably alerts you at the exact moment the appointment opens up, with everything you need to put it back on the market in thirty seconds.
How Wably's cancellation alert works¶
When a client cancels or moves an appointment while talking to the AI assistant on WhatsApp, Wably checks how far away the freed-up slot is. If it falls inside the window you have chosen, an email goes out to your address immediately.
The email contains:
- The type of event, marked with a clear label: Cancelled or Moved.
- The slot that has opened up, with an indication of how soon it is ("in less than an hour", "in about 5 hours").
- The client's name and the service that had been booked.
- If the appointment was moved rather than cancelled, the new date and time it was rebooked for.
- A "Message on WhatsApp" button, which opens the chat directly so you can contact whoever might take that place.
If several slots open up at the same time, you receive a single email collecting them all, ordered by time, so your inbox does not fill up with separate notifications.
Which changes set the alert off¶
The alert is designed for the changes that come from your clients through the AI assistant on WhatsApp: those are the ones you risk not seeing straight away, because they arrive while you are with someone else.
Changes you make yourself on the calendar do not trigger an alert, for a simple reason: you already know about them, you have just made them. A notification telling you about your own action is only noise, and noise is the quickest way to get the notifications that follow ignored.
The notice window: 24, 48 or 72 hours¶
Not every cancellation is urgent. If a client cancels ten days ahead, the calendar reorganises itself. If they cancel for tomorrow morning, the game is played out over the next few hours.
That is why the alert only fires for appointments that fall inside a window you decide:
- 24 hours: you only get the alert for genuinely last-minute cancellations.
- 48 hours: the default setting, the compromise that works for most practices.
- 72 hours: if you work with a full calendar and need more time to get back to your waiting list.
The window can be changed from the dashboard Home, at any time, with no technical support.
Why it matters, in revenue terms¶
You can do the maths on your own price list. Take a practice that loses two slots a month to cancellations discovered too late: on an average session of 50 euros that is 100 euros a month, 1,200 euros a year left on the table. Filling even half of them pays for the subscription and then some.
The point is not technological, it is about timing. You do not need a system that tells you at the end of the day what happened: you need a system that tells you while you can still do something about it. The waiting list you keep in your head, or in your WhatsApp contacts, is already there. All that is missing is the signal telling you when to use it.
Why by email and not on WhatsApp¶
This is a deliberate choice, not a limitation.
Email is the channel where information stays and can be found again. An alert on WhatsApp would be buried under your clients' messages within the hour, exactly when you need to dig it out to work out which slot had been left free.
Inside the email there is still the button that takes you straight to WhatsApp to act: you read where you have the history, you write where your clients are.
How it differs from reminders¶
These are two different features, working at two opposite moments:
| Automatic reminders | Cancellation alerts and free slots | |
|---|---|---|
| When | The day before the appointment | The instant the appointment falls through |
| To whom | To the client, on WhatsApp | To you, by email |
| What it is for | Stopping the client from forgetting | Recovering the slot that opened up |
| Effect | Fewer absences | Fewer gaps in the calendar |
The automatic reminder prevents, the cancellation alert recovers. Together they cover the entire life cycle of an appointment at risk.
What you have to do to turn it on¶
Nothing complicated: the cancellation alert is on by default with a 48-hour window on the plans that include it. If that suits you, there is nothing to touch.
If you want to change the time window or switch it off entirely, the toggle is on the Home of your dashboard. The emails go to your account address, they are in the language configured for your practice, and every message contains the link to turn the feature off if you change your mind.
If you switch it off, the AI assistant carries on handling cancellations and changes as normal and your calendar stays up to date: you simply do not get the immediate notification. You will still find the same information in the evening daily summary by email, which however arrives once the margin to act has narrowed.
Cancellation alerts are included in the Standard plan. The plan details are on the plans and pricing page.