Cancellations & Rescheduling
Allow customers to cancel or reschedule their appointments, and manage bookings from your admin.
Customer Self-Service
Customers can manage their own bookings through links in the confirmation email:
Reschedule — change appointment time (subject to availability and your policies)
Cancel — cancel the appointment and receive a refund (subject to your policies)
Enabling Self-Service
Customer cancellation and rescheduling is configured per service.
Customer self-service cancellation and rescheduling is available on the Pro and Premium plans. See Pricing.
Go to Sesami > Services and open a service
Scroll to Cancellation and Rescheduling
Turn on the options you want:
Allow customers to cancel their appointments
Allow customers to reschedule their appointments
Number of hours customers can manage their appointment before the start time — the notice window (e.g., 24 hours)
Automatically refund money on cancellation
Save
Repeat for each service where you want to allow self-service.
Reschedule limit: a customer can reschedule the same booking up to 6 times. After that, only the cancel option is shown. If they need to reschedule again, an admin can reschedule on their behalf from the Sesami Calendar.
How It Works for Customers
Customer receives booking confirmation email
Clicks Reschedule or Cancel link
For reschedule: selects a new available time
For cancel: confirms cancellation and sees refund eligibility
Receives confirmation email of the change
You can enable rescheduling without enabling cancellation — customers can change their time but must contact you to cancel.
Admin Management
Admins can manage any booking from the Sesami Calendar or Upcoming Appointments:
Reschedule
Open the booking details
Click Reschedule
Select new date and time
Customer receives an updated confirmation email
Reassign Resource
Change which resource is assigned to a booking (e.g., team member is sick):
Open the booking details
Click Reassign or Change Resource
Select a different available resource
Customers are not automatically notified when a resource is reassigned. Contact them if the change is significant.
Cancel
Open the booking details
Click Cancel
Choose Full refund or No refund
Confirm — refund is processed automatically (if enabled) or manually in Shopify
Refund Handling
Automatic
Sesami creates the refund in Shopify when a booking is canceled. Shopify refunds to the original payment method.
Manual
You go to Shopify > Orders, find the order, and process the refund yourself.
Choose automatic for efficiency or manual for more control. You can switch between them at any time.
Group Appointment Cancellations
For group bookings, each participant is managed individually:
Cancel or reschedule one participant without affecting others
Canceled spots become available for new bookings
To cancel an entire session, cancel each participant's booking
Defining Your Policies
Set clear policies and communicate them on product pages, confirmation emails, and your terms of service:
Cancellation deadline — how much notice is required (24h, 48h, etc.)
Refund rules — full refund before deadline, no refund after
Rescheduling limits — free rescheduling, or only within a deadline
Offering rescheduling as an alternative to cancellation reduces lost bookings and keeps customers happy.
Reducing No-Shows
Require a deposit at booking
Set a strict cancellation deadline
Send reminders via Sesami Flows
Use a no-refund policy after the deadline
Troubleshooting
Customer can't find reschedule/cancel links
Verify self-service is enabled in Sesami Settings
Check the confirmation email was delivered (check spam)
Admin can reschedule/cancel on behalf of the customer
Refund not processing automatically
Check that the Shopify order exists and is paid. If automatic refund fails, process manually in Shopify > Orders > [order] > Refund.
Related
Group Appointments — managing group cancellations
Notification Emails — cancellation email templates
Deposits — reduce no-shows with upfront payment
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