How do I charge a cancellation fee?

Yes, you can. However, the steps you need to take are a little different: Can I charge a Cancellation Fee for Group Tutoring?

Charging a student for cancellations is not mandatory, and is your decision to make. Find out more in this article.

After submitting your cancellation fee, it will be pending review and approval by the KIS Team. In the meantime, please send your client this text:

Hey there CUSTOMER, seems like we might not be doing our lesson today. All good! Just letting you know that KIS Academics might send through a cancellation fee as this counts as a no-show or last minute cancellation. To avoid this in future, just let me know at least 1 hour in advance. For now, let’s reschedule the lesson, please let me know what time works for you!

If you’d like to be a bit more lenient with a student’s first no-show, I’d recommend sending a friendly but firm warning message like this:

Hi there CUSTOMER, Hope things are okay. Just wanted to ask if you could please let me know a bit earlier if you need to cancel a lesson going forwards. There's usually a last-minute cancellation fee that gets charged if you cancel less than 1 hour before the lesson time, but I'm going to make sure that fee gets waived for today if we can reschedule the lesson. Please let me know what time works for you!

If your student reschedules, and you'd like to waive the cancellation, you can send them this warning text:

Hi there CUSTOMER, hope things are okay. Just wanted to ask if you could please let me know a bit earlier if you need to cancel a lesson going forwards. There's usually a last-minute cancellation fee that gets charged if you cancel less than 1 hour before the lesson time, but I'm going to make sure that fee gets waived for today since we are rescheduling the lesson. But if this happens again, I will unfortunately have to charge a cancellation fee, so please let me know earlier in future if you want to reschedule!

You can charge them a cancellation fee if the cancellation meets the policy criteria, but it's not mandatory for you to charge them. If you are afraid of souring the relationship so early on, you can just send them a warning message: 

Hi there CUSTOMER, hope things are okay. Just wanted to ask if you could please let me know a bit earlier if you need to cancel a lesson going forwards. There's usually a last-minute cancellation fee that gets charged if you cancel less than 1 hour before the lesson time, but I'm going to make sure that fee gets waived for today if we can reschedule the lesson. Please let me know what time works for you!

If the student/parent is trying to haggle the cancellation fee with you, please send them our way by sending us an email at contact@kisacademics.com

You should also make sure that you have submitted all your evidence to help us back you up. We may have to clarify the cancellation with you again if the evidence you submitted on the form was insufficient. 

If the customer refuses to pay for the cancellation, we have a 2-lesson guarantee that also applies to cancellations, so we will make sure you get paid even if the customer does not.