For independent beauty professionals
No-show cost calculator: what unfilled appointments come to in a year
For anyone working alone who gets the occasional no-show or last-minute cancellation. Put in your own average ticket and how often it happens.
Your trade
Changing the trade only changes the example values. The maths is the same for every trade.
Your average appointment
What goes wrong
Someone else books the slot, or the client moves to another day and still pays. Neither is a loss.
Scenario: a deposit
Optional. Only used for the deposit line below.
3 no-shows or late cancellations a month could leave up to $3,935 of work unfilled in a year.
2.4 of them go unfilled once the ones who rebook are taken out. At $148 a booking that is about $355 a month.
A month you work
$355
A year, 48 of 52 weeks
$3,935
- Chair time that goes empty
- 46.5 hours a year
- Share of your bookings
- about 3.5%
If a deposit were collected and kept under your own policy, you would have kept $75 a month on those bookings. This is a scenario, not a forecast: the calculator does not claim a deposit changes how often people turn up.
This is an estimate from the numbers you entered, not a guarantee.
How we calculate this
Not every no-show is a loss. 3 × (1 − 20%) = 2.40 bookings a month that nobody fills, because the ones whose slot gets rebooked still earn you money.
The money. 2.40 × $148 = $355 in a month you work. Over a year that is multiplied by 12 and by your 48 working weeks out of 52, so the year is a little less than twelve of these months.
The hours. Each unfilled booking frees 105 minutes. 2.40 × 105 minutes, times the same 12 months and week factor.
The deposit line is a scenario. 3 × $25 = $75 a month. It says what you would have kept, not what you would have saved: we have no measurement of how a deposit changes attendance, so we do not claim one.
Everything here is your own number, or an example you can change. Nothing is sent anywhere and nothing is saved.
What this does not model
A calculator that always finds a loss is a sales page. These are the four things it leaves out, and what that means for the figure you just read.
The rest of the day
An unfilled slot rarely stops at that slot. A late cancellation can push everything after it, make you rush a colour, or leave a gap you cannot fill at short notice. None of that is counted here.
Clients who move rather than vanish
The rebooking input is the only credit the calculator gives you. Someone who reschedules to next week still pays you, and if you know how often that happens, put it in the refill field. Anyone who quietly stops coming back is not modelled at all.
Tax, supplies and card processing
These are service prices, not take-home money. Tax, your supplies and any processing costs still come out of the figure above.
What a deposit would change
The deposit line shows what you would have kept if one had been collected and held under your own policy. It deliberately says nothing about whether a deposit makes people turn up more often, because we have no measurement of that. Refund rules vary by state and by your own policy, so this page does not describe them.
If unfilled slots are the problem
Chairwarden is a booking app for one person working alone. You can ask for a deposit on a booking, and it goes through your own Stripe account. Chairwarden takes no percentage of it, and you still pay Stripe’s own processing rate.
Free to try, up to 15 bookings/month · calendar protection included on every plan
300+ people have joined Chairwarden
A simpler way for booth renters to handle bookings.
The other way a day goes wrong
A booking that turns up in the wrong size can cost you a slot just as surely as one that never turns up at all.
Calendar fragmentation calculator