Cancellation Policy

Cancellation Policy: what is it?

Every coach without a written cancellation policy has one anyway, decided case by case under pressure, usually in a message thread at 10pm. That is the expensive version. A policy written in advance is not about being strict, it is about deciding once, calmly, so that you are not renegotiating your own terms with a client you like while they are upset. It also protects the client, who then knows what they agreed to.

Three different cancellations

The word covers three unrelated situations, and coaches get into trouble by writing one rule for all of them.

What a session cancellation policy has to state

Be specific enough that nobody has to interpret it. A vague policy is functionally the same as no policy, because the client will interpret it in their favour and you will feel unable to argue.

• The notice window, in hours, and how it is counted.
• How to cancel: which channel counts, and which does not.
• What happens inside the window: charged in full, half, or moved once.
• Whether a rescheduled session has to happen within a certain time.
• Your own cancellations, and what the client gets if you cancel late.
• The exceptions you will genuinely make, so you are not inventing them under pressure.

Subscriptions, notice and refunds

For recurring coaching, the standard approach is that cancelling stops the next payment and access continues to the end of the period already paid for. It is simple, easy to explain, and rarely disputed. Refunding a part-used month is far more complicated to administer than it is worth.

Be careful with anything that makes leaving difficult. Requiring a phone call to cancel, or a long notice period buried in terms, creates a bad ending to an otherwise good relationship and produces the reviews that cost you future clients. Consumer protection rules in many countries also constrain what you can require, particularly for contracts sold online, so check what applies where you sell.

Enforcing it without damaging the relationship

A policy nobody enforces trains clients to ignore it, and a policy enforced without judgement makes you unpleasant to work with. The workable middle is to enforce it as the default, state the exception out loud when you make one, and make the same exception for everyone.

The most common failure is not being too strict, it is never having stated the policy at all, then trying to apply it after the second late cancellation. Put it in your onboarding, in writing, next to everything else the client agrees to.

Keep your own side of it too. A policy that binds only the client reads as one-sided, and clients notice. State what happens when you cancel late, when you are ill, or when you take a holiday, and make the remedy concrete: the session is moved, credited, or covered. Coaches who write that clause find it easier to hold the line on the client-facing half, because the terms are visibly the same rules applied in both directions.