Cancelling bookings

Use the Cancel booking button to cancel a customer’s booking. You can also refund and email the customer as part of this process. Watch a short demo or follow the detailed steps below.

Detailed steps

1. Find and open the booking you’d like to cancel.

2. Under Booking actions, click the Cancel booking button.

3. Optional: Issue a full or partial refund for any payments on the booking.

4. Optional: Add an internal note for your staff.

5. Optional: Send a cancellation email to the customer. This email will include a summary of the cancelled booking and any refunded payments. You can also include a personalized message using the message box.

6. Click Cancel booking. You’ll see a pop-up message asking you to confirm. Click OK.

Once a booking has been cancelled, it will be marked with a badge.

Viewing cancelled bookings from an availability

When looking at an availability, cancelled bookings will be shown in the availability overview below the list of active bookings. You can collapse or expand the cancelled or rebooked bookings by selecting the icon next to the section.

Viewing cancelled bookings from the Bookings section

To quickly find a cancelled booking from the Bookings section of your Dashboard, enter the customer’s name, contact information, or booking ID in the search bar. If there are multiple search results, look for the red “cancelled” badge. The date and time the booking was cancelled will be recorded next to the badge.

Using the Cancelled Bookings report

Use the Cancelled Bookings report to see all cancelled bookings within a specific date range. This report is located under Reports > Bookings > Cancelled.

To run the report, adjust the date range and click Generate. If needed, you can further customize your report settings with filters, groupings, or added columns.

Learn more about Advanced report settings.

If a customer wants to cancel part of their reservation (for example, if a member of their party can no longer attend), you can use the Add or remove customers option to remove as many customers from the booking as needed.

Learn more about adding and removing customers.

Once you have your cancellation policies set up, you can also set up your Dashboard to accept online cancellations which allows your customers to cancel their booking online, and, when possible based on your cancellation policies, collect a refund or gift card. This can help reduce the amount of over-the-phone cancellations.

Setting up online cancellations

If you’d like to try out this feature, please reach out to support@fareharbor.com.

When setting up online cancellations, you’ll be able to choose whether you’d like to allow customers to collect refunds, gift cards, or both.

• Selecting refunds allows customers to collect a refund when they cancel their booking, as long as the cancellation follows the rules for the cancellation policy for that item. The refund amount is determined by your default cancellation policy.
• Selecting gift card allows customers to collect a gift card when they cancel their booking. The gift card will always amount to the booking total, excluding any fees. All the details for the gift card will be included in the cancellation email sent to the customer.

Once online cancellations are enabled, make sure to set up advanced cancellation policies to ensure your customers follow your company’s rules when it comes to cancelling.

What does online cancellation look like?

Once online cancellation is set up on your Dashboard, your customers will be able to cancel their booking online and collect a gift card or a refund, depending on your setup.

Online cancellations are possible for bookings that have been paid in full through FareHarbor, with an eligible payment processor and payment method (eligible payment methods include credit cards and online payment methods like PayPal and iDeal). The same rules apply for bookings made by affiliates or resellers using FareHarbor, as long as the payment for the booking was collected by you.

Not sure if your FareHarbor payment processor is eligible? Feel free to reach out.

For eligible bookings, customers will see a Cancel booking button on their confirmation page and in their confirmation email. Once they select Cancel booking, they’ll be able to choose refund or gift card, depending on your setup:

If a customer tries to cancel outside of the allotted cancellation window based on your cancellation policies, they’ll see a message prompting them to contact you:

If a customer needs to cancel a booking made through an API connection, they should contact the Online Travel Agency (OTA) they made the booking with to make changes or receive refunds. Cancelling or refunding an API booking in FareHarbor does not cancel or refund the booking for the customer.

After processing the cancellation or refund through the API, some API connections will automatically update the booking in FareHarbor, while others will need to be marked as cancelled and refunded manually in FareHarbor.

Read more about APIs and OTAs.

Which staff members can cancel bookings?

By default, all staff members with a FareHarbor login (except those with the Guide permission group) have the ability to cancel and refund bookings at any time. Affiliates do not have the ability to cancel bookings by default. However, if you’ve made changes to your company’s permission groups, these rules may not apply. Learn more about permission groups.

Will a customer still get automatic follow-up emails if their booking is cancelled?

If a booking has been cancelled, follow-up emails from FareHarbor will not be sent (this includes TripAdvisor Review Express follow-ups, if you have them enabled). Learn more about automatic emails.

Will my staff be notified when a booking is cancelled?

Staff members with a FareHarbor account can choose to receive email notifications for cancelled bookings by updating their account settings. You can also update their settings for them, if your permission group allows it.

Why is a cancelled booking marked as refunded when there was never any payment on it?

If a booking with no payments is cancelled, you may see a “Refunded” badge on the booking in specific parts of the Dashboard. This includes search results, the recent bookings section, and the booking summary in the contact toolbar.

These specific views include basic information about the booking but not all of its details (such as its payment history). To be safe, the system defaults to including a “Refunded” badge, even if that’s not the case. You can confirm a booking’s payment and email history by opening the booking and reviewing the activity log at the bottom.