Late cancellations, no-shows, and the part bindro cannot enforce for you

What exactly can a learner do on their own?

What your published terms let them do, and by default that is refund the whole booking at any time up to the moment the first session of their course starts. The link is in their confirmation email, the token in it is the authorisation, and the refund goes back to the card that paid without anybody at the school being asked. That default is what a school gets before it publishes anything.

Publish terms and the same button obeys them. You set two numbers: how many hours before the start self-service refunds stop, and the share you keep if a learner cancels inside that window. Inside the window the button then reads as a cancellation and says what it keeps before it is pressed — bindro keeps your share, returns the rest, ends the booking and puts the place back on sale, all without you. A window with nothing retained is the deliberate exception: that comes to you as a request, so publishing a window never quietly starts keeping money.

What no terms reach is the learner who simply does not arrive. There is no card held against a no-show and no charge for one, and past the start time the booking can only be refunded from the console, by somebody with the refund grant, for whatever amount you decide — which is where a no-show becomes a judgement rather than an automatic outcome.

One exception is worth knowing: if you cancel the sessions yourself, the window stays open indefinitely — a cancelled course must not trap anybody’s money.

• Full refund, learner-initiated, until the first session starts — that is the default, before you publish anything.
• A notice window and the share you keep inside it are both yours to publish, and bindro applies them itself.
• No late fee and no admin deduction beyond the share you published, and nothing at all for a no-show.
• Post-start cancellations come to you instead, in the console.

How should I price and word my terms around that?

Publish the rule you actually run on, because now the software runs it with you. Your forty-eight hours and your share go on the refund policy page once, and every booking taken afterwards is sold under that version — changing your terms today never changes a deal already done. A published deposit is a second lever: a learner on a plan has committed money at booking, and what a late cancellation returns is governed by the same terms. The third is structural: sell the course as the unit rather than the hour, so a change of plan costs them a stage rather than nothing.

Then write terms that describe what actually happens rather than what you wish happened. "Cancel online up to 48 hours before your first session for a full refund; inside 48 hours we keep 50% and the rest comes straight back; after the course starts, contact the office" is true, is what the buttons do, and is a better learner experience than a rule enforced one apologetic phone call at a time.

What the platform still will not do is charge a learner who simply does not turn up. If your economics depend on that rather than on a late cancellation, put the commitment in the product — a course rather than an hour, a deposit at booking — and say so in the course description. Finding out in week one that a no-show costs you the slot is expensive.

What is deferral, and when should I use it instead of a refund?

Deferral turns the booking into a credit rather than sending money back to the card. You do it from the orders page, for whatever amount is still returnable, and the learner is emailed a code worth that much, spendable on any future booking with your school for twelve months. It runs through exactly the machinery a refund runs through — the same order lock, the same ceiling, the same organiser-first split — so a booking cannot be deferred and refunded for more than it was worth.

Use it whenever the learner is not leaving, only moving. The money stays in your business, you do not pay the card network twice, and the learner is not out of pocket while they wait for a new date. The value sits on its own liability account until it is spent, which means you are not paid out for it — correctly, since the course has not happened.

Two limits. Only the school can start a deferral — what a learner can start on their own is a reschedule, which moves a date rather than money — and no rule turns a late cancellation into a credit automatically. And the code is a bearer instrument, so only its digest is stored — the console cannot show it to you again, and a learner who lost the email needs a new credit rather than a lookup.

Does the place come back on sale when somebody drops out?

Not by itself, and which of the three happened decides it. A refund and a deferral move money and set the order’s status; neither touches inventory. The place stays counted as sold against that session, so a course that was full stays full and the learner waiting for a cancellation is never offered it. A reschedule is the exception: the learner moves to another date of the same course and the one they left comes back on sale in the same action.

Putting it back on sale is one action: open the event in the console and set that pool’s capacity one higher. It takes effect immediately, the waitlist promotion sweep will pick the freed place up on its next tick, and the front of the queue gets a held place and an email rather than a race.

Build it into your own routine, because nothing will remind you. The refunded learner’s pass does stop working on its own — a fully refunded booking is off the check-in list and its code is refused at the door — so the risk is a lost sale rather than somebody walking in.

How do I let somebody in without charging them twice?

Issue a comp place. A comp consumes capacity and checks in exactly like a paid place while writing no revenue and attracting no fee, which is the honest way to run a make-up lesson for somebody who has already paid for a session they missed.

It is also the answer where a reschedule cannot reach. A learner moves themselves only to another date of the same course, so a missed week part-way through is a comp place on a later course, or a deferral credit and a fresh booking. Both leave a record; neither pretends the original lesson happened.