What do no-shows cost you?

How the numbers are worked out

No-shows a month are your bookings a week, times the share of clients who do not come, times 4.33 — the average number of weeks in a month. What they cost is that count times your average ticket, and a year is twelve such months. Every sum is rounded to a whole unit of the currency, because the inputs are estimates.

A deposit is plain arithmetic: what you keep for each no-show is taken off what is lost. It changes what a no-show costs you, not how often one happens.

Where the reminder range comes from

The range comes from a Cochrane systematic review of text-message reminders for health-care appointments (Gurol-Urganci et al., 2013). Compared with no reminder, reminders raised attendance by a risk ratio of 1.10, with a 95% confidence interval from 1.03 to 1.17.

The calculator applies that ratio to the visits that do take place — bookings × (1 − the no-show share) × (the ratio − 1) — and never wins back more than the no-shows themselves. The studies were of health-care appointments, not salons, so read the result as a range, not a promise. If you already send reminders, that part is already in your numbers.

What you can do about no-shows

Remind every visit. In Setvos a client gets a confirmation when they book and reminders before the visit — by default 24 hours and 2 hours ahead — in Telegram if they linked it, in WhatsApp if you connected it, and by text message otherwise. On Telegram the reminder carries a button that marks the visit confirmed in your diary.

Make cancelling easy. Every confirmation carries a private link to move or cancel the visit, so a client who cannot come frees the time instead of simply not turning up, and your waitlist can offer it to the next person.

Ask for a deposit where it matters: per service, as a sum or a percentage, paid at booking through the payment gateway you connect. You can ask it only of clients whose history warrants it, so a regular is never asked.