How much are cancellations costing me?
Cancellation & No-Show Loss Calculator
Cancellations only cost you when the slot stays empty. This separates the ones you refill from the ones you eat.
YOUR NUMBERS
YOUR RESULT
$5,400 a year in empty slots
- Lost per year
- $5,400
- Lost per month
- $450
- Lost per week
- $108
- Unfilled slots per week
- 2.4
Raising your refill rate by 20 points would recover about $1,800 a year — usually a waitlist text, not a policy.
Educational calculation from the numbers you entered. Not financial, tax or legal advice.
HOW THIS CALCULATION WORKS
Two shops with the same cancellation rate can be thousands apart, because one has a standby list and one has an empty chair. Refill rate is the lever, not the cancellation rate itself.
- Cancelled slots = booked clients × cancellation rate
- Unfilled = cancelled × (1 − refill rate)
- Loss = unfilled × average ticket × weeks worked
A WORKED EXAMPLE
40 clients a week, 10% cancel, 40% of those refill: 2.4 slots a week stay empty. At a $45 ticket over 50 weeks that is $5,400 a year.
These figures come from the example inputs above, not from industry data. ChairScale does not publish benchmark numbers until it has enough verified data to do it properly — read the methodology.
QUESTIONS BARBERS ASK
Should I charge a cancellation fee?
Run the number first. If most slots refill, a fee costs goodwill for very little; if almost none refill, a deposit is defensible and easy to explain.
What is a realistic refill rate?
Whatever yours is today — check your last month before assuming. The calculator is designed to show the gap between your current refill rate and a better one.
Do no-shows count differently?
They hurt more because the slot is lost with no notice. Include them here and track them separately if you plan to introduce deposits.
RUN YOUR NUMBERS
Save your numbers to a free ChairScale profile and get a business assessment that tells you which of these levers to pull first.