They moved it. What happens to the deposit?

Ten past eight on a Monday night, and your phone buzzes. "So sorry, something's come up. Can we move Bruno to Thursday instead?" Tuesday at two is empty now, and it was full when you locked up.

That's not a cancellation. It isn't nothing, either. The whole question is which of the two it sits closer to, and the answer changes completely depending on what time the message arrives.

A move and a cancel leave you the same hole in the day. The only difference is that a move comes with a promise attached, and what you're deciding is how much that promise is worth. Let bookings move freely and Tuesday's dogs drain quietly into Thursday, which was already full. Treat every move as a late cancellation and you'll find out how fast a wavering client stops telling you anything at all. They don't move it, they don't cancel it, they just don't come.

How late is a move still just a move?

For as long as you can still sell the slot. That's the whole test, and it's why a number borrowed from another shop is usually the wrong one for yours.

If you've got a waitlist and forty clients who'd take a Tuesday afternoon at short notice, a move twenty-four hours out costs you two texts. If that Tuesday came from someone who found you on Google a fortnight ago, twenty-four hours is a lost afternoon dressed up as flexibility. Same rule, two very different bills.

One number is usually enough. Once moving has its own deadline and cancelling has another, every awkward conversation turns into an argument about which of the two this was, and that argument will cost you more of the evening than the slot was worth. Whatever you settle on, pick the number you'd be comfortable saying out loud to a client you like, because sooner or later you'll have to.

The deposit doesn't belong to the date

You didn't take that money against Tuesday. You took it against a dog turning up. So by default it moves when the booking moves: same money, same booking, new time, and nobody needs to have a conversation about it.

It stops moving at the point the notice gets short enough that you can't refill, and there it's doing precisely the job you took it for. That isn't a punishment and it doesn't have to be delivered as one. It's the thing you both agreed to when the booking was made.

Where it goes wrong is the version where the deposit is refunded and a new one taken. Three things happen at once and none of them help you. The client watches money leave the booking and, for a moment, believes the appointment is gone. You've demonstrated that a deposit comes back on request, which is the one thing a deposit is supposed not to do. And you've paid a card fee twice on a single groom. A move should be one booking that changed its time, not two bookings with a refund in the middle.

What a move should never look like on the record

If a move lands on a client's history as a cancellation, you've quietly started collecting bad information about your best people.

The client who gave you five days' notice and took the next time you offered ends up carrying a cancellation history she never earned. Every rule you hang off that history then fires on the wrong person — the free first one gets burned, a flag goes on the profile, and the next time she asks for a different day you already have a feeling about her that the facts don't support. Meanwhile the ones who simply don't turn up leave no trail worth reading. Police the record and you end up policing the polite.

When someone moves it every time

Three moves in a row isn't a policy problem. It's a slot problem. Tuesday at two doesn't work for that household and probably hasn't for months; they've been solving it one text at a time because nobody asked.

Ask what actually suits and put them there. Enforcing your way through the third move keeps the wrong appointment on the books and leaves you defending it.

The reply worth having saved

The hard part of a late move is that you're writing it one-handed with a wet spaniel on the table, so it comes out either too soft or too sharp. Keep one in your phone:

Sorry to hear it. Tuesday's a bit tight to refill this late, so the $30 deposit will stay on the booking rather than come back to you — I've got Thursday 10am or Saturday 8:30. Which suits?

Three things are doing the work in there:

• The money is settled before they ask. Nobody has to raise the deposit, so it never becomes a negotiation.
• The reason given is the slot rather than their behaviour. "Tight to refill" is a fact about your Tuesday. "You've moved this twice" is a fact about them, and it invites a reply you don't want.
• It ends on two times instead of an apology. They came to you wanting a different day. Give them one before the thread has a chance to go quiet.

Keep reading

• Booking policies, for where the deadline and the fee actually get set.
• Who gets to put a dog in your diary?, on who gets to take the slot in the first place.
• Why the best groomers take deposits, on whether to hold one at all before you decide what it does when a booking moves.
• Filling a slot at short notice, for what to do with the Tuesday they just handed back.
• Seglo for pet grooming.