No-show and late-cancellation policies for US tutors (with sample clauses)

Two mechanisms make a written policy work. The first is economic: a Tuesday 5 pm slot cancelled at 4 pm cannot be resold. The loss is real, and without an agreement it lands on you by default — a busy tutor with 25 student-hours a week and two late cancellations per week loses roughly two full weeks of income per year to them.

The second is behavioral, and it's the one that surprises new tutors: the policy changes cancellation behavior more than it generates fees. When cancelling costs nothing, the threshold for cancelling keeps dropping — a birthday party, a big homework night, mild tiredness. When a late cancellation has a stated price, families reschedule earlier, and most tutors find they rarely need to actually charge the fee. The policy's main output is fewer late cancellations, not revenue.

In the US you have wide freedom of contract here: private tutoring agreements between you and a family are ordinary service contracts, and cancellation-fee terms are broadly enforceable when they're agreed in advance, reasonable in relation to your actual loss, and communicated clearly. (This article is practical guidance, not legal advice — a tutoring company with employees or unusual state-specific concerns should have a lawyer look over its terms.)

Every policy is three choices. Make them deliberately and the clauses write themselves:

• The cutoff: 24 hours is the US default and the easiest to defend and communicate; 12 hours is generous, 48 hours suits scarce weekend slots. Pick one number and use it everywhere — mixed cutoffs per student are impossible to track by memory.
• The fee: 100% of the lesson fee for no-shows, and either 100% or 50% for late-but-notified cancellations. Charging half for a notified late cancellation reads as fair and still changes behavior; charging full for both is simpler and equally common.
• The safety valve: an explicit illness exception (free if reported before the lesson starts), and — the clause tutors forget — the reverse rule: if you cancel, the family pays nothing and gets a priority make-up. A policy that binds both sides gets far less pushback.

The following set is written for one-on-one private tutoring, drop into your welcome email, intake form, or written agreement, and adjust the numbers to your practice:

• "Cancellations made more than 24 hours before the scheduled lesson are free. The lesson is rescheduled or credited."
• "Cancellations made less than 24 hours before the lesson are charged at 50% of the lesson fee."
• "Missed lessons without notice (no-shows) are charged at the full lesson fee."
• "Illness: a lesson cancelled for illness before its start time is not charged, regardless of notice period."
• "If I need to cancel a lesson, you will not be charged, and I will offer a priority make-up time within the same or following week."
• "Recurring lateness: if a student is more than 15 minutes late, the lesson runs to its scheduled end time and is charged in full."
• "Three no-shows within a semester may result in the standing weekly slot being released."

Make-ups are where generous tutors quietly lose their policy. If every late cancellation converts into a free make-up, you haven't set a cancellation fee — you've set an infinite-reschedule rule with extra steps, and your calendar fills with make-up debt you can never schedule. Decide the make-up rule as deliberately as the fee:

A defensible middle ground used by many US tutors: timely cancellations always get a make-up or credit; late-but-notified cancellations get one make-up per month or semester as a goodwill allowance, tracked; no-shows get none. The keyword is tracked — an untracked goodwill allowance becomes an entitlement within a semester. This is also where software quietly earns its keep: with attendance and cancellations recorded per student (see how Timeplanned tracks this on the tutor scheduling page), "you've used this month's make-up" is a fact on a screen, not an argument.

Whatever you choose, put an expiry on make-up credits (end of the following month is common). Unexpired make-up debt is a liability that compounds — studios that migrate to software after years of paper regularly discover dozens of orphaned make-ups nobody can date.

New students are easy: the policy goes in the intake conversation and welcome email before the first lesson, framed as standard practice — because it is. Existing families are the delicate case. The sequence that works:

• Give notice, not surprise: announce the policy taking effect from the first of next month, in writing, to everyone at once — a policy applied to everyone is fair; one applied ad hoc feels personal.
• Lead with the reverse rule and the illness exception — the parts that protect the family — before the fee.
• Keep the first enforcement soft: the first late cancellation after the policy starts gets a reminder ('this one's on me — from next time the 24-hour rule applies'), which converts the policy from threat to norm.
• Never negotiate the policy per family in chat. If you make an exception, name it as one ('I'll waive this one because of the circumstances') so the rule survives the exception.

A fee is only chargeable if you can show three things: the session was scheduled, the family knew the policy, and the cancellation or no-show happened when you say it did. Practically, disputes aren't won by legal force — US tutors almost never sue over a $60 lesson — they're won by having records boring enough that nobody argues.

That means: the policy in writing with a date it was shared; a schedule that exists before the lesson (not reconstructed after); and an attendance record made on the day. A chat thread does this badly — the reschedule agreed in WhatsApp three weeks ago is unfindable — which is why the record-keeping layer matters as much as the wording. Timeplanned records each session, its attendance outcome, and the resulting monthly statement in one place, so the invoice line for a no-show traces to a scheduled session and a same-day record; the general version of this argument is covered in Timeplanned vs spreadsheets.

One US-specific note: if you charge cards on file for no-show fees (via Stripe or similar), your policy must say so explicitly before the card is stored — surprise charges are how tutors end up on the wrong side of a chargeback regardless of how fair the fee was.