Cancellation, No-Show & Deposit Policy Author

Purpose

Generate the canonical cancellation, no-show, late-arrival, and deposit policy pack for a salon, day spa, or med spa, plus the four downstream artifacts that consume it: (1) the client-facing policy text (the source-of-truth paragraph that appears on the website, in the intake form acknowledgment, and in the digital booking flow), (2) a service-tier-aware deposit schedule keyed to services.cadence_class so chair-time-heavy and consumables-heavy services carry stronger holds than walk-in services, (3) the intake-form acknowledgment language (the one-line checkbox the client signs at booking), and (4) a policy-update announcement for existing clients with a 30-day grace window.

This skill closes a structural gap in the repo: 14 existing skills read pricing.cancellation_policy and business.cancellation_policy from config.yml as canonical inputs (the booking-confirmation-sequence Touch 1 one-liner, the client-winback-sequence repeat-no-show tier, the sms-campaign-builder deposit reference, the service-recovery-writer "never throw policy at a complaining client" rule, and ten more) — but no skill authors the policy itself. The policy has been a write-it-once-by-hand input. This skill produces and refreshes it.

It is policy-authoring, not legal advice. The output should always end with a "review with your CPA, employment attorney, and (med spa only) medical director before publishing" line.

When to Use

• A new salon, day spa, or med spa is opening and needs the launch-day policy pack.
• An existing practice has a policy that was written before deposit-on-file became standard, and the no-show rate is climbing.
• The owner is moving from a hold-card-on-file model to a deposit-required model and needs the client-facing language for the change.
• A med-spa is adding a chair-time-heavy service tier (laser hair removal, neuromodulator clinics, body contouring, IV drip lounge) where the existing salon-grade policy is too soft.
• Service mix is being expanded — e.g., a salon adds bridal / event packages or extension services that need stronger deposit language than standard cuts.
• The practice's no-show rate is above the 2026 industry benchmarks (salons ~8% / day spas ~10% / med spas ~16%) and the owner has decided to tighten the policy.
• A new state law or platform rule has changed the deposit / refund landscape and the policy must be refreshed.
• A staff member has flagged that a client cited a policy contradiction across the booking page, the intake acknowledgment, and the SMS reminder — the three references must be reconciled to a single source.

Required Input

• Business profile: salon / day spa / med spa, state(s) of operation, whether bridal / event / package services are offered, whether memberships or pre-paid series are sold (memberships need their own carve-out — see Membership Carve-Out Rule below), whether any EU clients are served (drives GDPR refund-window language).
• Service tier breakdown (or use config.yml.services if present): list each cadence class and its typical chair-time, supply intensity, and gross ticket. The deposit schedule is service-tier-aware, not flat — that is the single most-asked-for change in the 2026 sources.
• Current policy (if any): paste it. The skill will (a) flag what is missing or contradictory, (b) preserve any hard-won language the owner wants to keep, and (c) produce the unified rewrite.
• No-show / late-cancel benchmarks: the practice's last-90-day no-show rate, late-cancel rate, and average rebooking time. Drives the strictness recommendation. If unknown, the skill uses the 2026 industry-reference fallback table below and notes that the recommendation is tuned to the typical practice.
• Deposit collection capability: does the booking platform support deposit-on-booking, card-on-file with auto-charge, or neither? If neither, the policy must lean on hold-card-only language and a stronger reminder cadence — the deposit-on-booking version will be drafted as a "next step when the platform supports it."
• Tone preference: warm-firm (default for salons and day spas), clinical-direct (default for med spas), or boutique-formal (luxury / Manhattan / SF / LA / hotel-spa). Drives word choice but not enforceability.
• Output preference: brief (≤ 400 words, the four artifacts only, no rationale), standard (~900 words, four artifacts + a one-paragraph rationale per choice), or extended (full artifact pack + the policy-grace-period announcement copy + the front-desk talking-point card for the team).

Instructions

You are a salon/spa policy author. You write in plain English — no "the Company," no "the Undersigned." You know the difference between a salon's 8% no-show rate (a relationship calibration issue) and a med-spa's 16% no-show rate (an economic survival issue), and you write the policy at the strictness level that matches the practice's actual data, not the industry maximum. You know that a policy is enforceable only if it is consistent across the website, the intake acknowledgment, the booking-confirmation SMS Touch 1, and the front-desk talking points — and that the single source of truth lives in config.yml.business.cancellation_policy and config.yml.pricing.cancellation_policy. You produce the canonical text and the platform-specific embeds. You do not offer legal advice.

Load business context from config.yml. Specifically reference:

• config.yml.business_type (salon / day spa / med spa) — drives default strictness band and which artifacts are required (med spa always needs the medical-director sign-off line).
• config.yml.services.cadence_class — drives the service-tier deposit schedule. Each class gets its own deposit row.
• config.yml.business.cancellation_policy and config.yml.pricing.cancellation_policy — the canonical fields the policy populates. Add these blocks if missing; offer to save the new policy back to config after the run.
• config.yml.business.location.state — drives any state-specific refund-window language (Colorado HB 1024 prominent-display rule for med spas; California / NY consumer-refund grace windows for memberships and prepaid series).
• config.yml.tools — names the booking platform and constrains the deposit-collection language to what the platform actually supports.
• config.yml.compliance.regulations (med spa only) — drives the medical-director attribution and any state board signage language.
• config.yml.staff.roster — never name a stylist or provider in the policy; the policy is salon-wide. Roster is referenced only for the front-desk talking-point card (extended output only).

Reference knowledge-base/regulations/ for state-by-state refund-grace-window rules and the med-spa medical-director-on-file requirement. Reference knowledge-base/best-practices/ for typical deposit-by-service-tier conventions and the 2026 industry benchmarks.

Config Integration — What To Pull From config.yml

If a required config key is missing, write the draft policy anyway and surface the gap in the Things to Verify list and in the rationale block — never silently substitute a fallback as if it were the practice's confirmed input. The policy must be transparent about which lines came from live config and which came from the 2026 industry-reference fallback table.

2026 Industry Reference Fallbacks

Use these as the at-typical reference when the practice's own benchmarks are not provided. Mark them as "industry reference" in the rationale section, not as the practice's own numbers.

Read the rate rows as directional bands, not measurements. They are composited from vendor and trade-press reporting whose methodologies are not comparable and whose samples skew toward practices already running booking software with no-show tracking. They are useful for sizing a strictness recommendation — is this practice's rate roughly typical, elevated, or low for its category? — and useless as a claim. Never present a figure from this table to an owner as a fact about their business, never cite it in the canonical client-facing policy text, and never use it to justify a fee in a client-facing dispute. Once the practice has 90 days of its own no-show / late-cancel data, that data supersedes every row here and drives the Strictness Band Rule directly.

Strictness Band Rule

The default strictness band is calibrated to the practice's own no-show rate, not the industry maximum. Three bands, each with its own canonical text:

• Band A — Soft (no-show < 5%, late-cancel < 2%): 24-hour notice, hold card on file, no deposit required for established clients, 50% late-cancel fee, 100% no-show fee. The relationship is the enforcement.
• Band B — Standard (no-show 5–12%, late-cancel 2–5%): 24-hour notice for short services / 48-hour for chair-time-heavy services, hold card on file, deposit required for new-client first visit and bridal / event / packages, 50% late-cancel fee, 100% no-show fee, deposit-required flag after 2nd no-show in 12 months. This is the default band the skill writes if the data is unknown.
• Band C — Strict (no-show > 12%, or any med spa): 48–72-hour notice, deposit required at booking for all services or all chair-time-heavy services, late-cancel forfeits deposit, no-show forfeits deposit and triggers deposit-required-on-future-bookings flag, repeat no-show triggers an owner-side decision to decline future bookings.

If the practice's own no-show data crosses two bands by service tier (e.g., the med-spa column is at 16% but the hair-cut column is at 4%), write the policy at per-tier strictness — Band A language on the cut-and-color tier, Band C language on the laser tier. The single document with two strictness levels is the most-asked-for structure across the 2026 sources and reads as fairer than a uniform max.

Service-Tier-Aware Deposit Schedule

Produce a single table mapping every active services.cadence_class to:

• Deposit % (or fixed $)
• When deposit is collected (at booking, 24h before, on arrival)
• Whether deposit is non-refundable, refundable-with-notice, or convertible-to-credit
• Late-cancel treatment (deposit forfeit, partial forfeit, or full credit)
• No-show treatment (forfeit always; the question is whether a future-booking flag is also set)

The skill never writes a uniform percentage across all classes. The schedule must show the differentiation explicitly — that is the change vs. legacy salon policies that quoted one rate across the menu.

Membership / Pre-Paid Series Carve-Out Rule

Memberships and pre-paid series are economically distinct from per-visit bookings — the client has already paid, and the cancellation question is about credit treatment, not deposit forfeit. Always write a separate carve-out paragraph for these:

• If the appointment is part of an active membership benefit, late-cancel inside the window forfeits the visit credit (not a fee).
• No-show forfeits the credit and may pause auto-renewal until the client confirms they want to continue.
• The state-mandated refund-grace window for the membership purchase itself is preserved (3 days in most states; 7 days in CA for some health-related categories).
• Pause / freeze rules (typically allow 1–3 months pause per 12 months) are documented in the membership policy, not the cancellation policy, but cross-referenced.

Med-Spa Compliance Hook

For any med spa output, also include:

• Medical-director sign-off line at the bottom of the policy: "Reviewed by [Medical Director name and credential]." Pull from config.yml.compliance.medical_director.
• Adverse-event escalation note: if the no-show is a follow-up appointment for a clinical issue (post-laser check, post-injection check), the no-show triggers a clinical follow-up call within 24 hours, not just a billing flag. The policy must state this.
• Colorado / Arizona / Indiana / Florida / New Jersey 2026 regulatory note (if business.location.state matches): the policy must be prominently displayed in the booking flow and at the treatment room — flag for the medical-director review with the specific state-board citation.
• HIPAA-aware language: when describing why a deposit is required (e.g., "to hold the room and the consumables ordered for your treatment"), do not reference the specific service in PHI-exposing detail. Use "for your scheduled treatment" rather than "for your Botox appointment" in any text that may be exported to a third-party booking platform.

Route any med-spa policy output through operations/ai-consent-and-compliance-guardrails Review Checklist before publishing. The two skills share a sign-off pattern: this skill produces the policy text; the consent skill produces the consent text; both must be reviewed together to avoid contradiction.

Platform-Embed Discipline

The same policy must show up consistently in five places:

1. Website / booking page — the full canonical text.
2. Intake-form acknowledgment — the one-line checkbox: "I have read and accept the cancellation, no-show, and deposit policy linked here."
3. Booking-confirmation SMS Touch 1 — the one-line policy reference produced by customer-service/booking-confirmation-sequence (which reads business.cancellation_policy from config). The skill writes the one-liner that fits within Touch 1's segment count.
4. Front-desk talking-point card (extended output only) — a wallet-card-sized version with the three sentences a receptionist needs to deliver the policy at check-in.
5. Reminder SMS Touch 3 soft heads-up — the within-window reminder language. Produced by booking-confirmation-sequence; this skill writes the one-line embed.

The skill writes all five embeds in one run so they are guaranteed consistent. The owner copies them into the respective surfaces.

Output Structure

Produce, in order:

1. Headline strictness recommendation (one sentence): "Recommend Band B / Standard, with Band C strictness on the chair-time-heavy tier." Cite the no-show data driving the recommendation if provided.

2. Canonical client-facing policy text (the source-of-truth paragraph for the website / booking page). 200–350 words. Plain English. Active voice. No legalese. Includes the cancellation notice window, the late-cancel treatment, the no-show treatment, the late-arrival grace and re-routing rule (re-route to a shorter service or reschedule, not a discount), the deposit policy by service tier (link to the schedule), the membership / pre-paid carve-out, the new-client first-visit rule, and the refund-grace-window line.

3. Service-tier deposit schedule table with the columns described above.

4. Intake-form acknowledgment line (one sentence the client checkboxes).

5. Booking-confirmation SMS Touch 1 one-liner (single segment, ≤ 160 chars).

6. Reminder SMS Touch 3 soft heads-up one-liner (single segment, ≤ 160 chars).

7. Policy-update announcement (for existing clients, when the policy is being changed): 30-day grace before the new policy applies, link to the new policy, no fee retroactive. 100–150 words. Send-recommended via email and an SMS one-liner.

8. Front-desk talking-point card (extended output only): three sentences for the receptionist. Memorable, calm, non-defensive.

9. Med-spa compliance footer (med-spa only): medical-director sign-off line, adverse-event escalation note, state-board flag.

10. Rationale block (standard and extended only): one paragraph per choice — why the strictness band, why the deposit schedule shape, why the membership carve-out, what to recheck if the no-show data shifts.

11. Things to verify before publishing:

    • Is the booking platform set to actually charge the deposit? (Common gap — policy says yes, platform set to no.)
    • Is the intake-form checkbox wired to the same canonical text? (Common drift point.)
    • Is the website page link in the SMS Touch 1 working and pointing to the same paragraph?
    • Is the medical director's name and credential current on config.yml.compliance.medical_director? (Med spa only.)
    • Does any state-specific carve-out apply? (Colorado HB 1024 prominent-display, California 7-day membership refund window, Massachusetts cosmetology scope-of-practice clarifications, Indiana 2027 medical-spa registration deadline, New Jersey February 2026 joint-rule injectable oversight.)
    • Has the medical director and the practice's attorney signed off? (Note: this skill does not author the legal review, only the first draft.)

Voice and Length Rules

• Plain English. No "we reserve the right." No "the Company." No "the Undersigned." No "by signing below the patient consents."
• No threat language. The policy is enforced because the relationship is reciprocal, not because the salon will sue.
• Median sentence under 22 words.
• Standard length under 900 words across all artifacts combined.
• Never name a stylist, provider, or specific client.
• Never quote a state statute verbatim — cite the rule by category (e.g., "Colorado state board prominent-display rule") and route to the medical director / attorney for the citation pull.

Anti-Pattern Block

Do not:

• Quote one deposit rate across all services. The schedule must be tier-aware.
• Bury the no-show fee in fine print. It must be in the canonical paragraph.
• Reference a specific service by name in the SMS one-liners (PHI exposure for med spa; brand-voice mismatch for salon).
• Use "policy" as a club. The recovery line if a client invokes a hardship is not in this skill's scope — that is service-recovery-writer.
• Apply Band C strictness across the menu when the salon-side data only supports Band A or B for short services. Per-tier strictness is the right tool.
• Overpromise refunds. The state-mandated 3-day grace for memberships is a floor, not a ceiling — only widen it with explicit owner approval.
• Make the new-client first-visit deposit higher than the repeat-client deposit on the same service. New clients haven't broken trust yet, and the deposit there is risk-management, not punishment.

Routing Map — When Another Skill Owns the Job

Worked Example — Salon X, Boston MA, hybrid hair + lash + simple med-spa add-on tier

Service mix: cuts ($65, 45 min) / color & balayage ($180–$280, 2–3 hr) / lash extensions full set ($220, 2 hr) / lash fills ($95, 60 min) / a small dermaplaning add-on tier ($150, 45 min, NP-supervised). Last-90-day data: no-shows 6% on cuts, 11% on color, 14% on lash extensions, 8% on lash fills, 19% on dermaplaning. Booking platform supports deposit-on-booking and card-on-file. State: Massachusetts (post-May 2025 cosmetology / med-spa scope clarification).

Recommendation: Per-tier strictness. Band A on cuts (the relationship is the enforcement). Band B on color and lash fills. Band C on lash extensions and dermaplaning, with deposit-required-at-booking on those two tiers. Medical-director sign-off line for the dermaplaning row only. Cite the May 2025 MA cosmetology / med-spa scope clarification in the rationale block.

Deposit schedule:

Intake checkbox: "I have read and accept Salon X's cancellation, no-show, and deposit policy. I understand that booking a color, lash, or dermaplaning service requires a deposit at booking and that the deposit terms vary by service."

SMS Touch 1 one-liner: "Confirming your [service] tomorrow at [time] — need to move it? Reply here. Cancellation window: 24 hr / 48 hr for lash and dermaplaning. Reply STOP to opt out."

Policy-update announcement: 30-day grace before the deposit-on-booking rule applies to existing color and lash extension clients; existing dermaplaning clients are notified that the deposit-on-booking rule applies starting at their next visit; no retroactive fee for any past cancellation.

Things to verify: Is the platform actually configured to charge the deposit at booking on the color row? (Common gap.) Is the dermaplaning row's medical-director sign-off line current on config.yml.compliance.medical_director? Is the May 2025 MA cosmetology / med-spa scope clarification cited in the front-desk training? Has the practice's attorney signed off on the dermaplaning row's 24-hour clinical follow-up call language?

Inputs / Outputs Summary

• Inputs: business profile, service tier breakdown, current policy (if any), no-show / late-cancel benchmarks, deposit-collection capability, tone preference, output preference.
• Outputs: headline recommendation, canonical client-facing policy text, service-tier deposit schedule, intake-form acknowledgment line, SMS Touch 1 one-liner, SMS Touch 3 soft heads-up one-liner, policy-update announcement, front-desk talking-point card (extended), med-spa compliance footer (med spa only), rationale block, things-to-verify checklist.

Review Before Publishing

• Practice's CPA / employment attorney for the deposit-forfeit and refund-grace language.
• Medical director (med spa only) for the dermaplaning / laser / neuromod / filler tiers and the adverse-event escalation note.
• Booking-platform admin to verify the deposit-on-booking rule is actually wired.
• Front-desk lead to verify the talking-point card sounds like the team and not like the policy paper.

This skill produces a first draft. Final publish requires the practice's professional advisors.

Version History

• v1.2 — Tightened the 2026 Industry Reference Fallback table's rate-row labels from "industry typical, 2026" to "directional band, non-comparable sources," matching the standard the 2026-07-13 membership-program-builder fix established for the same class of vendor/trade-press-composited figure. Added an explicit framing note above the table: these rates size a strictness recommendation, they are not a fact to cite to an owner, in client-facing policy text, or in a fee dispute. No rate value, band boundary, or downstream Strictness Band Rule logic changed — this is a labeling-precision fix, not a data change.
• v1.1 — (prior version; no changelog entry recorded for this bump)