No-show rate

The share of booked appointments where the customer simply does not arrive. A silent tax on every appointment business: paid capacity, zero revenue.

No-show rate is no-shows divided by booked appointments over a real window, measured from the booking system rather than memory. A no-show is worse than an empty slot: the staff were paid, the room was lit, and a paying customer may have been turned away because the book looked full.

Double-digit rates are common in appointment businesses, and most owners underestimate their own number until they measure it. The cost arithmetic is rate times bookings times average ticket, annualised; our no-show cost calculator does it in seconds.

The effective fixes are known and boring: deposits or card-on-file, reminders with one-tap rescheduling, a stated policy, and deposits made mandatory for repeat offenders. The full playbook, including what NOT to do, is in reducing no-shows.