Cancellation Policies and Refunds for Recording Studios
Set a cancellation window, publish it on your booking page, and issue refunds in one click when you cancel a session — with two cases PunchIn refunds automatically.
Cancellations happen. An artist gets sick, travel falls through, a session moves. What you want is a policy your clients see up front, a cancellation window the software enforces for you, and a one-click way to return money when you decide to. That is what PunchIn gives you.
Your policy is enforced at the point of cancellation
You set a cancellation window — the number of hours of notice a client must give. When a client tries to cancel their own booking inside that window, PunchIn refuses it and tells them how much notice your studio requires. They have to contact you directly, which is exactly the conversation you want to be having about a late cancellation.
Outside the window, clients can cancel themselves without involving you, and PunchIn refunds their deposit automatically the moment they do — no action needed from your dashboard.
Clients see the terms before they pay
Your cancellation window and your deposit percentage are both shown on the booking page before a client confirms and pays. Nobody agrees to a session without seeing what happens if they pull out, so a late cancellation is never a surprise argument — it is a term they already accepted.
You configure both under Config → Policies:
- Cancellation notice — hours of notice required to cancel.
- Deposit — the percentage of the session total taken up front, with the balance due at the session.
There's no separate "late fee" percentage to set — inside the cancellation window a client can't self-cancel at all (see below), and if you cancel the booking yourself you simply choose whether to refund the deposit or keep it.
Refunding is one click, not a trip to Stripe
When you cancel a session from your dashboard, you choose whether to refund it at the same time. Refund it, and PunchIn issues the full Stripe refund against the original payment for you, straight out of your own connected Stripe balance. Decline the refund, and the booking is cancelled with the reason recorded against it.
Either way the slot is released back to your calendar immediately, the Google Calendar events PunchIn created are removed, and the client is emailed.
Because you make the refund call yourself, you keep the judgement: a regular client with a genuine emergency can be refunded outside your stated policy, and a repeat late-canceller does not have to be.
Two cases PunchIn refunds for you automatically
You don't have to be involved for every refund. Two situations trigger one without any action on your part:
- An on-time client cancellation. When a client cancels their own booking outside your cancellation window, their deposit is refunded the moment the cancellation goes through.
- A slot that was never actually available. A rare race where a session was taken or released between payment starting and completing — PunchIn refunds the client in full rather than holding money for a session it cannot honour.
Every other cancellation — inside the window, or one you cancel from the dashboard — leaves the refund decision to you.
Keep the policy, lose the admin
Set your window once, let the booking page publish it, and handle the exceptions yourself in one click when they come up.