Cancellation and make up policies that actually work

Most music teachers write a cancellation policy once, in a hurry, in the week they get burned. It usually says something like "24 hours notice required for a make up lesson", and then it quietly stops being enforced, because enforcing it feels like being difficult about a sick eight year old.

Two terms later you are carrying nine outstanding make ups, three of which are from a family that left in June.

The problem is almost never the notice period. It is that the policy says what a parent must do and never says what happens to the money.

Why most policies fail

Three failure modes, and nearly every unworkable policy is at least one of them.

It offers refunds instead of credits. A refund takes income out of a slot you held, staffed and could not resell. A credit keeps the value in your studio and gives the family something real. Families accept credits readily. They just need to be told that is what happens.

It has no expiry. This is the big one, and it is the reason make ups accumulate. An open-ended credit is an unfunded liability with no end date, and it grows fastest with exactly the families who cancel most. Credits need to die.

It does not say what happens when you cancel. A policy that only binds the family reads as unfair, because it is. Yours needs a line about your own absences, and that line is what makes the rest of it defensible.

The three decisions

Everything else is detail.

1. The notice period. 24 hours is the market standard in Australia and it is what parents expect. Some studios run 48. Do not go below 24: it is not enough time to resell the slot, so you are giving away the thing the policy exists to protect.

2. What a late cancellation converts into. Three workable answers: nothing, a credit, or a capped number of credits per term. Pick one and write it down.

3. When the credit expires. The end of the term it was issued in is the cleanest rule, because it matches how Australian studios already bill and parents already think. End of the following term is the generous version. "Within 3 months" is common but it drifts out of sync with your terms and creates arguments.

A policy you can copy

Adjust the numbers, keep the shape. This is deliberately short, because a policy nobody reads is not a policy.

Cancellations and make up lessons

Lessons are booked and billed by the term.

If you cancel more than 24 hours before a lesson, you receive a make up credit. Credits can be used for any available slot and expire at the end of the following term.

Cancellations inside 24 hours, and missed lessons, are charged in full and do not receive a credit.

You can hold up to 2 unused credits at a time.

If I cancel a lesson for any reason, you receive a credit that does not count towards your limit and does not expire until it is used.

If you are running late, the lesson still finishes at its scheduled time.

That last line prevents more friction than anything else in the document.

Make up credits, and the part everyone leaves out

A make up credit is not a favour, it is a liability on your books. Treat it like one.

Cap the balance, not just the rate. "Two cancellations per term" is a rate limit and it does not stop accumulation, because a family can hit the cap every term. "You can hold up to 2 unused credits" is a balance limit, and it forces the credit to be used or lost before another is issued. Balance limits are what actually keep the number down.

Make the expiry match your billing. If you bill by term, expire by term. The two calendars agreeing is worth more than any particular length of grace period.

Track them somewhere that is not your memory. Credits are the single most common source of "but you said I had one". The number needs to live somewhere the family can see it, ideally next to their invoices. Ours sits in the parent portal so there is nothing to dispute.

Decide what happens when a family leaves. Unused credits at the point of departure are the messiest case. The clean answer is that they lapse, and it is only clean if you said so in advance.

When you cancel

Your own absences are the part that makes the policy fair, so be more generous here than you are with the family.

A credit for every lesson you cancel, no expiry, not counted against their cap. If you are away for a stretch, either credit the block or push the term end out. Do not offer to "fit them in somewhere", because that is a promise about a calendar you have not looked at yet.

Introducing a new policy without losing students

The mistake is starting mid term. Nobody reads a policy change that arrives in week 5.

Send it with the term invoice, as part of the enrolment for the next term, framed as what it is: the terms of the booking they are about to pay for. Give one paragraph of reason and no apology. Something like: "From Term 1 I am moving to a make up credit system, so cancellations are easier to reschedule and I can keep your slot held for you."

Then hold it. The first family who tests it is the one that determines whether you have a policy or a suggestion.

What we do

Every part of the above is a real object in TeachMusic rather than a paragraph in a PDF. Your notice period and credit expiry are settings, a late cancellation issues a credit automatically against the policy you set, the balance shows in the family's portal beside their invoices, and expiry runs on your terms without you remembering.

The reason it is built that way is the reason this page exists: the policy is not the hard part. Applying it consistently, to people you like, in week 8 of a long term, is the hard part.