Rescheduling, Cancelling, and No-Shows

What to do when a customer calls to move, skip, pause, or cancel service — which object to touch, what message the customer automatically receives, and the billing and payroll consequences of each choice.

Written By Support Team

Last updated About 3 hours ago

The customer just called. Before you touch anything, decide which layer they're actually asking you to change: one appointment (a visit), one service occurrence (a job), or the whole arrangement (the service plan). Pick the wrong one and you either send the customer a message you didn't mean to send, or quietly cancel eight months of work. If that hierarchy isn't second nature yet, read Service Plans first.

Moving one visit

Rescheduling is a visit-level action, and it takes seconds.

On the schedule (web): click the visit and drag it to a new time slot, or drag it onto a different technician. The duration is preserved and the technician assignment updates automatically.
On mobile: open the visit, tap the Schedule icon at the bottom to enter edit mode, then drag the block to a new time or another crew. The slider handles adjust duration.
From the visit itself: open the visit and edit the date, time, or arrival window directly — best when you're on the phone with the customer and need to type an exact time.

Watch the availability bars while you drag. If the crew's bar shows no open space, you're overbooking someone.

What the customer automatically receives

All of this is controlled in Settings → Messaging, and it's worth auditing before your first busy reschedule day. See Client Messaging Settings.

Visit rescheduled — fires when a visit is moved to a different time. Use with caution: if you drag a visit into the wrong slot and then move it again, the customer gets two messages.
Visit created / scheduled — fires when a visit is scheduled. It does not fire for pending jobs, which is exactly why bulk-scheduling from the pending queue is safe while bulk-scheduling a whole plan's visits at once is not.
Visit reminders — your configured reminders (a day before, an hour before) run against the visit's scheduled time.
Job cancelled — fires when a job is cancelled.
On My Way — manual only, sent when a tech taps the button. It can't be turned off, but you can edit the wording.

Internally, admins can also be notified through Workflows — job triggers include Rescheduled and Cancelled, so you can text a crew lead or create a task automatically.

Skipping or cancelling a single service

First choice: don't cancel, move it. Pushing a service out to next month keeps the plan's history and revenue intact and requires nothing more than a drag.

If the service genuinely isn't happening, note this rule: a visit cannot be deleted if it is the only visit tied to a job. That's deliberate — it prevents orphaned jobs with no appointment. To remove the work entirely, go to the customer profile, open the Service tab, and deactivate or delete that service or job. If the job has multiple visits (a re-service you no longer need), you can remove the extra visit and leave the job intact.

Pausing a plan

Snowbirds, a house being remodeled, a customer between paychecks — the request is "keep me, just not right now." Handle a pause this way:

Leave the remaining jobs in the pending queue rather than scheduling them. Pending jobs keep the customer visible as due without booking a crew.
Push the next visit out to the restart date, and add a note on the plan so the next person to look knows why.
Set a task to follow up before the pause ends, so the account doesn't quietly go dormant.

One caution: pausing the work does not necessarily pause the money on monthly or start-of-month billing, where charges run on calendar dates.

Cancelling the plan entirely

Deactivate the service plan — don't delete jobs one by one. Deactivating preserves the history so your reporting, sales attribution, and payroll records stay accurate. Deleting individual jobs leaves a plan that no longer matches reality.

Open the customer profile, find the plan, and deactivate it. Inactive plans stay visible on the customer and on the Service Plans page, where you can filter for them during reviews.
Deactivating also stops auto-renew, so the plan won't duplicate itself at the end of its term.
Check the Pending Jobs list after cancelling a plan.
Invoices that were already issued stay outstanding. Cancelling future service doesn't write off past work.
If your agreement has a cancellation policy or early-termination fee in its terms and conditions, apply it before you deactivate — the signed agreement stays on the customer's Attachments as your record.

No-shows and locked gates

Rotor does not have a dedicated no-show outcome on a visit today. Pin outcome types like No Answer belong to door-to-door canvassing on the map, not to scheduled service. Until there is, pick one of three consistent handlings and train the crew on it:

Reschedule it. The tech moves the visit from their phone and adds a visit note. Nothing bills, nothing is lost. Best for a first occurrence.
Complete it and charge a trip fee. Finish the visit, mark the job complete, and add a trip charge line item to the job. This is the only handling that produces revenue and a payroll line, so make sure your agreement's terms cover it.
Cancel the job. Use it when the customer is unreachable and the service window has passed. Expect the Job cancelled message to go out if you have it enabled.

Whichever you choose, put the reason in the visit notes. They surface alongside job, plan, and customer notes on the technician's next trip out, which is what stops the same locked gate happening twice.

Decision table

Customer wants to	Do this	Billing effect	Payroll effect
Move one visit	Drag it on the schedule, or edit the visit	None — the job still bills when it's completed	Commission moves with the visit, because it's applied on the scheduled visit date. Watch period boundaries
Skip one visit	Push it to the next window if you can; otherwise cancel that job from the customer's Service tab	A job that never completes never invoices under standard billing	No completed job, no commission.
Pause the plan	Leave remaining jobs pending, push the next visit to the restart date, add a plan note and a follow-up task	Standard billing goes quiet. Monthly and start-of-month billing may keep charging — check first	Nothing accrues while no visits are scheduled
Cancel entirely	Deactivate the service plan on the customer profile	Future services stop. Existing invoices stay owed; apply any cancellation fee from your agreement	Already-earned commission on completed jobs is unaffected
No-show / couldn't access	Reschedule, or complete with a trip fee line item — and always add a visit note	Only the trip-fee route bills	Only the trip-fee route produces commission, calculated off the job total

Tips

Decide which layer the customer wants to change (visit, job, or service plan) before you touch anything.
Audit Settings → Messaging before a busy reschedule day so customers don't get duplicate or unexpected messages.
Prefer moving a service over cancelling it to keep the plan's history and revenue intact.
Deactivate a service plan instead of deleting jobs one by one.
Always add a visit note for no-shows and locked gates so the next tech knows what happened.

Congratulations! You can now handle reschedules, skips, pauses, cancellations, and no-shows in Rotor.

Have additional questions? Our team is ready to help you succeed. Contact us through the chat or drop us an email at support@getrotor.com.

Service Plans — how visits, jobs, and plans fit together
Client Messaging Settings — control which messages customers receive
Pending Jobs — working the pending queue
Payroll — how commission is calculated

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