no-show-policy

---
name: no-show-policy
description: Turns your own covers and cancellation history into a written deposit and cancellation policy, priced from your real loss, with the booking-page wording and the refund decision log. Use when no-shows are costing you tables, when you are about to start taking deposits, or when the policy you have is a paragraph nobody reads.
---

# Stop losing the table without losing the booking

You give this your last three months of bookings, the ones that did not turn up, your average spend per head, and whatever your booking page currently says about deposits. You get back a written policy with the numbers worked out from your own trade, a cancellation table you can put on a page, the exact paragraph that sits next to the booking button, and a one-line log sheet for the nights you decide to give the money back. It will not invent a percentage for you and it will not tell you a policy is enforceable, because that is your solicitor's call.

## What it does

1. **Work out what a no-show actually costs you before choosing any number.** Take the covers that did not arrive, the average spend per head on that day of the week, and the honest answer to whether the table went back out. A 7pm Saturday two-top that sits empty for the whole service is a different loss from a 6pm Thursday four-top you resold at 6.40pm. Produce three figures: covers lost, revenue lost, and revenue recovered by reselling. The reason for doing this first is that the Competition and Markets Authority's guidance on unfair contract terms says a cancellation charge is more likely to be fair if it is "a stated sum which represents a genuine pre-estimate of loss the supplier is likely to suffer", and that a charge is more likely to be unfair if it does not reflect "any ability of the business to mitigate (reduce) any loss following the cancellation, for instance by finding another customer". You cannot pre-estimate a loss you have never measured. For scale, ResDiary's survey of 175 UK and Irish venues reported that "the average loss in revenue as a result of no-shows totalling £3,621 per venue last year", but that is their sample and not your restaurant, so the policy uses your figures and never theirs.

2. **Decide which bookings the policy touches, and write the boundary as a number.** Do not apply a deposit to every booking. Name the trigger in covers, in day, in date, or in all three: parties of eight or more, every booking from 20 December to 1 January, every Saturday after 7pm. The same ResDiary survey found "more than half (51%) required a deposit for a certain number of covers" and that "the average minimum number of covers required to trigger a deposit requirement sits at nine", which tells you the shape of the norm without telling you your trigger. Write the boundary so a host reading it at the phone can apply it without asking a manager. Anything the host has to interpret will be applied differently by three different hosts, and inconsistency is what turns a policy into an argument on the night.

3. **Choose the instrument, and know that they are not the same thing.** There are three: money taken now as a deposit and set against the bill, a card held and charged only if nobody turns up, and full prepayment for a fixed menu. They behave differently at the point of booking. The CMA's price transparency guidance notes at footnote 35 that "deposits or pre-authorisations on a consumer's payment card, such as those that are sometimes taken when checking into a hotel, which will be automatically refunded if not called upon would not be 'mandatory charges' for these purposes and do not need to be included in total price", whereas money you actually take up front is part of what the guest is paying. Pick one per booking type and say which, because "we take a deposit" written next to a card-hold form is the sentence that generates the chargeback.

4. **Set the amount low and say what it is a percentage of.** The CMA's guidance is direct on this: a genuine deposit "will not normally be more than a small percentage of the price. A larger prepayment is more likely to be unfair as it may amount to a disguised penalty." Express the figure per head, against your average spend, and show the arithmetic on the page so a guest can see it is not arbitrary. ResDiary's venues reported an average of £13 per head in 2023, up from £12. Write yours as a round number a guest can hold in their head, and never set it above the revenue you calculated in step 1, because a deposit larger than the loss it covers is the definition the guidance warns about.

5. **Write the cancellation window as an ascending table, not a sentence.** Rows are the notice given, columns are what the guest pays. For example: more than 48 hours, nothing; 24 to 48 hours, half the deposit; under 24 hours or no arrival, the full deposit. The CMA accepts this shape explicitly, saying "it may be acceptable for a contract to contain a sliding scale of termination or cancellation charges but there must be no circumstances in which they are likely to be disproportionate or punitive", and quotes a court approving one because "it is shown not in small print but in a very clear form, namely a table of cancellation charges in ascending scale". Put the table on the booking page itself. A table a guest can read in four seconds is doing the work that a paragraph of terms does not.

6. **Write the half of the policy that binds you, or the rest of it is weaker.** Schedule 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 lists as potentially unfair a term "permitting the trader to retain sums paid by the consumer where the consumer decides not to conclude or perform the contract, without providing for the consumer to receive compensation of an equivalent amount from the trader where the trader is the party cancelling the contract". So write what happens when you cancel: the deposit back in full, by when, by which route, and what you do if you cancel inside 24 hours. Give the same dates and the same amounts in both directions. This is also the paragraph that sells the policy to a guest who is hesitating over the booking button.

7. **Name the exceptions you will honour and the person who decides.** Illness, bereavement, a cancelled train, a member of the party with symptoms they should not bring into a dining room. List them, then name one job title who can waive the charge and one who cannot. The CMA's guidance says a financial sanction is more likely to be fair where "the consumer can easily avoid the sanction becoming due", and a discretion nobody can reach at 6pm on a Saturday is not an easy route. Keep the list short and real. A long list of exceptions is a policy with no policy in it, and an unwritten discretion is the thing your staff will be shouted at about.

8. **Put the terms where the guest sees them before they commit, not behind a link.** Section 64 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 defines a term as prominent "if it is brought to the consumer's attention in such a way that an average consumer would be aware of the term", the average consumer being "a consumer who is reasonably well-informed, observant and circumspect". The CMA adds that prominence "suggests actively highlighting and flagging these" and that "the extent of highlighting required in practice is likely to relate to how onerous or surprising the term is". A deposit is surprising to a guest booking a Tuesday table. So the output includes the short version that sits beside the booking button, in the booking widget, and repeated in the confirmation, not a link labelled terms and conditions.

9. **Produce the four artefacts and the arithmetic behind them.** One: the full policy, under 400 words, with the cancellation table. Two: the short booking-page paragraph, under 60 words, with the deposit amount and the free-cancellation deadline in the first line. Three: the host script for the three questions guests actually ask, which are "is it refundable", "what if someone drops out" and "does it come off the bill". Four: a refund decision log with columns for date, booking name, amount, reason given, who decided and whether it was refunded, so that six months later you can see whether the policy is being applied or quietly ignored. Every figure in all four traces back to the covers and spend from step 1.

## Then it checks

1. Every money figure in the policy traces to a number the owner supplied in step 1, and the output shows the arithmetic that produced it, with no figure taken from the ResDiary survey or any other venue.
2. The cancellation table has at least three rows, ascends, and has no row where the guest pays more than the deposit amount stated at the top of the policy.
3. The policy states what happens when the venue cancels, with the same notice periods and the same amounts as the guest-side table, and names a refund route and a deadline in days.
4. The trigger for the policy is written as a number of covers, a named day, or a dated period, and contains no word a host would have to interpret, such as "large", "busy" or "peak".
5. The booking-page paragraph carries the deposit amount and the free-cancellation deadline in its first sentence, and is under 60 words.
6. The instrument is named once and used consistently throughout: the words deposit, card hold and prepayment never describe the same charge in two places.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is.
- Never state that a term is enforceable, binding or legally safe. Section 62 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 says "an unfair term of a consumer contract is not binding on the consumer", and whether a particular term is unfair is decided on the facts of the contract, not by a skill that has never seen it. The output describes what the guidance says and leaves the conclusion to the owner's adviser.
- Never set a deposit above the revenue calculated in step 1. A charge that exceeds the loss it is supposed to cover is the exact thing the CMA describes as a possible disguised penalty, and it is also the thing a guest screenshots.
- Never copy another venue's policy wording or another venue's numbers. The whole basis for a cancellation charge is that it estimates your loss, and a figure lifted from a restaurant down the road estimates theirs.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner's solicitor or accountant to check before it is published or charged against a customer. It reads guidance and your own trading figures and sets out wording; it is not legal advice on your booking contract and it is not a ruling on what you may charge.

## Built from
- Competition and Markets Authority, "Unfair contract terms, CMA37: Guidance on the unfair contract terms provisions in the Consumer Rights Act 2015", https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7f8b58ed915d74e33f716e/Unfair_Terms_Main_Guidance.pdf, 22 July 2026, read 14 September 2026: paragraphs 6.62 to 6.67 gave the small-percentage limit in step 4, the genuine pre-estimate and mitigation tests in step 1, the ascending sliding-scale table in step 5 and the easily-avoidable test in step 7.
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, sections 62 and 64 and Schedule 2, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/section/62 and https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/schedule/2, as enacted, read 14 September 2026: the fairness test and the not-binding consequence behind the rules, the prominence and average-consumer definitions in step 8, and grey list paragraph 4, which is why step 6 exists at all.
- Competition and Markets Authority, "Unfair commercial practices: price transparency, CMA209", https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/691b10065a253e2c40d705d9/Price_transparency_-_CMA209_.pdf, 18 November 2025, read 14 September 2026: footnote 35 on refundable card pre-authorisations, which is the distinction step 3 forces the owner to make.
- ResDiary, "Beyond the Booking: UK & IE Hospitality Industry Report 2024", https://resdiary.com/industry-insights/uk-ie-hospitality-industry-report-2024, no publication date shown on the page, read 14 September 2026: the 76% of venues affected, 8% average no-show rate, £3,621 average loss, 51% taking deposits, nine-cover average trigger and £13 average per head, used only to size steps 1 and 2 and never copied into the owner's policy.
- The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, regulation 28, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/3134/regulation/28, as made, read 14 September 2026: regulation 28(1)(h) on catering and leisure services supplied on "a specific date or period of performance", which is why the policy does not promise a fourteen-day cooling-off right and hands the point to the owner's adviser instead.

# no-show-policy

## You are given
A folder from a UK hospitality venue containing at least three months of bookings as a CSV or XLSX export, with a status column somewhere in it marking the ones that did not turn up, a till or sales export for the same dates giving covers and sales excluding VAT by day, a spend-per-head figure or enough data to compute one by day of week, a food and drink cost percentage, a capture of whatever the booking page currently says about deposits, and a settings file naming the instrument the venue intends to use, the free-cancellation notice in hours, and the job titles that may and may not waive a charge. Status values are inconsistent and some no-shows are recorded only as a note in a comments field.

## Produce
Write into an `output/` folder next to the inputs:

1. `no-show-analysis.csv` with these columns in this order: `booking_ref`, `booking_date`, `day_of_week`, `booking_time`, `service`, `party_size`, `covers_lost`, `spend_per_head_gbp`, `spend_per_head_source`, `revenue_lost_gbp`, `table_resold`, `minutes_to_resale`, `revenue_recovered_gbp`, `net_loss_gbp`, `status_source_field`. One row per no-show, plus a `TOTAL` row. `spend_per_head_source` is `own_day_of_week_average` or `house_average`.
2. `loss-by-daypart.csv` with columns: `day_of_week`, `service`, `bookings`, `no_shows`, `no_show_rate_pct`, `covers_lost`, `revenue_lost_gbp`, `revenue_recovered_gbp`, `net_loss_gbp`, `net_loss_per_no_show_gbp`, `net_loss_per_cover_gbp`. Plus a `TOTAL` row.
3. `deposit-working.csv` with columns: `line`, `value`, `unit`, `source`. The arithmetic, one step per row, from net loss per cover through to the proposed deposit per head, ending with a row `deposit_per_head_gbp` and a row `net_loss_per_cover_gbp` so the two can be read side by side.
4. `cancellation-table.csv` with columns: `notice_band`, `guest_pays_gbp`, `guest_pays_pct_of_deposit`, `venue_cancels_refund_gbp`, `venue_cancels_refund_route`, `venue_cancels_refund_by_days`. At least three bands, ascending, and no band where the guest pays more than the deposit per head multiplied by the party size.
5. `policy.md` - the full policy under 400 words, carrying the trigger as a number of covers, a named day or a dated period, the instrument named once, the cancellation table, the paragraph that binds the venue when the venue cancels, the named exceptions, and the job title that may waive a charge.
6. `booking-page-paragraph.txt` - under 60 words, with the deposit amount and the free-cancellation deadline in the first sentence.
7. `host-script.md` - one printed page answering the three questions guests ask: is it refundable, what if someone drops out, does it come off the bill.
8. `refund-decision-log.csv` - a blank template, header row plus one empty row, with columns: `date`, `booking_ref`, `booking_name`, `amount_gbp`, `reason_given`, `decided_by`, `refunded`, `refund_route`, `notes`.
9. `trigger-check.csv` with columns: `trigger_rule`, `expressed_as`, `bookings_in_period_caught`, `covers_in_period_caught`, `pct_of_bookings_caught`, `interpretation_words_found`. `interpretation_words_found` must be empty on every row.
10. `exceptions.csv` with columns: `booking_ref_or_field`, `missing_field`, `what_it_blocks`, `source_file`.
11. `README.md` - the date range, bookings counted, no-shows counted, total covers lost, total revenue lost, total recovered, net loss, the deposit figure with its arithmetic, and everything that could not be computed.

## Rules
- Write files only. Never publish, upload or paste anything onto a booking page, a website or a booking platform, and never take, hold or refund a payment. The policy reaches customers when the owner puts it there.
- Every money figure in `policy.md`, `booking-page-paragraph.txt` and `host-script.md` must trace to a row in `no-show-analysis.csv` or `deposit-working.csv`, and the arithmetic must be visible in `deposit-working.csv`. Never use a figure from an industry survey, a trade body, another venue or a published average in the owner's policy.
- Never set the deposit per head above `net_loss_per_cover_gbp`. If the venue's settings ask for more, write the lower figure and name the gap in `exceptions.csv`.
- Where a no-show has no spend-per-head for its day, use the house average and write `house_average` in `spend_per_head_source`. Where the export does not record whether the table was resold, leave `table_resold` empty, set `revenue_recovered_gbp` empty rather than zero, and list it in `exceptions.csv`. An unknown recovery is not a recovery of nil.
- The trigger must be a number of covers, a named day or a dated period. Scan it for the words large, busy, peak, popular, significant and similar, and record any hit in `interpretation_words_found` rather than shipping it.
- Name the instrument once, from the settings, and use the same word throughout. The words deposit, card hold and prepayment must never describe the same charge in two places. Scan all three documents and record any mixed usage in `exceptions.csv`.
- The venue-cancels paragraph must carry the same notice bands and the same amounts as the guest-side table, with a refund route and a deadline in days.
- Never write that a term is enforceable, binding, legally safe or compliant. State the figures and the wording and stop.
- Never copy a guest name, phone number, email address or card detail out of the bookings export. `no-show-analysis.csv` carries `booking_ref` only, and `refund-decision-log.csv` ships blank for the venue to fill in by hand.
- Money in pounds to two decimal places, percentages to one. British English, £, DD Month YYYY dates. No em dashes. No cell may read approximately, circa or tbc.

## Return
The absolute paths of the files written, the date range, bookings and no-shows counted, the no-show rate, covers lost, revenue lost, revenue recovered and net loss, the proposed deposit per head with the arithmetic that produced it and the net loss per cover beside it, the word count of `policy.md` and `booking-page-paragraph.txt`, and every figure that could not be computed. State that nothing has been published, and that the policy is a working document for the owner's solicitor or accountant to check before it goes on a booking page or is charged against a customer.