Why a written policy matters
The two most common mistakes new tutors make: not having a cancellation policy at all, or having one but never enforcing it. Both end at the same place.
A clear policy earns its keep in a few ways. It recovers your time, because a cancelled lesson costs you the lesson plus the slot you turned away to keep that lesson booked. It sets the relationship up correctly: parents who know your policy are less casual about rescheduling, since most keep one for their own work and aren't surprised you have one for yours. And it protects the genuine emergencies: when a child is genuinely ill the day of a lesson, the goodwill exception you grant feels like goodwill rather than the third instance this term.
Tutoring isn't unusual in this. Plumbers, dentists, physiotherapists, driving instructors, and hairdressers all charge for missed slots. The expectation that tutoring should be infinitely flexible is a relic of a market that hasn't quite caught up with itself.
Sample policy language
Illustrative wording you can adapt: set your own based on your circumstances and consult a contracts adviser if material to your business. The pattern below is what most working UK tutors use.
Cancellation policy. Lessons cancelled with 24 hours' notice or more are rescheduled at no charge. Lessons cancelled inside 24 hours are charged at the full lesson rate. If a student does not arrive, I will wait 15 minutes from the scheduled start time before marking the lesson as a no-show and charging the full rate.
Block-prepay packages: cancelled lessons inside 24 hours are deducted from the block at the full lesson rate.
If the lesson can't go ahead because of something on my side (illness, unavoidable circumstances, technical failure on my end), the lesson is rescheduled at no charge or the fee is refunded.
Genuine emergencies such as sudden illness or family bereavement are handled on a case-by-case basis. Please contact me as soon as you can.
That's it. Five short paragraphs that cover 95% of the situations you'll meet in a year of tutoring.
Variations you might consider. A 48-hour notice window instead of 24, especially if you teach in person and travel to lessons. A split charge of 50% for late cancels and 100% for no-shows: some tutors find this generates fewer disputes. A three-strikes rule, where genuine emergencies are waived for the first two cancellations in a term and the third triggers the standard charge regardless: useful for chronic late-cancellers. Or "no charge if the slot can be re-let": if you can fill the cancelled slot from a waitlist, the original family isn't charged. Generous; only practical if you have demand.
When to share the policy
The touchpoints, all in writing:
In your profile: a short summary line. Include on your Tutorperch profiles your cancellation terms using the tables or free text.
Before the first lesson: full text in the booking confirmation or first email. Ask the parent to confirm they've read it; their reply becomes your evidence.
In every block-prepay arrangement: restate the relevant clause when the block is paid for. Reduces "I didn't realise" disputes substantially.
The asymmetry to avoid: enforcing a policy that you hadn't communicated. If a parent first hears about your 24-hour rule when you're charging them for a Saturday-morning cancellation, you've earned the awkwardness of that conversation.
Handling the cancellation conversation
When a parent late-cancels, the message back is short, factual, and not defensive. A workable template:
Thanks for letting me know, sorry [child]'s not well. As per the cancellation policy I shared at the start, lessons cancelled inside 24 hours are charged at the full rate, so I'll include this Tuesday's slot in this month's invoice. I hope [child] feels better soon and I'll see them next week.
It works because it acknowledges the human reason for the cancel and cites the policy as something both parties agreed to, rather than a punishment you're inventing. Ending with a forward-looking line closes the conversation while keeping the relationship open.
The version that fails: a long apologetic message offering to make exceptions this time, then visibly resenting it. Cancellation enforcement is one of the few business operations where direct trumps warm.
When to make an exception
Discretion exists for a reason. The honest framing: you're not running an algorithm, you're running a relationship-based business. Exceptions you might reasonably grant include: a child admitted to hospital that morning; a close family bereavement; a genuine first-time emergency from a long-standing client with no prior pattern; or your own diary mistake (you double-booked, forgot the lesson), which warrants a full refund without question.
Exceptions to be cautious of. "Something came up", repeatedly, with a different something each time. "[Child] doesn't feel like it tonight": that's not an emergency. "We're going on holiday next week": holidays aren't an emergency, they're notice.
The pattern matters more than any individual instance. One late-cancel from a family with 30 lessons of perfect attendance is goodwill. The third late-cancel in two months from a family who haven't paid for anything is a different conversation.
Late payment
Adjacent operational issue, same operating principle: you're a professional who needs to be paid on time, and a clear written policy makes that easy.
Workable defaults. A block-prepay model (default to 5- or 10-lesson blocks paid in advance) eliminates 90% of late-payment problems by design. For single lessons, paid on the day via bank transfer before or immediately after the lesson, with no running tab. End-of-month invoicing is the most common source of late-payment problems for tutors; avoid unless your client base is exclusively from professional households who treat it as a normal billing cycle.
If a payment is late:
Day after due: short polite reminder.
Three days after due: second reminder, no further lessons until cleared.
Seven days after due: stop teaching, formal email, log the debt.
Persistent non-payment: small claims court is available for amounts up to £10,000 (England and Wales). Usually disproportionate, and the cleaner exit is the relationship.
Don't let unpaid balances drift. The longer they sit, the harder they are to collect, and a cancelled tutoring relationship with a £200 outstanding balance is a worse outcome than firmly enforcing a payment line at week one.
Block prepay: the operational lever that fixes most of this
A block-prepay model (the parent pays for a block of 5 or 10 lessons in advance, with a small discount for the prepayment) solves several problems at once. Cashflow: money in advance smooths your income. Cancellation friction: cancelled lessons come out of the block, so the disincentive is built into the structure. Commitment: families who've paid for 10 lessons turn up for them. And admin: one transaction every 5-10 weeks instead of one per lesson.
A typical block: 10 lessons paid up front, 5-10% discount versus the per-lesson rate, the cancellation policy applied to lessons within the block. Tutorperch profiles include a structured field for block-discount terms specifically because it's so common a pattern.
Not every family wants block prepay; offer it as an option rather than a requirement. Most parents who book repeated weekly lessons with the same tutor prefer the simplicity of paying once a term over paying every Tuesday.
A word on tax and record-keeping
You need a record of every cancellation charged for, every payment received, and every refund issued, kept for at least the period HMRC's records retention rules require. The current floor for self-employed records is generally five years from the 31 January submission deadline of the relevant tax year; verify your circumstances with HMRC's record-keeping guidance and a qualified UK accountant. We aren't your tax adviser.
A simple spreadsheet with one row per lesson (date, student, scheduled, attended, charged, paid) is enough for most working tutors. Whatever system you use, write the entry on the day; backfilling a month later is where errors creep in.