A no-show is a truck at a locked door. A late cancel is a hole in the afternoon you might still fill. Customers accept a policy they heard when they booked, and they fight a fee they hear for the first time while you are standing on the porch. The reminder that makes the policy feel fair is the same family of message as on-my-way and ETA texts. The cost of the smallest roll is the truck roll minimum.
Rates in every table here. Labor is $45 an hour unless a table says otherwise, the truck is $0.65 a mile, and overhead is $12 an hour. That $12 is a $1,920 monthly shop cost spread across 160 hours. These are the public calculator's starter numbers. On the phone, overhead is the monthly shop cost split across the hours you actually log that month, and the open month stays a draft until it closes. One labor rate covers the job. A helper's pay goes in other direct costs.
Where the text actually goes out. The costing log can store an optional phone number on a job. It does not send a text. It has no schedule, so it cannot send a booking confirmation, a day-before reminder, an on-my-way note, or a review ask. Send those from the phone in your pocket, or from the field-service tool that already holds the appointment. When the visit happens, log what they paid, the time, the miles, and the parts. That is the part this product does today.
What the empty driveway costs
You drove 16 miles, half an hour in the van, and you waited 15 minutes because the note said they might be in the back yard. Nobody came out. You collected nothing.
No-show, nothing collected
| Line | Math | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| What they paid | $0.00 | |
| Onsite labor | 0.25 h × $45.00 | $11.25 |
| Travel labor | 0.5 h × $45.00 | $22.50 |
| Vehicle | 16 mi × $0.65 | $10.40 |
| Materials, your cost | $0.00 | |
| Overhead | 0.75 h × $12.00 | $9.00 |
| Total job cost | $53.15 | |
| Net profit | $0.00 − $53.15 | -$53.15 |
| Net margin | No invoice | — |
| Profit per hour | -$53.15 ÷ 0.75 h | -$70.87 / h |
Open this ticket in the calculator. Change the labor rate or the miles and the fee moves with them.
The screen asks you to enter what the customer paid. Without revenue this is just a cost pile — useful for callbacks, not for pricing. The cost is $53.15. There is no percentage to manage. Three of these in a week is $159.45 before you count the jobs you did not run instead. Log it. What they paid is zero. The job type is whatever you drove out to do. A missing row is how the week still looks profitable.
A fee that covers the roll
The 35% price on that stack is $81.77. A fee below the cost is a discount on a wasted trip. A fee at the cost is a break-even errand. Here is $75, which is a number shops can say without a speech.
No-show fee, $75
| Line | Math | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| What they paid | $75.00 | |
| Onsite labor | 0.25 h × $45.00 | $11.25 |
| Travel labor | 0.5 h × $45.00 | $22.50 |
| Vehicle | 16 mi × $0.65 | $10.40 |
| Materials, your cost | $0.00 | |
| Overhead | 0.75 h × $12.00 | $9.00 |
| Total job cost | $53.15 | |
| Net profit | $75.00 − $53.15 | $21.85 |
| Net margin | $21.85 ÷ $75.00 | 29.1% |
| Profit per hour | $21.85 ÷ 0.75 h | $29.13 / h |
Open this ticket in the calculator. Change the labor rate or the miles and the fee moves with them.
The verdict is OK, not a winner. Fine if this is filler between high-margin installs. To hit 35% net with this cost stack, the invoice needed to be $81.77 (you charged $75.00). You got paid. You did not have a good hour. If the policy is meant to leave a real margin on a wasted roll, the number has to clear $81.77.
No-show fee, $89
| Line | Math | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| What they paid | $89.00 | |
| Onsite labor | 0.25 h × $45.00 | $11.25 |
| Travel labor | 0.5 h × $45.00 | $22.50 |
| Vehicle | 16 mi × $0.65 | $10.40 |
| Materials, your cost | $0.00 | |
| Overhead | 0.75 h × $12.00 | $9.00 |
| Total job cost | $53.15 | |
| Net profit | $89.00 − $53.15 | $35.85 |
| Net margin | $35.85 ÷ $89.00 | 40.3% |
| Profit per hour | $35.85 ÷ 0.75 h | $47.80 / h |
Open this ticket in the calculator. Change the labor rate or the miles and the fee moves with them.
The verdict is solid — 35%+ net. Do more of this work. This invoice is $7.23 over the 35% price. Same wait, same miles. The difference is the sentence you were willing to say at booking. Pick one number and use it. A fee you only remember when you are angry will not match what the customer remembers.
Say it when you book
One sentence, with the window. "We can be there Thursday between 10 and 12. If nobody is available to let us in, or the job is canceled after 4 p.m. the day before, there is a $75 fee." Change the clock and the amount to match how you actually work. Same-day calls need a shorter fuse, because 4 p.m. the day before already passed. "Inside two hours of the window" is a rule you can enforce. "We'll see" is not a policy.
Put the same sentence in the confirmation text. The confirmation sequence is booking, day-before, and morning-of. The morning-of text is the one that saves the roll. The fee is what remains when the text was sent and the driveway was still empty.
Reminder from North Side Plumbing. We are scheduled today between 10 and 12. Please have someone there to let us in. Need to move it? Call before 8. A missed visit is a $75 fee, which we went over when you booked.
Late cancel is not the same ticket
If they call the evening before and you fill the slot with another job, you did not lose $53.15. You lost a phone call. Charging a full no-show fee for a slot you refilled is how a fair policy becomes a story they tell. If you cannot fill the slot, you lost the contribution of the job you would have run.
That contribution is not the empty-driveway cost. It is the profit on a normal ticket you no longer have time to book. A short drain on these rates looks like this:
The job the open slot could have been
| Line | Math | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| What they paid | $225.00 | |
| Onsite labor | 1 h × $45.00 | $45.00 |
| Travel labor | 0.5 h × $45.00 | $22.50 |
| Vehicle | 18 mi × $0.65 | $11.70 |
| Materials, your cost | $18.00 | |
| Overhead | 1.5 h × $12.00 | $18.00 |
| Total job cost | $115.20 | |
| Net profit | $225.00 − $115.20 | $109.80 |
| Net margin | $109.80 ÷ $225.00 | 48.8% |
| Profit per hour | $109.80 ÷ 1.5 h | $73.20 / h |
Open this ticket in the calculator. Change the labor rate or the miles and the fee moves with them.
The verdict is solid — 35%+ net. Do more of this work. This invoice is $47.77 over the 35% price. Profit $109.80. A late cancel you could not refill costs about that, if your book is full enough that the slot was real. A late cancel on a Tuesday that had gaps costs less, because the truck was not going to be full anyway. Be honest about which Tuesday you had. The fee can be smaller than the no-show fee when they told you in time for the truck to stay at the shop. Write that down. "Half the no-show fee if you cancel before the truck leaves" is a rule people understand.
Waivers, members, and the row you still log
- Waive the fee when you believe them. A hospital run, a note you can see. Log the visit at zero revenue anyway, so the waiver has a count.
- Do not waive it because the conversation is uncomfortable and the policy was never said. That is a discount, and it trains the next call.
- Maintenance-plan customers need a rule you decided in advance. A free missed visit inside a cheap plan is a benefit you should see in the plan's numbers, not a surprise.
- Do not collect a fee you did not state. If the confirmation never mentioned it, eat the $53.15 and fix the script tonight.
The policy customers accept is the one that was boring at booking, repeated the morning of, and the same amount every time. The truck still costs $53.15 when the door stays shut. The fee is how that cost stops living only in your memory.
Frequently asked questions
When should a customer hear about a no-show fee?
When they book, in the same sentence as the window. A fee introduced on the porch of an empty house feels like a penalty. A fee they already agreed to feels like the policy.
How much should a no-show fee be?
At least the cost of the drive, the wait, and overhead on those hours. On 15 minutes of waiting, 30 minutes and 16 miles of driving, and a $45 rate, that cost is about $53. A $75 fee is in the OK band. About $82 is the 35% price on that stack.
What is a late cancel versus a no-show?
A no-show is a truck that already rolled. A late cancel is a slot you might still fill. If you refill it, the hard cost is small. If you cannot, you lost the profit of the job you did not book. Those are different numbers.
Does a reminder text replace the fee?
No. The reminder is why the fee feels fair, because you gave them a chance to move the job. The fee is what you collect when the truck still rolls to nobody. The costing app does not send the reminder.
Cost the empty driveway
Fifteen minutes waiting, half an hour of driving, 16 miles, nothing collected.