8 Ways to Prevent No Shows and Late Arrivals

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At the beginning of starting your business, you’ll learn many best practices the hard way. This blog post will help you prevent the stress and headaches from any client no shows and late arrivals.

Photography prevent no shows and late arrivals

8 ways to avoid no shows and prevent late arrivals:

  1. Require a retainer to book with you. This means that they are paying you an amount of money (ex: $100) to book you for that specific date/time. When they do this, it means you are saying no to potential clients that would want to book you for that same day. For this reason, retainers are non-refundable. Collecting a retainer also means clients are less likely to not show up because they’ve got skin in the game.

  2. Make sure your contract is buttoned up. List start and end times, retainer fees and policy, rescheduling fees and policy, cancellation policy, and late arrival policy. Consider adding lines in your contract for clients to initial next to the rescheduling/late arrival/cancellation policies. This will help to avoid any miscommunication or instances where they didn’t thoroughly read the contract.

  3. Email the specifics a week before the session. Include the start AND end time. Suggest arriving 5-10 minutes early to prep or touch up outfits, hair, makeup, etc.

  4. If you have back to back sessions, have somewhere to be right after the session, or cannot accommodate late arrivals due to sunset times, communicate that you cannot extend the end time for late arrivals.

  5. Text your client the day before the session. Be sure to verify the time and location. This also helps them have access to your number in case of any last minute questions.

  6. If you’re constantly going over your session time, consider setting an alarm on your phone to help you stick to your agreed upon shooting times.

  7. Verbally communicate timing throughout the session. On the client side, sessions often go by very fast and they likely do not have their phones or watches on them to tell time. I will typically tell them when we are halfway through and then one more time when there’s about 5-10 minutes left.

  8. At the end of the session, ask for any last requests. This communicates gently that the session is coming to an end and helps the client feel heard if there is a pose/photo they wanted but hasn’t been captured yet.