If you decide to cancel an event, there are many things you should be aware of to make the cancellation as smooth as possible.

Learn here what steps are necessary to cancel an upcoming event in doo.

1. Postpone or cancel?

You may ask yourself whether you would rather postpone your event than cancel it completely, e.g. due to low attendance or current external circumstances. When making this decision, you should consider the following.

1.1. Events with active bookings

In general, doo advises you to cancel events for which there are already bookings in doo, cancel the corresponding bookings and create a new doo event for the new date. You can then invite the relevant bookers to register for the new date, or you can register manually for those with positive feedback.

Cancelling and creating new business events clearly separates the two dates. The attendee list of the new business event gives you an overview of the attendees actually expected to attend at any given time, and you do not need to manually track whether or not each attendee of the old business event will attend on the alternate date. In the case of chargeable business events, another reason for separating the two events is to avoid accounting problems, since the business event date actively selected by the accountant appears on the attendee invoices. For new registrations, instead of a refund, you could send those bookers who have already paid a promotion code for the alternative event in the amount of their invoice, which could save them a refund.

1.2. Event without active bookings or sent out invitations

If no bookings have yet been received for your event and no invitations have yet been sent out, there is no reason not to postpone the date of the existing event.

To do this, go to the event editing, adjust the end date first and then the start date in step 1 "Event information" and save the change. The changes are then applied immediately and are valid for every incoming booking from now on.

2. Cancellation of the event

To cancel your event, go to the event details page and click on "Cancel event" under "Administration" on the right and confirm the cancellation in the window that opens. The registration will then be terminated immediately and nobody will be able to register - already registered participants will not be automatically informed about the cancellation (see point 4.).

3. Calling up the cancelled event

You can still view the cancelled event by calling up your event overview and selecting "Completed" at the top of the tab. Your business event is listed there by cancellation date (together with regularly closed business events) and you can call it up to view existing bookings, for example. You also have the option of copying the event if you plan a similar one at some point in the future.

4. Cancel bookings and inform bookers

Existing bookings remain technically unaffected by the cancellation of a business event - i.e. they are not canceled. The system also does not send automatic notifications of cancellation to the bookers. Both of these notifications must therefore be sent manually:

Call up the event details page again (see point 2.) and click on "Manage bookings". Select the existing bookings individually and cancel them. Inform your bookers about the cancellation and send them their respective cancellation invoices if necessary. Check whether there are any bookings that have already been paid for and for which refunds need to be issued and process these with the respective bookers - if there is already a substitute event, you can also distribute promotion codes if necessary. All information on cancellation and refunds can be found here.

Especially for fee-based events, it is important that all existing bookings are canceled after the cancellation so that the relevant cancellation invoices are created in the system. Please note that for unpaid bookings, payment reminders will be sent to the bookers until you cancel the respective bookings in doo.

Tip: Users of the doo E-Mail Manager have the option of informing all bookers of the event of the cancellation by means of a doo e-mail message. More information about sending email campaigns with doo can be found here.

5. Rebooking participants to another event

If you want to rebook attendees of the canceled business event to another business event, you can proceed as follows: 

1. Call the contact in your contact center and go to the contact details page.
2. Click on "+ New booking" at the bottom and select the event for which you want to re-book the person.
3. Follow the manual registration process, which is explained here step by step.

6. Final settlement of the cancelled event

If your cancelled event is a chargeable event, payment including the final invoice for this event will be made in the month following the cancellation date. You will receive the attendance fees including any retained credit via the regular payment process. You can find all information on the topic of sales disbursement here.

7. Tip: If it is uncertain in advance whether an event will take place

You are not yet sure whether your event will take place when the online registration goes live, e.g. because external factors influence the taking place or because a minimum number of participants is reached?

Especially in the case of paid events, we recommend that you activate the manual release for the event in these cases, as this allows you to avoid the issue of refunds. In this way, you can "collect" registration requests for the time being, without the booker being invoiced. Once it is clear that the event is taking place, you can deactivate manual approval, which automatically approves all bookings and prompts the bookers to complete their booking and choose a payment method. If the business event does not take place, you can reject the booking requests that have been received, and a cancellation text is sent.

You can find all information on manual approval here.