Shift Cancellations
Note: Screenshots in this article use data from our internal demo organisation. Any organisation IDs or user IDs visible in the screenshots reference our demo dataset, not your or any other customer's data.
🎯 Overview
Track every cancelled shift in one place — who cancelled, when, why, and at what cost to the roster.
This report:
- Surfaces all cancelled shifts with their reason, responsibility, billable status, and the person who actioned the cancellation.
- Breaks cancellations down by location, job title, contract type, or employee so you can spot patterns.
- Lets you switch the headline numbers between shift counts and shift hours.
Use this dashboard to:
- Investigate why shifts are being cancelled and who is driving the volume.
- Compare cancellation rates across locations, teams, and roles.
- Monitor billable vs non-billable cancellations for client reporting.
- Spot trends in cancellation volume over the last 12 months.
➕ Benefits
- One view of every cancellation across the organisation, with the full context attached to each shift.
- Flexible switching between shift counts and hours, so the same dashboard answers both operational and financial questions.
- Built-in trend chart highlighting whether cancellations are climbing, falling, or seasonal.
🗂️ Dashboard Tabs
This is a single-page dashboard. At the top you'll see a Latest Data Sync indicator showing when the data was last refreshed, followed by headline KPIs, breakdown charts, and a detailed table of every cancelled shift.
The key cards are:
- # Of Cancelled Shifts/Hours — headline count of cancellations across the filtered period. Switches between shift count and total hours via the KPI: Shifts or Hours filter.
- % Of Cancelled Shifts/Hours — cancelled shifts (or hours) as a percentage of all shifts (or hours) in the same period. Useful as a rate rather than a raw count.
- % Of Cancelled Shifts/Hours By Reason — pie chart breaking cancellations down by Cancellation reason, showing which reasons dominate.
- % Of Cancelled Shifts/Hours By Parameter — table comparing cancelled shifts, total shifts, and the cancellation percentage, grouped by whatever you pick in the inline Dynamic Parameter dropdown on the card (Location, Parent location, Grandparent location, Job title, Contract type, or Employee).
- # Of Cancelled Shifts/Hours Over The Last 12 Months — area chart of cancellation volume across the last 12 months. The trend grain is controlled by the inline Date Aggregation dropdown on the card (Monthly or Weekly).
- Employee & Location With The Most Cancelled Shifts/Hours — quick-glance card showing the single employee and the single location with the highest cancellation total in the filtered period.
- Cancelled Shifts — the detailed table. One row per cancelled shift, with Shift start date, Shift start time, Shift end date, Shift end time, Shift length in hours, Shift cancelled at, Location, Shift type, First name, Last name, Employee ID, Supported people, Cancelled by, Cancellation responsibility, Cancellation reason, Cancellation notes, and Billable cancellation.
🎛️ Filters
Standard Filters
- Location / Parent Location / Grandparent Location — filter by organisational hierarchy
- Job Title — filter by employee role
- Contract Type — filter by employment contract
- Full Name / Employee ID — find a specific employee
- Status — employee status (Active, Leaver, Left, Starting Soon, Deactivated). Defaults to Active and Leaver.
Report-Specific Filters
| Filter | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| KPI: Shifts or Hours | Shifts | Switches the headline KPIs, breakdowns, and trend chart between shift counts and shift hours. |
| Shift Date | This month | Filters by the date the shift was scheduled to take place. |
| Cancellation Date | -- | Filters by the date the cancellation itself was logged (useful when investigating recent admin activity). |
| Cancellation Reason | -- | Narrows to one or more specific cancellation reasons. |
| Cancellation Responsibility | -- | Narrows to cancellations attributed to a particular party (e.g. employer, employee). |
| Shift Type | -- | Limits to a specific shift type. |
| Include Absence Shifts? | Include absence | Whether to include absence-related shifts alongside standard shifts. Options: Include absence, Exclude absence, Absence only. |
| Include Agency Shifts? | Include agency | Whether to include agency shifts. Options: Include agency, Exclude agency, Agency only. |
| Include Breaks? | Yes | Whether shift-length hours include or exclude break time. Affects every card that totals or sums hours. |
| Is Cancellation Billable? | -- | Narrows to cancellations flagged as billable (Yes) or non-billable (No) to the client. |
| Include Deleted Shifts | Hide deleted shifts | Whether deleted shift records appear alongside live cancellations. |
A few extra lookup filters (All Locations Downstream From) let you scope the dashboard to a specific branch of your org hierarchy.
Dynamic Parameters
This dashboard has two structural switchers that change what is shown rather than narrowing rows. Both live inline on the card they control, not in the top filter bar.
- Dynamic Parameter (on the % Of Cancelled Shifts/Hours By Parameter card) — opens a dropdown inside that card to change the grouping dimension. Defaults to Location. Options: Location, Parent location, Grandparent location, Job title, Contract type, Employee.
- Date Aggregation (on the # Of Cancelled Shifts/Hours Over The Last 12 Months card) — opens a dropdown inside that card to change the trend-line grain. Defaults to Monthly. Options: Monthly, Weekly.
❗️ Important Definitions
- Cancellation responsibility — who the cancellation is attributed to. This is set when the shift is cancelled in Sona and drives the Cancellation Responsibility filter. Use it together with Cancellation reason to separate, for example, employee-driven sickness cancellations from manager-driven roster changes.
- Billable cancellation — whether the cancelled shift is still chargeable to the client. A cancellation can keep its billable status (e.g. late cancellations that still incur a charge) or be marked non-billable. The detailed Cancelled Shifts table shows this per row as Yes / No.
❓ Common Questions
Why does the cancellation percentage seem high or low compared to my own count?
The % Of Cancelled Shifts/Hours card is computed against all shifts in the same period — cancelled plus uncancelled. If you've filtered heavily on the dashboard (e.g. one location, one job title), both the numerator and denominator shrink, so percentages can swing dramatically on small denominators. Cross-check the # Of Cancelled Shifts/Hours total to confirm the absolute volume before reading too much into the rate.
Why don't the hours and shift counts move proportionally when I switch KPI: Shifts or Hours?
Shift counts treat every cancellation equally — a 2-hour cancellation and a 12-hour cancellation each count as one. When you switch to Hours, longer shifts contribute more, and the Include Breaks? filter then also affects the total. A location with many long cancelled shifts will look more significant in Hours mode than in Shifts mode.
🗓️ Data Coverage
- Data freshness: Refreshes every 30 minutes via the automated data pipeline. Check the
Latest Data Syncindicator on the dashboard for the exact timestamp.
⬇️ Downloading Data
- To download the current view as a PDF, click the download button in the top-right corner of the dashboard.
- To download an individual chart or table as CSV or Excel, click the download button in the top-right corner of that chart.