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Haven cancellation policies are built from stacked refund tiers — an ordered list of rules you control, instead of a single fixed preset. This lets you match anything from a simple "full refund up to 7 days out" to a layered Airbnb- or Hospitable-style policy with mid-stay protection.
Each tier is one rule: a refund percentage, the window it applies to, and a few optional settings. When a guest cancels, Haven walks your tiers from the most generous (earliest) to the least and pays out the first tier that matches how far ahead of check-in the cancellation happened. If no tier matches, the booking is non-refundable (after the grace period).
You read a policy as a set of windows. For example, two tiers — 100% if cancelled 14+ days before check-in and 50% if cancelled 7+ days before check-in — read as:
The "No refund" window at the bottom is implicit — it covers any time closer than your lowest tier.
Any tier can require that the booking was made at least N days before check-in for that tier to apply. This is how you say "100% refund — but only if the guest booked at least 7 days in advance," so a last-minute booker doesn't get your most generous tier. Leave it empty for the tier to always apply.
For longer stays you can add a tier that also applies once the stay has started. Instead of a percentage of the whole booking, a mid-stay tier refunds a percentage of the unspent nights — the nights the guest has not yet used — and can charge a penalty of one or more nights first.
This matches the Airbnb-style long-stay rule: "Guests who cancel within 5 days of check-in or during their trip are charged 1 extra night and refunded 50% of the unspent nights."
How a mid-stay refund is calculated:
Taxes on mid-stay refunds: Haven refunds the tax that was collected on the nightly portion being refunded, drawn from the booking's frozen tax breakdown. Tax on the cleaning fee and other one-time fees is not refunded mid-stay, because those are treated as already consumed once the stay begins.
A mid-stay tier is always the last tier in your policy (the lowest "days before check-in"), since it covers the tail end and the in-stay period.
You don't have to build tiers from scratch. The Start from a template… menu in the editor seeds common shapes you can then fine-tune:
Templates only seed the tiers — once you edit them, your tiers are the source of truth, and Haven shows a derived label (Flexible, Moderate, Strict, Super strict, or Custom) automatically.
Not sure where to land? Use Help me decide in the Cancellation policy section to open the cancellation coach. Answer a few questions about your market, how far ahead guests book, and your refund comfort, and it recommends a full tier list (including a mid-stay tier when it makes sense) that you can apply with one click.
All bookings on Haven include a 24-hour cancellation grace period. This is a platform-enforced policy that applies to every booking, regardless of the host's chosen cancellation policy.
Example: A guest books a property at 2:00 PM on Monday. They have until 2:00 PM on Tuesday to cancel and receive their full refund. After that, the host's cancellation policy (Flexible, Moderate, Strict, or Super Strict) determines the refund amount.
Cancellation refunds follow the refund tier that applies — nothing else is taken out. No payment processing fee is deducted from cancellation refunds, whether the guest or the host cancels, and whether you absorb the card processing fee or pass it to guests at checkout.
Below the tiers, Refunds are given as chooses what a refund is: Money back to the guest's card, or a Stay credit — a credit note for the same amount toward a future direct booking at any of your listings that pay out to you. With Stay credit, pick how long credits stay valid (6, 12, 18 or 24 months, or no expiry).
A guest cancelling under a stay-credit policy is emailed the credit automatically; nothing is refunded to their card. When you cancel, the same happens unless you choose Refund to the guest's card in the cancel dialog for that one cancellation. The 24-hour grace period and Haven's Screen & Protect fee are always money back. The setting is frozen onto each booking with the tiers, and shown to guests on the listing page, at checkout and on their reservation. See Give a Stay Credit Instead of a Refund.
When you cancel a paid booking, Haven asks Who asked to cancel?
Cancellations that reach Haven from your PMS, and ones made in the Haven mobile app or through the Haven API, are treated as yours and refunded in full.
Under a no-refund policy you can still make good with a guest — typically once you have re-filled their dates — by giving them a stay credit: a branded card with a code worth an amount you choose, valid on a future direct booking with you. See Give a Stay Credit Instead of a Refund.
If you run several listings, you can set one cancellation policy for all of them instead of editing each: Sites → Listing sites → gear icon → Property settings → Cancellation policy → Set for all listings. Build the tiers in the same editor and click Apply. New bookings on every listing then use that policy, and each listing's Cancellation policy section shows it read-only. Each listing's own policy is kept and comes back when you choose Set individually instead. See Set Booking Rules for All Listings.
A guest agrees to your cancellation policy when they pay. From that moment the tiers are frozen onto the booking — editing your policy later never changes a paid reservation, so a guest's refund is always calculated from the terms they agreed to.
Until then the terms are still open. A booking request you haven't answered, or one you approved that the guest hasn't paid for yet, follows your listing: change the listing's policy (or your policy for all listings) and those unpaid reservations pick up the new one. The guest sees the current policy on the payment page before they pay. If they already had the payment page open, their checkout is reset so they see the new terms first.
The one exception is a reservation whose policy you set on the reservation itself (below) — it keeps the policy you chose for it.
You can give a single reservation its own cancellation policy without touching your listing — useful when you agree to a request on different terms, such as non-refundable for a peak week or a more flexible policy for a returning guest.
The new policy applies to that reservation only and shows in the reservation's payment summary. It is no longer affected by changes to the listing's policy; Use the listing's policy instead in the same dialog puts it back.
This is available from the request until the guest pays. Once the booking is confirmed the button is gone and the policy is locked. It is offered on a pre-approved inquiry too, but not on an inquiry you haven't answered — pre-approve it first.
A signed rental agreement locks it sooner. When a listing asks guests to sign the rental agreement right after booking, the guest signs before paying — or before sending a request to book — and the signed copy states the cancellation policy they read. From that signature on, the reservation's policy cannot be changed: Cancellation policy opens to a note saying who signed and when, and changing your listing's policy no longer reaches that reservation either. To offer different terms, decline the reservation and use Send a new offer; the guest signs again when they accept it.
If your listing is synced from a connected channel manager, your cancellation policy is imported from that partner and the field stays locked to keep the two in sync — the tiers you see are derived from the synced policy. To edit the tiers in Haven, use Edit in Haven on the field to unlock it and set your own — see the in-app message on that section for details.
A guest who wants different dates or a different party size doesn't have to cancel. You can change a confirmed booking in place from the reservation — see Modify a Reservation.
This matters for your policy, because modifying and cancelling settle money very differently:
So if a guest asks to move their stay by a few days, modify it. Reserve cancellation for a stay that isn't happening.
Guests cannot modify their own reservations. They message you and you make the change, which keeps the decision — and your calendar — yours.
When a listing takes a deposit at booking and charges the balance later (see Payment Schedules), the policy still decides what the guest is owed, but the refund comes out of what has been paid so far. A guest who cancels before the balance is charged is refunded from the deposit alone, and the balance is never collected.
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