How do I stop fence customers from canceling at the last minute?
Short answerTake a materials deposit when the fence is ordered, list every prerequisite on the agreement, and confirm each one a few days before the crew rolls. Fence installs depend on ordered posts and panels, marked utility lines and sometimes association approval, so a cancel late in the chain is expensive.
The explanation
A fence project has a chain of dependencies, and a customer can break it at any link. Materials are ordered to the footage, utility lines have to be marked before posts go in, and some neighborhoods require approval before work starts. A cancel after ordering can leave you holding custom lengths or gates that nobody else wants.
Write the prerequisites into the agreement and check them before the install week. A short message asking whether the lines are marked and the approval is in hand catches problems early, and a no answer lets you move the date without the crew losing a day.
A deposit sized to cover materials keeps the order from becoming your loss. Say in plain words that the deposit pays for material already ordered, which makes it feel fair, and tell the customer which part is refundable before the order is placed.
In fence contractor
Fence work runs on ordered material, utility locates and sometimes neighborhood approval. Because panels and gates are cut to the job, a cancel after ordering costs real material money. All fence contractor scheduling questions.
How Apex does it
In progress
Part of this is built. The rest is not. Status as of 2026-10-07; the badge shows the least-built feature involved.
Apex is designed to take deposits at booking and when a quote is approved, and to apply a cancellation policy. All three pieces are in progress, so check each feature badge.
- BK22Deposits / prepayment at booking(In progress)
- ES08Deposit on quote approval(In progress)
- BK23Cancellation policy and no-show fees(In progress)
Apex Flow Scheduler is in early access. See how we label status.
Where this question comes from: we wrote it from research on common owner problems. It is not measured search demand.
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