Appointment Statuses Explained
Every appointment in CareLaunch has a status — Booked, Arrived, Fulfilled, and so on. This guide explains what each one means, what typically causes it to change, and which changes happen automatically versus which require someone to take action. Use it to answer questions like "why did this appointment get marked as cancelled?"
The Statuses
| Status | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Booked | A confirmed appointment. This is what a new appointment is set to as soon as booking is complete. |
| Pending | Waiting on payment. Only appears if your organization requires payment before an appointment counts as confirmed. |
| Proposed | Not a real appointment yet — either an open time slot shown while browsing availability, or a draft a staff member hasn't finished creating. |
| Arrived | The patient has joined their virtual visit (or been checked in by staff). |
| Fulfilled | The visit took place and is complete. |
| No-show | The appointment time passed, or the visit ended, without the patient joining. |
| Cancelled | The appointment was called off — by the patient, by staff, or automatically under certain conditions (see below). |
A few additional statuses (Checked In, Waitlisted, Entered in Error) are uncommon — Waitlisted only appears when your organization has enabled the optional waitlist feature, and the others show up only in specific situations. See Statuses You Might Not See at the bottom of this page.
How It Works
1. Booking
When a patient or staff member completes a booking, the appointment is created as Booked by default. There's no separate approval step in between — unless your organization has turned on payment-required scheduling, in which case new appointments start as Pending until payment is received, then move to Booked (or another status your organization has chosen for that workflow).
2. Check-In
For virtual visits, the appointment automatically moves to Arrived the moment the patient clicks to join the call. Assigned providers are notified right away — see Patient Arrived Notifications. Staff can also mark a patient as arrived manually from the appointment view.
3. Completing the Visit
When the provider ends the visit, CareLaunch automatically records the outcome:
- If the patient joined at any point, the appointment becomes Fulfilled.
- If the patient never joined, it becomes No-show.
4. No-Shows Without a Visit
If your organization has enabled automatic no-show detection (under Settings > Scheduling > Notifications), CareLaunch will also mark an appointment No-show on its own if the patient never joined and the scheduled time has passed. This setting is off by default — without it, an appointment only becomes a no-show through the "ending the visit" step above.
Cancellations
An appointment can be cancelled several different ways:
| What Happens | Who/What Does It | Automatic or Manual |
|---|---|---|
| Patient cancels from the portal | Patient | Manual (subject to your cancellation notice policy) |
| Staff cancels from the appointment dashboard | Staff/Admin | Manual |
| Payment isn't completed within the configured time limit | System | Automatic, opt-in setting |
| Patient doesn't confirm the appointment in time | System | Automatic, opt-in setting (off by default) |
| Patient abandons or times out of an online registration flow the appointment was created from | System | Automatic |
When an appointment is cancelled, any pending reminders are called off, and if your organization has automatic refunds enabled, a refund is issued for any payment already collected.
Confirming an Appointment Is Not the Same as Its Status
CareLaunch tracks a separate "confirmed" flag on an appointment, apart from its status — a confirmed appointment is still shown as "Booked." Today, only an admin can mark an appointment confirmed on the patient's behalf, from the appointment view; there isn't yet a way for patients to confirm their own appointment from the portal.
If your organization requires confirmation (an opt-in setting), CareLaunch keeps sending the patient confirmation requests until the appointment is confirmed. If it's never confirmed in time, you can choose what happens next: leave the appointment as-is, flag it for staff follow-up, or automatically cancel it (see the cancellation table above).
Who Can Change a Status
| Role | What They Can Do |
|---|---|
| Patient | Cancel their own appointment (subject to your notice policy). Patients cannot set any other status. |
| Staff / Provider | Change an appointment to any status from the appointment view. |
| Organization / Platform Admin | Same as staff, plus changing status for multiple appointments at once, and permanently deleting appointments. |
Staff and admins aren't restricted in which status they can pick next — for example, a completed appointment could be manually switched back to Booked if needed. Keep in mind that changing status manually (especially through a bulk update) skips the automatic notifications, refund handling, and reminder cleanup that the normal flows above take care of for you.
Statuses You Might Not See
These statuses are uncommon. You'll only see them in specific situations rather than from the everyday scheduling workflow:
- Checked In — CareLaunch's check-in process uses Arrived instead of this status.
- Waitlisted — Used when your organization has enabled the optional waitlist feature (off by default). If you don't use a waitlist, you won't see this status.
- Entered in Error — Available for staff to flag a record created by mistake.
Related Documentation
Last updated: July 2026