Cancelling a roster marks a single roster date as cancelled when the activity can't run as scheduled. The rest of the activity is unaffected, and only that one date is closed off. Volunteers rostered on the date are notified, and the cancelled roster stays in your history with a Cancelled status.
This is the right action when a specific roster falls through for reasons like bad weather, a venue issue or a staffing gap, while the activity itself is still running as normal. To close the entire activity, see Ending, Suspending or Deleting an Activity instead.
Cancelling a roster
Navigate to Rosters and select the roster for the date you want to cancel
Click Cancel Activity in the roster header
Choose a Cancellation Reason from the dropdown
Add optional notes and attachments to explain the cancellation
Click Cancel Activity to confirm
Once confirmed, the roster is cancelled immediately and every volunteer rostered on the date receives a notification.
What happens when you cancel
When a roster is cancelled:
Every rostered volunteer is notified of the cancellation
The roster is marked Cancelled in your rosters list and stays visible in history
Cancelled rosters don't count towards your missed activities number on the Impact Dashboard. They're treated as a known, deliberate non-delivery
No activity report is required for a cancelled date
You can cancel a roster at any time, before or after the date it was supposed to run. Cancelling a past roster is a valid way to clean up a missed date that never had a report submitted.
Cancellation reasons
Cancellation reasons are configured by your organisation in Admin Console > Operations. Every cancellation must include a reason, and the reason is visible in your reports and activity history afterwards. Common examples include "Weather", "Staffing shortage", "Venue unavailable" and "Public holiday".
Admins can add, remove or reorder cancellation reasons at any time. Removing a reason doesn't affect any cancellations that already used it. Those stay intact in history.
Reactivating a cancelled roster
If circumstances change and the activity can run after all, you can create a new roster for the same date to replace the cancelled one. The cancelled record stays in history; the new roster is tracked separately.
Event activities
For Event activities, cancelling a roster cancels only that single event date. The rest of the event dates stay open as normal. The cancelled date remains visible in history as a cancelled event date.
Cancel, unpublish and mark as full
Three roster-level actions that are easy to confuse:
Cancel — the activity cannot run on this date. Volunteers are notified, the roster is closed off, and a reason is recorded.
Unpublish — the activity will still run, but you need to pull the published roster back to draft to make changes before re-publishing. Volunteers are notified that the roster has been unpublished.
Mark as Full — the activity will still run, but you don't want any more volunteers adding themselves. Useful for dates where an external group is filling the team.
See How to Roster for more on unpublishing and marking as full.
Permissions
You need to be the Activity Leader for the activity, a Program Manager for its program, or a Volaby Admin to cancel a roster.
Cross-links
How to Roster — unpublishing, marking as full, and other roster-level actions
Editing an Activity — for changes that affect the whole activity rather than one date
Ending, Suspending or Deleting an Activity — for closing out the whole activity rather than one date