Does BRM email the customer when I cancel a booking myself?

No — and that's intentional

When you cancel a reservation yourself in Back Office (by changing its status to Cancelled), BRM does not send the customer an email. If you've tested this and seen nothing arrive, nothing is broken and nothing is misconfigured.

BRM's automatic emails are triggered by things customers do and by scheduled jobs — an online booking, a customer cancelling themselves through their cancellation link, an unpaid booking timing out. A member of staff making a change in Back Office is treated as a deliberate action where you decide what the customer is told.

This is also why you won't find a "manual cancellation" switch in your notification settings. There isn't one.

How to notify the customer

Use the reservation's own email tool, which already knows about your cancellation wording:

1. Open the cancelled reservation.
2. Go to the Comms tab.
3. Click Send email.
4. Set Email Type to the cancelled option.
5. The subject and content load from your saved cancellation template — the same wording used for self-service and automatic cancellations. Edit anything you want to change for this particular customer, then send.

You can adjust that template at Settings → Notifications → Content, on the cancellation tab.

Which cancellations DO email automatically

• Self-service cancellation — the customer cancels using the link in their booking email.
• Auto-cancellation — an unpaid provisional booking expires and BRM cancels it for you.

Both are switched on or off at Settings → Notifications → When, and both share the one cancellation template. Note that auto-cancellation emails are off by default, so if you rely on them, check that setting.

Related

See "Which actions send an email to the customer automatically?" for the full picture.