When something changes after you've filed
Bookings change after they are reported. An extra person turns up, a name was spelled wrong, half the party arrives on a different day, or the whole thing is cancelled. Each of these has an answer, and a cancellation carries its own 24-hour deadline that many owners do not know exists.
Almost every guide treats reporting as a single event. Real bookings are not like that, and the questions owners actually ask are about what happens afterwards.
An extra person turns up
Common, and genuinely awkward when you only find out after the 24 hours have passed.
The obligation is to report everyone who stays. So the extra person is reported — the only question is how, and the practical answer is to add them rather than to unpick what you already sent. Owners report submitting the additional traveller against the same booking reference.
Do it as soon as you know. You are already outside the window for that person, and the difference between late and much later is the difference between a small problem and an obvious one.
You got something wrong
Names misspelled, a digit wrong in a passport number, the wrong date of birth.
Submissions can be corrected. Do it as soon as you notice — an error you have fixed is a different thing from an error still sitting on file.
Remember that you are responsible for the details matching the guest's actual document. If you have entered what the guest told you and it turns out not to match their passport, correcting it is not optional tidying.
Half the party arrives on Thursday
Very common with family groups and one booking.
The report is tied to the stay, so the guests who have not arrived have not started their stay. The usual approach owners describe is to report the arrivals as they happen, using the same booking reference for the later ones, on the day they actually turn up.
That keeps each traveller inside their own 24 hours rather than reporting somebody as present days before they are.
A cancellation
This is the one that catches people out, because almost nothing mentions it.
A cancellation is a reportable event in its own right, with its own 24-hour clock. If you reported a booking and it then falls through, that needs reporting too.
A guest simply does not show
Slightly different from a cancellation, because nobody cancelled anything.
If you reported a party of four and three arrived, the honest position is that the record no longer matches reality, and the sooner it does the better. Treat it the same way as a correction and amend what you sent.
The habit that makes all of this easier
Keep the reference you get back from each submission. It is your evidence of what was reported and when, and it is the thing you will need if you later have to explain a change.
Keeping them also makes corrections far quicker, because you are amending a known record rather than hunting for it.
The exact screens for corrections and cancellations change from time to time. Rather than reproduce them here and let them go stale, the Ministry's own visual guide to the platform is the authoritative walkthrough.