11.3 Rescheduling, Canceling, and No-Show Rules

Two Different Deadlines: Online vs. Test Center

The Washington NAC knowledge exam is a scheduled, proctored appointment, and the deadline to change it depends on how you scheduled it. The two windows are different, and confusing them is a common, expensive mistake.

• Online Written (or Oral) examinations must be canceled or rescheduled at least 48 hours before the scheduled examination time.
• Test-center examinations must be canceled or rescheduled at least ten (10) calendar days before the scheduled examination date — and the handbook specifies that Saturdays, Sundays, and national holidays are not counted as calendar days, so the effective lead time is even longer than ten plain days.

You make the change yourself online in your CNA365 account using the "How to Cancel or Reschedule an Exam" resource. Because the test-center deadline is so much earlier, candidates who think they have "a week" before a Friday test-center appointment may already be inside the no-change window once weekends and holidays are removed.

The No-Show Rule And Forfeited Fees

If you do not cancel or reschedule within the required time frame and do not show up, you are responsible for the examination fee: it will not be refunded and cannot be transferred to a new date, and you may not give your exam date to another person. The blunt summary the handbook uses is that once payment of exam fees is received, NO REFUNDS WILL BE ISSUED. A no-show therefore costs you the full fee and the appointment, even though you never sat for the exam.

The Excused-Absence Safety Valve (14 Calendar Days)

Washington provides one limited relief path. A candidate who is late or absent may submit an excused-absence request via CNA365 within 14 calendar days of the exam date — but only for specific, documented reasons:

• Illness of yourself or a member of your household
• Death in the family
• Traffic accident or ticket
• Court appearance or jury duty
• Military duty
• Weather emergency
• Incarceration

Your request must include documentation or verification of the reason, and Credentia's decision to approve or deny the excused absence is final. "I overslept" or "I wasn't ready" is not on the list. Treat the excused-absence process as a narrow exception, not a routine do-over.

Build A Personal Cutoff Earlier Than The Official One

The safest planning habit is to decide whether you will keep the appointment before the official deadline arrives. For an online exam, make the keep-or-change decision at least three days out so you stay clear of the 48-hour wall. For a test-center exam, decide roughly two weeks out, counting only business days. If a separate fact — a failed sitting — is in play, remember that a failed exam is not a no-show: it counts as an attempt and requires a new fee to retake, which is covered in the retakes section.

How To Make The Change

You cancel or reschedule yourself, online, inside your CNA365 account — there is no phone-cancellation shortcut, and a proctor cannot reschedule you on exam day. Because you control the change, the responsibility for hitting the deadline is yours. If life is uncertain in the days before an online exam, the conservative move is to reschedule while you are still outside the 48-hour window rather than gamble on attending; rescheduling in time preserves your fee, while a late change or no-show forfeits it entirely.

Think about which factors most often force last-minute changes — illness, transportation failure, work-coverage gaps, childcare, or technology problems — and notice that several of them also appear on the excused-absence list. That overlap is useful: if one of those documented emergencies makes you miss the exam, you may still pursue an excused absence within 14 days, but you should not rely on it for ordinary scheduling conflicts. The excused-absence path requires verification and a final Credentia decision, so it is a safety net, not a planning tool.

A Simple Timing Rule To Memorize

Memorize the pairing: online = 48 hours, test center = 10 business days, miss it = fee gone. If you can recall only one fact under stress, recall that the test-center deadline is far earlier than it feels once weekends and holidays drop out of the count. Candidates lose fees most often not by failing to care, but by assuming the test-center window works like the online window. Keep the two deadlines separate in your mind and act on the earlier one whenever a test-center appointment is involved.

One final nuance separates a change from a miss. Canceling and rescheduling are both done the same way and within the same deadline, but they have different downstream effects: a reschedule moves your existing paid appointment to a new date, while a cancellation gives up the slot. Either action, taken in time, avoids a forfeited fee. What you cannot do is convert a missed appointment into a free reschedule after the fact — once you are past the deadline or have failed to appear, the fee is gone and you must register and pay again for a brand-new appointment.

That is why the single most valuable habit in this section is acting before the deadline rather than reacting after it.