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What are opt-outs?

An opt-out is a record that a phone number has asked not to be called again. It is held against the number, for your whole account — not as a setting on one contact record. That distinction matters in practice:
  • The number is suppressed wherever it appears — in any list, under any contact, in any batch.
  • The opt-out survives the contact being deleted. Removing someone from your contacts does not undo their request.
  • Adding the same person again later, under a new name or in a new import, does not bring them back into scope.
Each opt-out keeps the detail behind it: the reason given, where it came from, and the call it was recorded on. Opt-outs can also be withdrawn if the person later asks to be contacted again. Opted-out numbers are excluded from future batch dialling by the Opt-out screening gate — there is no separate suppression list to maintain by hand. Opt-outs are a different check from the Do Not Call Register (DNCR): DNCR is Australia’s national register, checked against ACMA’s data; your opt-out list is account-level and built from what people tell you directly. See How opt-outs interact with DNCR below.

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How an opt-out is recorded

Recording is automatic — there’s no button to click. When a call establishes that the person asked to be removed from your list, an opt-out is written for their number as part of the call’s processing, along with the reason and a link back to that call. This comes from Post-Call Analysis, which runs on every completed call and produces a Classification section of standard fields, one of which is whether the contact asked to be removed from the call list. If the call’s outcome says the contact opted out, that is taken as authoritative. You can see the result for any individual call under Call Analysis on the Details tab, in the Classification section alongside Outcome, sentiment and the rest of the standard fields — see Call Details. Two safeguards are worth knowing:
  • A call that never connected can never record an opt-out. A voicemail, a rang-out call or a failed dial cannot produce one, so a bad line can’t quietly suppress a number.
  • The opt-out is written before the call is finished off. If it cannot be saved, the call’s processing is retried rather than the opt-out being lost.
Opt-outs can also be created without a call at all — for example when someone emails or writes in to ask — and withdrawn later if they change their mind. Both are handled by the Voxworks team today; see Manual management below.

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The opt-out screening gate

Opted-out numbers are kept out of future calls by the Opt-out screening gate, one of three screening gates configured per batch on the Screening gates card under Calling rules in a batch’s Settings tab. The card describes it plainly: “Blocks contacts who opted out on a previous call.” It’s on by default for every batch. The gate checks the queued phone number against your account’s opt-out records, so it catches the same person under a different contact record. Two things worth knowing about how it runs:
  • It runs automatically, and on demand. Like the other screening gates, it runs whenever its per-batch switch is on: it screens queued contacts ahead of their scheduled dial time, re-screens on the same schedule as the rest of the queue, and you can force an immediate check with the Screen button on the batch’s Queue tab. The fail-closed rules, verdicts and timing are shared across all three gates — see Batch Screening Gates for the full mechanics.
  • It’s a batch check. It screens contacts queued through batches. Scheduling a single outbound call from the New Call modal checks the number against the DNCR only — it does not check your opt-out list.

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Manual management

There’s currently no screen in Contacts or Lists for browsing, searching or manually setting opt-out status — coming soon. In the meantime, if you need a number added to your opt-out list without a call having happened, or an existing opt-out withdrawn because the person has asked to hear from you again, speak to the Voxworks team for further custom configuration.

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How opt-outs interact with DNCR

Opt-out and DNCR are independent, separately-enforced checks:
  • A number can be opted out, on the DNCR register, both, or neither — the two checks don’t affect each other.
  • DNCR Override on a contact only affects the DNCR gate. It has no effect on the Opt-out gate — an overridden, DNCR-registered contact who has also opted out is still blocked from batch dialling until the opt-out is resolved.
  • On a batch’s Queue tab, a contact blocked by opting out and a contact blocked by the DNCR register both show as Blocked, with the reason recorded per contact — see Batch Screening Gates.
  • Both checks sit inside the same legal picture: DNCR compliance is a statutory obligation under the Do Not Call Register Act, while honouring an opt-out is both good practice and expected under related telemarketing conduct rules. See DNCR & Opt-Out Compliance for the full legal framing and shared-responsibility model.

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Next Steps

  • Batch Screening Gates — fail-closed semantics, verdict lifetimes and the Screen button shared by all three gates.
  • Post-Call Analysis — the Classification framework that produces the opt_out field.
  • DNCR Washing — the parallel, register-based check and its status badges and overrides.
  • DNCR & Opt-Out Compliance — the legal framing for both checks and where responsibility sits.