Calendars in the business app works on its own — you don't need online booking. Each team member has their own calendar, and owners and managers can add shared calendars (a front desk, a room, a van, team days off). When online booking is set up, bookings show on the same calendar as one more thing on it.
What you see
Calendars → Calendar shows Day, Week or Month with Previous, Today and Next. Times are in the business's time zone. On it:
- Events — things you or your team added (a solid colored block).
- Blocked time — busy time with no customer (a striped block).
- Your Google or Outlook events — when you've connected your calendar (a dashed block). You see their titles; the rest of the team sees them as "Busy".
- Bookings — when online booking is set up. Click one to confirm, change, cancel or refund it. Hide bookings takes them off.
Each calendar has its own color. Click the colored names above the calendar to show or hide a person or a shared calendar. On a phone, Day and Week are a list of each day's events.
Who sees what: staff see their own calendar and the shared ones. Owners, managers and your agency see everyone's.
Add an event
Click New event, or click a time on the calendar. Fill in:
- Title, the date and start and end time — or tick All day and pick the first and last day.
- Calendar — your own, a shared calendar, or (owners and managers) anyone's.
- Contact (optional) — the event goes on that contact's timeline ("Appointment added") and shows under Upcoming appointments on their page.
- Repeat — daily, weekly (pick the days), monthly or yearly, every 1 to 99, ending never, on a date, or after a number of times.
- Busy — on by default: when online booking is on, nobody can book you then. Untick it for something that shouldn't block bookings.
- Location, Notes and a Reminder (see below).
To change an event, click it. The form shows the date you clicked.
Repeating events
When you Save or Remove a repeating event, pick which dates:
- Only this event — just this date. It becomes its own changed date (marked ↻); the rest of the series stays as it was. Its reminder and busy time move with it.
- This and following events — this date and every one after it. The series is split: the old one ends the day before, and a new one starts on this date with your changes (a "10 times" series carries on with the times that were left). Dates you'd changed one by one after this date are dropped.
- All events — the whole series. If you changed the time or date, every date moves by the same amount. As in Google Calendar, dates you changed one by one are kept when you only change things like the title, location or notes (and they pick up those changes unless you'd changed that same detail on them), but they're dropped — back to the series — when you change the time, length or repeat.
Removing works the same way: Only this event, This and following events (the series ends the day before) or All events.
Staff can change their own events and the shared-calendar events they added. Owners and managers can change any. If someone else adds, moves or removes an event on your calendar, you're told (My notifications: Event added to my calendar).
Block time
Click Block time for lunch, a school run, a vacation or anything else you're not available for. Blocked time is always busy and has no customer. The title is optional ("Busy" if you leave it empty).
When online booking is set up, your blocked time and busy events stop customers booking you — on the booking page, on your website and when someone books by hand. This works for team members who are also booking staff.
Reminders
Pick when (At the start, 10 or 30 minutes, 1 or 2 hours, or 1 or 2 days before). Then:
- Remind the calendar's person — a notification, email and phone push, following their own My notifications settings (row Calendar event reminder). For a shared calendar, whoever added the event is reminded.
- Email the contact a reminder — free, like booking emails. Not sent to someone who bounced, marked an email as spam, or is on the do-not-email list or Do not disturb for email.
- Text the contact a reminder — only if they can get texts from you (they agreed, or texted you first), never after STOP, and only within texting hours. Billed like other automated texts.
Each date of a repeating event gets its own reminder, once.
Sync with Google Calendar or Outlook
Click Sync my Google / Outlook calendar above the calendar (or use Settings → My integrations) and Connect. Then:
- Show its events here — your events from that calendar show on your calendar in the business app, read fresh each time you open it. Edit them in Google or Outlook.
- Put events and blocked time I add here into it — what you add in the business app (including repeats) goes into your Google or Outlook calendar, and moves or disappears when you change or remove it here. A repeating event stays one repeating event there: a date you change on its own is changed there too, a removed date is removed, and a split series becomes two repeating events. Changes made to those copies in Google or Outlook aren't brought back: the business app's event is the one that counts.
Which calendars are read and which one events go into: Settings → My integrations (see Connect your calendar and video apps).
Shared calendars
Owners and managers click Shared calendars to add one (a name and a color), rename it or delete it. Everyone can see shared calendars and add to them. Deleting one removes its events too.
Online booking is optional
Without online booking, Calendars still does everything above. If you can set booking up, a small card says Let customers book online — Set up booking; dismiss it if you don't need it. Once booking is set up, Calendars also has Booking schedule, Bookings list, Waiting for approval and Calendar settings (see Set up online booking).
On the phone
In the Business Hub app, Calendar shows each day's events, blocked time, synced events and bookings by person, with New event and Block time for the day you're looking at. Repeats, contacts and other people's calendars are added on the web.