Sync bookings to your calendar

Send every appointment, including the ones already booked, into the shop diary and each person's own Google or Outlook calendar.

Calendar sync writes every appointment Booked takes into the calendars your team already lives in — Google Calendar or Outlook. Connect once and bookings appear, move and disappear on their own. There are two kinds of calendar: the shop diary, which gets every booking, and staff calendars, where each person gets only their own. It only ever writes one way: out of Booked, into the calendar.

Connect the shop diary

Go to Settings › Calendar sync, under Reminders & calendar in the settings rail. Sign in with the account whose calendar you want every booking in — usually the shared clinic mailbox rather than one pharmacist’s personal account.

• 1Calendar sync — under Reminders & calendar in the settings rail. It needs an activated licence, because the connection runs through Booked.
• 2The shop diary — one calendar that gets every booking, whoever it is with. Connect Google Calendar or Connect Outlook and sign in to that account.
• 3Staff calendars — everyone on your team, each with their own calendar. Email a link sends them a link that works once and lasts a fortnight; they sign in to their own Google or Outlook, never to Booked.

1. Open Settings › Calendar syncThere is no Save button on this section — connecting and disconnecting take effect the moment you do them.
2. Press Connect Google Calendar or Connect OutlookSign in as the account that owns the calendar you want, and allow calendar access when asked.
3. Come back to Calendar syncYou are returned to Booked’s Settings, on Calendar sync, where it says “Calendar connected. Bookings will start appearing in it.” If the sign-in did not finish, it says “That connection did not finish. Have another go.” instead. Settings also remembers the last section you had open, so reloading the page keeps you there.
4. Check it names the right accountThe shop diary card reads Connected to Google Calendar or Connected to Outlook, with the email address underneath. If that is the wrong mailbox, disconnect and sign in again.

If the card says Not switched on, calendar sync is still being finished off across Booked; there is nothing for you to do, and it starts working on its own. Bookings go into that account’s main calendar — there is no picker, so you cannot route them into a separate “Appointments” calendar.

Give each member of staff their own calendar

Under Staff calendars, everyone on your team is listed. Nobody hands you their password: you send each person a link, and they sign in to their own Google or Outlook.

• Email a link. Sends them an email with a Connect my calendar button. It uses the email address on their staff record, so the button only appears when there is one.
• Get a link. Makes the link for you to copy and send yourself. Each link works once and lasts a fortnight; New link replaces it.
• Connect now. Connects a Google calendar for them in this browser, if they are sitting next to you.

Connect the shop diary and a staff calendar and an appointment appears in both. If an appointment moves to someone else, it leaves the first person’s calendar and appears in the new one.

Add the bookings you already had

A calendar hears about a booking when it is made, moved or cancelled, so bookings made before you connected are not in it yet. Once any calendar is connected, the shop diary’s or a member of staff’s, the shop diary card gains a line headed Add existing bookings: “Copies in bookings made before you connected. Safe to run again.”

1. Choose how far backFrom today is the default. Last 30 days or Last 90 days adds recent appointments too, if you want your history in the calendar.
2. Press Sync and stay on the pageBooked sends the bookings eight at a time, so a long diary never runs into a time limit, and a bar shows how far it has got. The sending runs from your browser: if you leave Calendar sync part-way, press Sync again later.
3. Read the resultFor example “31 bookings synced.” Open your calendar and they are there, looking just like new ones.

• 1Which bookings — From today, Last 30 days or Last 90 days. Every booking from the start of that day onwards goes, including all those still to come. Cancelled and no-show appointments stay out.
• 2Sync — sends them to every calendar you have connected: the shop diary gets them all, and each member of staff gets their own. While it works the button reads Syncing… and a bar counts them off, “12 of 31”.
• 3The result — how many were synced, or “Nothing to add for those dates.” when there were none. If a calendar turned any away, this line says so in red instead.

• Running it twice adds nothing twice. A booking already in the calendar is updated, not copied. Press Sync whenever you think something is missing.
• If Booked cannot be reached, the line shows what went wrong, such as “Could not reach Booked just now.”, with Try again, which carries on from the booking it stopped at.
• If a calendar turns some away, the line reads, for example, “2 of 31 were turned away.”, followed by the first reason the calendar gave, in its own words: “Microsoft turned an appointment away: …” or “Google turned an appointment away: …”. The rest are in, and the connection stays Connected. If the reason does not tell you what to change, contact Booked support and quote it.

What each booking looks like in your calendar

Booked creates one calendar entry per booking in each calendar it belongs in. The title is the customer’s name and the service; everything else you might need while you are looking at your week is in the entry’s details.

• 1Title — the customer’s name, then the service. In the shop diary the member of staff follows in brackets; in their own calendar it is left off. A booking with no name against it is titled “Booking”.
• 2Start and end — taken from the booking, read in your WordPress time zone, and sent as an exact time in UTC, so the calendar shows it in its owner’s own time.
• 3Location — the branch name.
• 4Details — the service, the customer’s email address and phone number, any notes on the booking, and a final Status: line. Enough to ring someone without opening Booked.

Which bookings sync, and which changes come through

Every booking syncs — there is nothing to switch on per service or per branch, and it does not matter whether your confirmation emails and texts are turned on. Booked remembers which calendar entry belongs to which booking, so a change updates the entry already there instead of piling up duplicates. If someone deletes an entry in the calendar, the next change in Booked puts it back.

Sync happens at the same moments the booking’s own messages would go out: Booking pending, Booking approved, Booking cancelled, Booking rescheduled, Booking changed, each reminder and Questions still to answer. The Payment receipt and Booking refunded emails are the exceptions: a receipt or a refund changes nothing a calendar shows, so neither touches it. Bookings paid for online are the other exception: when the form has a card step, the emails wait for the payment, but the entry appears as soon as the booking is made.

The last two rows catch people out. Shorten a 20-minute appointment to 10 minutes and change nothing else, and the calendar still shows 20 minutes. Move the start time as well and the entry catches up.

What calendar sync will not do

• It does not read your calendar. Personal appointments, meetings and holidays sitting in Google or Outlook are invisible to Booked and will not close a slot. To stop customers booking a time, block it in Booked — with time off or a break on the member of staff, or by closing the branch that day.
• Edits made in the calendar do not come back. Dragging an entry to another day in Google or Outlook changes nothing in Booked: the customer still has the original appointment, and the next update from Booked overwrites what you did. Always make the change in Booked.
• It does not email your customers. Confirmations and reminders still come from Booked. Nobody is invited to the calendar entry — it is your team’s copy of the diary, not the customer’s.

Disconnect, or switch to the other calendar

Once a calendar is connected, its row names the account, with a Disconnect button next to it. Booked asks first (“Stop adding bookings to the shop diary? Appointments already in it stay where they are.”), and disconnecting takes effect straight away. Entries already in the calendar are left where they are; nothing is tidied up for you. If a connection stops working, the card says Needs reconnecting and offers Reconnect.

That only happens when the calendar will not let Booked in at all: the sign-in has run out, access was taken away, or there is no mailbox behind the account. The card then reads “Google would not let us in — the connection needs making again.”, or the same for Microsoft. A member of staff’s row shows Error with those words, and its own Reconnect. A calendar turning away one appointment is different: the connection stays Connected, because it is working. If an appointment is missing from a calendar, press Sync under Add existing bookings. It adds what is missing, and tells you if a calendar turned anything away, and why.

• 1Connected — which calendar bookings are going to. Disconnect asks first; appointments already in the calendar stay where they are.
• 2A link to send — Get a link (or New link) makes one you can copy and send yourself, for someone with no email address on their staff record.

Switching from Google to Outlook, or the other way, is a clean break rather than a move: disconnect, then connect the other. Bookings written before the switch stay in the old calendar; only bookings made or changed afterwards land in the new one. Expect next week’s diary to be split across the two for a while, and keep the old calendar open until it has emptied out. Or, once the new calendar is connected, press Sync under Add existing bookings to copy everything from today on into it straight away.