Sync bookings to your calendar
Send every appointment into Google Calendar or Outlook.
Calendar sync writes every appointment Booked takes into the calendar your team already lives in — Google Calendar or Microsoft/Outlook. Connect it once and bookings appear, move and disappear on their own. It is one connection for the whole business, and it only ever writes one way: out of Booked, into your calendar.
Connect Google or Outlook
Go to Settings and choose the Calendar tab. There is one card, Calendar sync, with a section for each provider. Sign in with the account whose calendar you want the bookings in — usually the shared clinic mailbox rather than one pharmacist's personal account.
Configure how Booked works.
Add every booking to your calendar automatically (one-way). Connect the email you already use — patient confirmations still come from Booked.
Sign in with Google and allow calendar access — that’s it.
Sign in with GoogleSettings › Calendar sync before anything is connected.
- 1The Calendar tab — the tabs run down the left of the Settings panel, between Payments and Add-ons.
- 2Sign in with Google — takes you to Google to sign in and allow calendar access. Nothing to install and no keys to copy: the connection is held by Booked on your behalf.
- 3“Being switched on for your account” — that provider is not ready on your account yet, so no sign-in button appears. We switch this on at our end; there is nothing to fix on your site. If both sections say it, contact us.
- Open Settings › Calendar syncThere is no Save settings button on this tab — connecting and disconnecting take effect the moment you do them.
- Press Sign in with Google or Sign in with MicrosoftSign in as the account that owns the calendar you want, and allow calendar access when asked.
- Come back to Settings › Calendar syncYou are returned to the Booked dashboard, not to the tab you started on. Click back into the Calendar tab to see the confirmation.
- Check the banner names the right accountIt reads Connected to Google Calendar: or Connected to Microsoft: and then the email address. If that is the wrong mailbox, disconnect and sign in again.
This is a single connection for the business, not one per member of staff: every booking, at every branch, for every employee, lands in the one connected calendar. It goes to that account's main calendar — there is no picker, so you cannot route bookings into a separate “Appointments” calendar.
What each booking looks like in your calendar
Booked creates one calendar entry per booking. 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.
priya.sharma@example.com
07700 900412
Second dose — first given 12 August
Status: confirmed
A synced booking as it arrives in the connected calendar.
- 1Title — the customer's name, then the service name. A booking with no name against it is titled “Booking”.
- 2Start and end — taken from the booking and stamped with your website's timezone.
- 3Location — the branch name. Video consultations have no branch, so this line is left blank for them.
- 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.
The Timezone field on Settings › Region & currency is recorded but is not what drives scheduling. Appointment times — and the times stamped on calendar entries — come from your WordPress timezone. If your calendar entries land an hour out, that is the setting to check.
Which bookings sync, and which changes come through
Every booking syncs — there is nothing to switch on per service, per branch or per member of staff, 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.
Sync happens at the same moments your notifications fire: Booking pending, Booking approved, Booking cancelled, Booking rescheduled, Booking changed, Booking refunded and Payment received.
| What you do in Booked | What happens in your calendar |
|---|---|
| A customer books, or you add a booking | An entry is created, whether it lands Pending or Confirmed. |
| You confirm a pending booking | The entry is updated — the Status: line changes. |
| You move it to another day or time | The entry moves with it. |
| You change the customer, service, employee or branch | The entry is rewritten with the new details. |
| You change the price, or a payment or refund goes through | The entry is refreshed. |
| You cancel the booking | The entry is deleted outright — not marked cancelled, removed. |
| You mark it Completed or No-show | Nothing. The entry stays exactly as it was, still showing the old status. |
| You change only how long it runs | Nothing. Length on its own does not trigger an update. |
Cancelled bookings are deleted from the calendar rather than crossed out, so no trace is left of an appointment that was booked and then dropped. That history is still on the booking in Booked and in the Activity log — but do not rely on your calendar to show it.
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 — on the employee's working hours, or by closing the branch that day.
- Edits made in the calendar do not come back. Dragging an entry to another day, or deleting it 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.
- It is not one calendar per pharmacist. There is no way to send Priya's appointments to her calendar and Oliver's to his.
Calendar sync is part of your Booked subscription, not a paid extra. The Included / Not in plan list on Settings › Your plan only ever covers video consultations and the AI note-taker, so calendar sync never appears there — that is not a sign you are missing something you paid for.
Disconnect, or switch to the other calendar
Once a calendar is connected the card shows a banner naming the account, with a Disconnect button next to it. Disconnecting stops new bookings being written and takes effect straight away. Entries already in the calendar are left where they are; nothing is tidied up for you.
Add every booking to your calendar automatically (one-way). Connect the email you already use — patient confirmations still come from Booked.
Your Google Calendar is connected.
Sign in with your Microsoft account and allow calendar access — that’s it.
Sign in with MicrosoftThe same card once Google Calendar is connected.
- 1The connected banner — names the provider and the exact account bookings go to. Worth a glance if appointments stop appearing where you expect them.
- 2Disconnect — stops the sync immediately. No confirmation is asked for, and existing entries are left untouched.
- 3The other provider — still offers its sign-in button. Only one calendar can be connected at a time, so using it replaces the Google connection rather than running both.
Switching from Google to Outlook, or the other way, is a clean break rather than a move. 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.