How to sync appointments with Google and Outlook calendars

The short answer

Connect a team member’s Google or Outlook calendar once. From then on, an appointment booked in the NextUp app appears on their calendar, moves when it moves and disappears when it is cancelled. A busy time on that calendar closes the same time for online booking, so a client cannot book the hour of the dentist visit.

Calendar sync is a Pro feature, and it is set per person.

Why a team needs it

A booking page shows the hours a person works. It cannot know about the school pickup, the second job or the Saturday class. Without a link to their calendar, those times look open and a client books one of them.

The result is a clash someone has to fix: a message, an apology, a new time. The calculator below counts how many a month your team might have. If the number is close to zero, you may not need sync yet.

It also helps the other way. Many people live in their phone’s calendar. When their bookings are on it, next to the rest of their day, they stop opening a second app to check.

What syncs, which way, and what does not

Bookings go out. A booked appointment is created on the team member’s calendar, moved when the booking moves and removed when it is cancelled. Google gets the event on the person’s main calendar.

Busy times come in. The busy times on their calendar close their open slots. NextUp reads only when you are busy, not what the event is: event names stay on Google or Outlook. For Outlook, busy, tentative and out-of-office times count, and the bookings NextUp made are left out so they do not block themselves. The busy times are refreshed about every two minutes.

It does not work backwards. Moving or deleting the event on Google or Outlook does not move or cancel the booking. Change it in the NextUp app. A sync problem never blocks a booking, so if an event is missing from a calendar, check the connection.

How NextUp Walk-in handles it

There are two ways to connect a calendar and one way to share it, all set up from the dashboard.

Connect Google Calendar or Outlook. Open the team member’s profile from the Staff page, or let them do it from their own sign-in, and follow the Google or Microsoft prompt. If a calendar was connected without permission to read busy times, the profile offers a reconnect button so personal events close slots. Each person is separate: one person connecting does not affect anyone else.

Make a calendar link. On the Calendar page, the options menu has Calendar links. Choose whose bookings, press Make a link, and add it to Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, Outlook.com or Microsoft 365. Owners and managers can share the whole location or anyone’s bookings; a team member shares their own bookings and blocked time. The link is private and shown only once.

It works alongside weekly hours and blocked time in NextUp Walk-in. Sync adds to those rules and never replaces them. When a client books “anyone”, a time closes only when nobody on the team is free.

Keep your calendar clean

Mark personal events the way the calendar expects. Google ignores events set as free when it reports busy times, so an event you want to close slots should be shown as busy. Outlook counts busy, tentative and out-of-office time.

Use a calendar link, not a connection, for anything you only want to view. A link updates by itself every so often, and Google can take a few hours, so do not use a link to catch a booking in the next hour. It shows the last month and the next six months, and it is read-only: changes are made in NextUp.

Keep one person responsible for reconnecting. If someone removes NextUp Walk-in’s access from their Google or Microsoft account, their slots stop closing until they reconnect.

See calendar sync, calendar and online booking, pricing, hair salons.

Check it works in ten minutes

Connect one person first. Add a test event on their personal calendar for tomorrow and open the booking page: the hour should be gone. Book a test appointment for them and look for it on their calendar. Move it in the NextUp app and watch it follow.

When both work, connect the rest of the team.

Stop the double-booking