Providing availability with Google Calendar

Google Calendar can be more than a place where reservations are written. With TheBooking, selected calendar events can also define when a service is available.

This is useful when providers already manage their schedule in Google Calendar and do not want to duplicate every working interval in WordPress.

How it works

Connect a Google Calendar as a source for an availability plan. Events in that calendar become availability windows for the services in the plan.

TheBooking then turns those windows into bookable appointment times using the service duration, buffer, capacity, provider rules, existing bookings, and any blocking calendars.

For example, a provider can create a Google Calendar event from 09:00 to 13:00. A 60-minute service can then show several bookable times inside that window.

Assign a source calendar

1. Open Availability > Google Accounts.
2. Expand the connected Google account.
3. Expand the calendar you want to use.
4. Enable the Source role for the availability plan.
5. Create or edit availability events in that Google Calendar.

Google events must be visible to the API and marked busy. Events marked free are ignored by Google Calendar's availability data and cannot provide booking windows.

When to use separate calendars

Use separate source calendars or availability plans when:

• different services need different schedules;
• different teams work on different days;
• providers should manage their own availability;
• you want a clear separation between availability planning and personal appointments.

In multi-provider plans, TheBooking respects provider and sub-team scoping. See Provider and sub-team scoping.

Check the final result

After changing source calendars, open Availability > Slots and preview the dates customers should be able to book. This confirms that the calendar events, service duration, buffers, and provider rules produce the expected slots.