How calendar sync works

Calendar sync runs in both directions, and it is worth five minutes of your time to know which. Reading stops you being double booked. Writing puts each booking where you will see it. And if you change one of our entries yourself, Business Box notices.

Reading: how times are decided#

A time appears on your booking page only if it survives all of this:

1. It is inside the availability schedule the event type uses.
2. It is not on a blocked public holiday, and not on a date you closed with an override.
3. It is free in every calendar you ticked Check for conflicts on.
4. It does not clash with another Business Box booking, including the buffers either side.
5. It is further away than the event type's minimum notice, and nearer than its bookable up to limit.
6. The day has not hit the event type's daily cap.
7. Nobody else is currently holding it while they fill in the form.

Business Box reads only whether you are busy — not what the appointment is. An event marked Free in Google or Outlook does not block anything, which is exactly why closing a whole day belongs in a date override and not in an all-day calendar event.

Writing: the booking in your calendar#

One calendar receives bookings. Business Box creates the entry when the booking is confirmed, moves it if the appointment is rescheduled, and removes it if the booking is cancelled. It never touches an entry it did not create.

Your customer is added as a guest, so your calendar provider sends its own invitation on top of the Business Box confirmation. That is deliberate: it means the appointment appears in their calendar in the form they expect.

The sync badge on a booking#

When you change a booking in your own calendar#

Dragging an appointment in Google Calendar or Outlook is a perfectly reasonable way to run a day, so Business Box handles it rather than quietly disagreeing with you. A move and a deletion are treated deliberately differently.

If you move it#

The move is followed. The booking is updated to the new time and any reminders not yet sent are re-timed, so nobody is reminded of a time nobody is attending. The old slot is freed for someone else.

Your customer is not emailed again, because your calendar provider has already told them — it moved their copy of the invitation. Moving it yourself also does not use up one of the customer's own reschedules.

Two exceptions, where the move is not followed:

• The new time clashes with another booking. Business Box leaves its copy where it was and emails you naming the clash, because this is almost certainly a mistake.
• The new time is in the past. Treated as a deletion.

If you delete it#

Nothing is cancelled. Deleting is ambiguous — the appointment might be off, or you might be tidying, or it might be a slip — and the cost of guessing wrong is a customer arriving to an empty room. So the booking stays live, the time stays held, the badge becomes Missing from calendar and you get one email asking what you meant.

From the booking you then choose:

• Cancel, if the appointment really is off. Your customer is told, and refunded if they paid.
• Re-create calendar event, to put the entry back.

No reminder is sent for a booking whose entry has been deleted, so nothing goes out to your customer while you decide.

When changes are noticed#

Business Box compares its bookings against your calendar at four different moments:

• Whenever you press Refresh on the Calendars page.
• Every few minutes for anything starting within the next twelve hours.
• Immediately before any reminder is sent, so no reminder can carry a stale time.
• Nightly, for everything else.

So a change to this afternoon's appointment is picked up almost at once, and a change to something three weeks out within a day. If you have just made a change and want it reflected now, press Refresh.

Reconnecting a calendar#

Calendar access can lapse — a password change, a security policy, permission revoked somewhere else. When it does, the connection shows Needs reconnecting, you get an email about it, and your booking pages tell visitors Bookings are paused right now.

1. Go to Booking → Calendars.
2. Press Reconnect on the connection showing the amber badge.
3. Approve the same permissions again.

Disconnecting#

Disconnect removes the connection. Entries already in your calendar stay where they are, but new bookings will not be added to it, and any Meet or Teams links depending on it stop being created. Existing bookings keep working for you and your customer.

If it was the calendar receiving bookings, pick another one afterwards — or new bookings will show Not on calendar.

Last reviewed 28 September 2026.