How do I set up online booking?

Open Calendar, then the Booking settings tab. One number switches booking on. Everything else on the screen already has a sensible answer, so most businesses set the number, press Save and never come back.

How much work you can take

Two fields, and between them they decide every time your booking page offers.

1. Jobs you can run at the same time. One number for the whole business. Three technicians is three, two bays is two, one crew is one. Anything from one to a hundred.
2. How long one appointment takes, in minutes. Every booking is this long, and the times on offer are spaced this far apart. Anything from fifteen minutes to eight hours.

Press Save changes. Your booking page starts offering times from that moment, and the database itself refuses a booking that would put you over the number, so two customers cannot take the last slot at the same instant.

Leaving the capacity field empty switches online booking off completely. Nobody is offered a time, on your booking page or through your AI. That is also where every new account starts, which is why the screen leads with it until you fill it in.

When customers can book

This starts ticked as "Use the same hours I am open", so it needs nothing from you. Untick it only if you take bookings in a narrower window than you answer the phone, for example a shop open until six that stops taking jobs at four.

Each day gets a Bookable tick and a start and finish time. The hours you are open are shown beside each row so you can see the window you are fitting inside.

Booking hours have to sit inside the hours you are open, and a wider window is refused when you save, naming the day it disagrees on. A day you are closed cannot be bookable.

Narrowing this does not change when your AI treats you as closed. That is driven by your business hours and nothing else, so these are two different settings on purpose, and tightening a booking window can never quietly change how the phone is answered after hours. See What are my business hours for, and what happens after hours?.

Letting customers pick a person

Off, the customer never chooses anybody. The booking goes to whoever is free, and no staff setup is needed at all. That is the right answer for a pest firm with three technicians or a garage with two bays, where nobody asks for a person by name.

On, the customer picks a named person, and only the times that person's own schedule says they are working are offered. Set those schedules in Team management, then the Schedules tab. This is available on the Pro and Scale plans; on other plans the tick box explains that and your bookings keep using one capacity number for the whole business.

Your booking link

Your own booking page address is on this screen with a Copy link button. Put it on your website, your Google Business Profile, your email signature and your invoices. Depending on your plan you may not have a booking page of your own, in which case this section says so and your AI can still take booking requests on a call or in a chat. What a customer sees when they open the link is covered in How do customers book an appointment with me online?.

Calendars being checked

Depending on your plan, this screen also lists the Google Calendars your team has connected and what each one does: whether it is checked for conflicts, and whether somebody's busy time takes one job off what your business can take.

You cannot connect somebody else's calendar from here, because Google only lets a person allow access for themselves. Each person connects their own in Settings, then Profile, then Security. See How do I connect my Google Calendar?.

Who can change this

Organization admins only. These settings decide when your whole business can be booked, so an advisor opening the tab is told that rather than shown a form that would refuse them. Everyone with access to the calendar can still see what is booked.