ShootCal Help

Appearance

Calendar sync: connecting Google or Microsoft ​

ShootCal owns your schedule. Every appointment you create is stored in your ShootCal account first, including its title, date and times, all-day span, location, status, and deposit marker, plus the business details that belong with it: the client, session type, and your private notes. Your clients, tasks and follow-up plans, session types, booking pages and booking requests, contracts, invoices and payment records, and reminder settings are stored by ShootCal too. A normal ShootCal account supports your studio: calendar, booking page, clients, tasks, invoices, contracts, deposits, reminders, reports, and push or email digests. No Google or Microsoft account is required.

Connecting a calendar is optional, but recommended. You can connect one provider: Google or Microsoft. In the web app, Booking Setup determines the business calendar used for ordinary new events. With calendar sync enabled, those events automatically sync their schedule there after saving in ShootCal. A connection also lets ShootCal check selected external calendars for conflicts before offering a time. Appointments created while deliberately disconnected remain in ShootCal only until you explicitly sync an eligible event after reconnecting.

One thing to be clear about up front: the calendar copy holds only the schedule. It is not a backup of your ShootCal business data. Payments, invoices, contracts, client details, and private notes live only in ShootCal. (For paperwork exports, see Invoices, card payments, and manual payments, which documents the cash-received, invoice-list, sales-tax, and expense CSV exports and the optional Google Drive invoice backups.)

What ShootCal stores ​

Your ShootCal account's database holds your whole studio, scoped to your account:

  • Appointments, each with its schedule (title, start and end, all-day flag and timezone, location, and status such as confirmed, canceled, busy or free) and its business metadata (session type, client name and email, your internal notes, and the deposit marker, a simple paid or unpaid flag, never an amount).
  • Clients: the client details on your bookings, contracts, and invoices are saved with those records in ShootCal. With a Google connection, you can explicitly import older clients from your Google Contacts (the "ShootCal Clients" label) into your saved ShootCal list; see Clients and the client manager.
  • Tasks and follow-up plans: your to-dos and their saved client or appointment relationships. Session-type follow-up templates are managed on the web. Calendar sync does not copy these to a provider task list.
  • Booking pages and booking requests: your public availability rules and every request a client submits.
  • Contracts and invoices: the full documents, e-signature audit trails, payment and refund history, and expenses.
  • Reminders and digests: your per-session-type reminder switches, reminder templates, push subscriptions, and digest preferences.

Because ShootCal stores all of this itself, the app works the moment your account exists. Connecting a provider adds to it; nothing is withheld until you connect.

What syncs when you connect a provider ​

With calendar sync enabled in web Booking Setup, ordinary new web events use your saved business calendar automatically. For an appointment linked to that connected calendar, ShootCal syncs a copy of these schedule fields:

  • the title
  • the start and end, including all-day date spans, in your studio timezone
  • the location
  • the description you put on the appointment itself
  • the status (confirmed or canceled, and busy or free)

Separate client records, tasks, follow-up plans, internal notes, booking requests, contracts, invoices, and payment records are not part of calendar sync. Calendar titles, locations, and descriptions can still contain personal information you enter, so review them before sharing a calendar.

Sync is two-way for the schedule. Changes you make in ShootCal are carried to the connected calendar, and changes made in the Google or Microsoft calendar are imported back into your ShootCal appointments. If the two ever disagree, ShootCal does not guess: the appointment shows a review panel comparing the ShootCal schedule with the calendar copy, and you choose which schedule to keep. Your business fields stay in ShootCal whichever side you pick. This two-way sync covers appointment schedule fields only; importing earlier Google tasks is a separate, explicit, one-time action; see Tasks and client follow-ups.

Pending changes and recurrence review ​

Saving an appointment in ShootCal and syncing its calendar copy are separate results. Check the appointment's status and review panel if the calendar update is pending or needs attention. A provider outage or changed calendar permission does not erase the saved appointment.

Imported recurring appointments remain visible and their busy times still count in booking availability. Manage recurring dates, times, moves, cancellations, and invitations in Google Calendar or Outlook. ShootCal does not create or change recurring schedules in this release. For an owned imported appointment, the web editor can still save its client, session-type, and deposit details while the recurring schedule stays read-only. Saved history and pending recovery remain available.

Conflict checking ​

ShootCal always checks your own stored appointments before offering or confirming a time, so double-booking protection works with no provider at all. Connecting a provider adds external busy-time checking: ShootCal can also read the busy blocks on your other connected calendars (for example a personal or family calendar you choose in Booking availability) and route around them.

A lapsed or revoked connection never fakes an empty day. If ShootCal cannot reach the provider, external conflict checks are marked unavailable, the app shows a warning, and unchecked time is treated as unknown rather than free. Your saved appointments remain fully usable the whole time.

One provider per account ​

Each ShootCal account connects to one calendar provider: Google or Microsoft, not both. You make the choice on the website under Settings → Account, which is also where you connect, reconnect, or disconnect. Provider consent always happens on the website, on the provider's own consent screen. The native iPhone, iPad, and Android apps sign in with your ShootCal account and never ask for your Google or Microsoft password.

For the exact Google permissions requested when you connect Google and what each one does, see Account, sign-in, and permissions. For how the stored connection is encrypted and protected, see Privacy, data storage, and security.

Disconnecting ​

You can disconnect at any time, in either place:

  • In ShootCal, under Settings → Account on the website.
  • At the provider, for example from your Google Account security settings, which immediately invalidates ShootCal's stored connection.

Disconnecting stops sync and external conflict checking. It does not delete anything: appointments remain saved in your ShootCal account, and copies already synced to your Google or Microsoft calendar remain there as ordinary events. After a deliberate disconnect in ShootCal, you can stay signed in and create new events locally. They are listed under your Booking Setup calendar's name with Sync off, and you can edit them like any ShootCal appointment. An expired or revoked permission is not treated as a deliberate disconnect; review the connection warning before creating another event.

Reconnecting does not automatically export events created while disconnected. On the web, open a saved event after reconnecting. If ShootCal confirms that the event is eligible for its first calendar copy, it shows Sync this event to Google Calendar or Sync this event to Microsoft Outlook, with the destination calendar named below. Choose that action to start sync for this event. It uses your current Booking Setup destination. Previously synced events do not need this action; an ordinary synced event has no sync-review button unless its status needs attention.

These new-event and first-export controls describe the web app. In the iPhone, iPad, and Android apps, an eligible event shows Review event on ShootCal, which opens that event on the website so you can choose the sync action there. For supported app versions, see app update guidance.

FAQ ​

If I never connect a calendar, what still works? ​

The core studio tools: the calendar and agenda, session types and golden-hour scheduling, your public booking page and booking requests, clients, tasks, contracts, invoices and payment records, deposits, reminders, reports, and push/email digests. The calendar, booking, and deposit data is stored in your ShootCal account, so none of it depends on Google or Microsoft. A connection adds schedule copies on selected Google or Microsoft calendars and external busy-time checks. Provider calendar invitations for one-off appointments need an exact connected, writable calendar; ordinary confirmations and add-to-calendar attachments work without that invitation feature.

Exactly which fields sync to my connected calendar? ​

The schedule only: title, start and end (including all-day spans, in your studio timezone), location, the description on the appointment itself, and status (confirmed/canceled and busy/free). Client identities, internal notes, contracts, invoices, payment history, and the deposit marker are never written to the calendar copy.

Can I connect both Google and Microsoft, or more than one account? ​

No. One ShootCal account connects one calendar provider: Google or Microsoft. You choose in Settings → Account on the website. Disconnecting stops calendar sync; it does not switch this account to another provider. Your saved ShootCal appointments remain available.

Everything happens on the ShootCal website, under Settings → Account. Connecting sends you to the provider's own consent screen (Google's or Microsoft's), so ShootCal never sees that password. Follow the sign-in controls available in your ShootCal app. Connecting a calendar remains a separate website action; native apps do not collect your provider password.

What happens to conflict checking if my connection expires? ​

Your ShootCal appointments are always checked, so your own bookings still block their times. External checks against your other connected calendars pause until you reconnect, and the app tells you rather than silently treating unchecked time as available. Reconnect in Settings → Account to resume sync and external checking.

Is the calendar copy a backup of my ShootCal data? ​

No. The copy on your Google or Microsoft calendar contains only schedule fields: enough to see and share your schedule, not enough to reconstruct your business. Contracts, invoices, payment records, client details, and private notes exist only in ShootCal. If you need your own copies of the paperwork, use the cash-received, invoice-list, sales-tax, and expense CSV exports under Payments › Reports (see Invoices, card payments, and manual payments); signed contracts can also archive a PDF copy to your Google Drive, and invoices can back up to Google Drive, when Google is connected.

What happens to my bookings if I disconnect or stop using ShootCal? ​

Your appointments, clients, booking requests, contracts, invoices, and payment history all remain in your ShootCal account, because that is where they have always lived. Disconnecting a provider only stops sync; the schedule copies already in your Google or Microsoft calendar stay there as normal events you can keep, edit, or delete in that account. If you want your ShootCal account itself removed, submit an account deletion request for manual review. Submitting a request does not immediately remove your account or records. The details and support contact are on the privacy page.