Syncing Google Calendar
Connect Google Calendar to Spatiko for two-way sync — busy times block bookings, shoots appear on your calendar, and dragging an event reschedules the job.
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Connecting Google Calendar is the single most important scheduling step in Spatiko. It’s what lets your real life block bookings, puts every shoot on the calendar you already live in, and keeps the two in sync both ways. Connect it under Settings → Calendar.
What connecting does
Your busy times block bookings. Anything marked busy on the calendars you’ve chosen to check is automatically removed from the slots agents can pick. Your dentist appointment, your kid’s game, another job — if it’s on a calendar Spatiko checks, Spatiko won’t book over it. Without this connection, working hours are all Spatiko knows, and it will happily offer time you’ve already promised elsewhere.
Your shoots appear on your calendar. Every confirmed booking shows up as a detailed event: the property address as the location, the client’s name and contact, the services booked, access instructions, notes, property size, and a link straight back to the order. Everything you need for the shoot is on the calendar event — no digging. (The connection uses the same secure sign-in flow as Spatiko’s other integrations — see how connecting works.)
One calendar for shoots, many calendars for busy time
Spatiko uses your Google calendars two different ways, and you configure each separately:
- Calendar for shoot events — the one calendar Spatiko creates an event on for each booked shoot. Only this one calendar is written to. Spatiko suggests your primary calendar and only offers calendars you can write to — handy if you keep a separate work calendar.
- Calendars to check for conflicts — the set of calendars whose events make you unavailable, so clients can’t book over them.
The calendar your shoots are written to always counts as busy, whatever else you pick.
Which calendars block your bookings
Most photographers’ lives don’t fit on one calendar. There’s the work calendar, the personal one, maybe a shared family calendar, and the side gig where you second-shoot weddings. If Spatiko only watched a single calendar, a client could book you for a Saturday your wedding calendar says you’re across town — and you’d find out too late.
That’s why every calendar on your Google account can block booking time — including read-only shared and subscribed calendars you can’t write to. In the Google Calendar settings, the Calendars to check for conflicts list shows all of them with everything ticked by default; untick any calendar whose events shouldn’t block you (a holidays calendar you only follow for reference, say). Google limits a free/busy check to about 50 calendars per lookup, so if your account has more than that, you’ll be asked to pick the ones that matter.
Two-way rescheduling
Sync runs both directions. If you drag a shoot to a new time in Google Calendar, Spatiko notices within a few minutes and moves the booking to match — no need to open Spatiko to reschedule.
One guardrail on a team: moving a booking this way requires reschedule permission. If someone without that permission drags an event, Spatiko puts it back and tells them it was undone — so a shoot never quietly moves without the right sign-off. (For rescheduling inside Spatiko, with control over who gets notified, see managing shoots.)
Per photographer
Calendar connections are personal, not shared. Each photographer connects their own Google Calendar, and Spatiko writes each shoot to the calendar of whoever is assigned to it. There’s no single business calendar to maintain — everyone works from their own, and Spatiko keeps them all coordinated.
Disconnecting
Disconnecting only removes the link between Spatiko and Google — your Google Calendar and its events are left untouched. Your Spatiko shoots stay in Spatiko; they just stop syncing out until you reconnect.
If you skip it
Spatiko will warn you when you’ve set working hours but haven’t connected a calendar, because personal events can’t block bookings until you do. You can still take bookings — but you’re relying on your working hours alone to protect your time, which is why we nudge you to connect. It’s a two-minute setup that prevents the most common scheduling headache there is.
Go deeper
- Calendar & availability — how a synced calendar feeds the slots clients are offered.
- Setting your availability — the working hours your calendar’s busy time carves into.
- Managing shoots on your calendar — rescheduling inside Spatiko, with control over who gets notified.
- Connecting your tools — the other accounts Spatiko links to, and how connections are managed.
Frequently asked questions
Can I reschedule a shoot by dragging it in Google Calendar?
Yes. Drag the event to a new time and Spatiko notices within a few minutes and moves the booking to match, so you never have to open Spatiko to reschedule. On a team, the person dragging needs reschedule permission — without it Spatiko puts the event back and tells them it was undone.
Which of my Google calendars can block bookings?
Any calendar you tick under Calendars to check for conflicts — personal calendars, shared team calendars, even read-only ones you subscribe to. Every calendar on your account is selected by default, and the calendar Spatiko writes shoot events to always blocks time. Untick a calendar to stop it blocking.
Which of my calendars do shoots get written to?
Exactly one — the calendar you pick as your Calendar for shoot events. Spatiko only offers calendars you can write to and suggests your primary calendar by default, which helps if you keep a separate work calendar.
Does disconnecting delete my Google Calendar events?
No. Disconnecting only removes the link between Spatiko and Google — your Google Calendar and its events are left untouched, and your Spatiko shoots stay in Spatiko. They simply stop syncing out until you reconnect.