Scheduling in HoneyBook helps you get time back by eliminating all of the back-and-forth when it comes to meetings or other scheduling needs.

There may be a few reasons why your Scheduler tool isn't functioning as expected. Here are five common issues you can troubleshoot on your own:

The time zone in your Scheduler tool and the time zone in your company settings need to match. If they are mismatched, your session times will present as a few hours off.

Learn more about setting the correct time zone here!

Availability is another way of defining your business hours—essentially, just the windows of time on any given day when you would like a client to be able to book a session with you. For example, you might like to take sessions from 8:00am-12:00pm and then again from 1:00pm-4:00pm Monday through Friday. This is your availability.

Duration is the window of time that you'd like to actively be in a session for. For example, if your standard consultation call runs 30 minutes, you'd want to set your Consultation Call Session duration to 30 minutes.

Your availability must be a broader window of time than the session's duration. If your availability is a smaller window than your session duration window, you will see no available sessions.

Buffers prevent back to back meetings so your clients won't see availability immediately following a booked session time when buffers are turned on.

For example, if you have 30 minute sessions available all day long with 10 minute buffers turned on and a client books an 8:00am session with you, your 8:30am session will no longer be available. Your 8:00am, 30 minute session will run right up until 8:30am, but when a 10 minute buffer is added, you've required HoneyBook to mark you as unavailable from 8:00am to 8:40am, therefore removing the 8:30am session time as available.

PLEASE NOTE: Before any sessions are booked, all sessions will show as available, even with buffers on! Once one session is booked, the buffers apply so the next client booking only sees your available sessions with all buffers and booked sessions accounted for.

If a time appears blocked that you want to be available for, or, conversely, a client was able to book over a legitimately blocked time with you, your first stop should be your HoneyBook Calendar to double check the following:

Check the settings of your Google Calendar events

In order to block time from being available, you'll need to set Google Calendar events to "Busy" instead of "Free."

Check for booked projects

Booked projects (in which the client has signed the contract or made a payment) in HoneyBook will, by default, mark you as busy/unavailable. To make sure you're marked as available at the correct times, try adding start and end times to your Project's Details section. Adding a start and end time will mark you as unavailable only during that window rather than the entire day.

Check for non-booked projects

Non-booked projects in HoneyBook (aka tentative projects, in which a client has not yet signed a contract or made a payment) will, contrastingly, list you as available until the projects are booked.

Some members prefer to only show availability for a single date or set date range, versus, for example, every Monday for the next year.

To set this up, make sure to:

For example, in the images above, you'll see that the session is a 15-minute video call, which can be booked any time between 9:00am-5:00pm, and only on January 7th (since no availability is listed for any other dates).

PLEASE NOTE: Since the fixed date range in this example is January 7 - January 8, all other days are greyed out, so an availability block cannot be added. The dates included in the fixed date range are the only days for which you'll be able to set availability.

Still have questions? Feel free to send us a message by clicking the Question Mark icon on any HoneyBook page. Our team is always happy to help!