Learn how to use the brand new Google calendar integration to make your life way easier… and ResponsiBid even more powerful!

Go to settings > Administrator

Setup your time settings first:

1. Make sure you set your company time zone correctly. If you don’t it will mess up virtually everything in your account that deals with time. Especially scheduling.
2. Set your default job arrival window. This is the amount of time ResponsiBid will assume by default when scheduling a job. EXAMPLE: We will arrive between 8:00am and 9:00am – This is a one hour arrival window. You will have the ability to change this on a per customer basis, but it will just allow the system to start with the amount of time you are used to.
3. Set your default job start time. If you set this to 8am, ResponsiBid will take away the option to choose from any time earlier than that. So make sure you don’t pick something too late in the day or else you will be trying to schedule with a customer and wonder why you can’t book anything earlier than this time.
4. Set your increment step size. This is going to clean out the available times in the dropdown only show the increments you want. If you schedule jobs at 5 min intervals (EXAMPLE: 8:05am) then you’ll want to leave it there. If you only schedule jobs on the half hours or hours (EXAMPLE: 8:30am or on the hour) then you can choose the 30 min option.

Next, you’ll need to authorize Google Calendar:

1. Click the blue button to be taken to Google to authorize your account.
2. Once you click, you will be taken to a page to select the account you want to connect
3. Once you have selected the account you will have to grant ResponsiBid permission to Google by clicking the “allow” button. Remember that you will be granting permission for ResponsiBid to have control over only the calendars associated with a single Google account. If you need other calendars, you will have to share with edit privileges to the account that you authorize here. Once you give this permission, ResponsiBid and Google Calendar can talk back and forth.
4. After granting permission to have the 2-way connection, you will need to setup the rest of the account as follows:
5. You will need to turn visibility on for all the calendars that you want to have available when scheduling in ResponsiBid. Anything you don’t want, you can simply toggle it to “hidden”.
6. Setup your default hourly rate so ResponsiBid can take a guess at how long each job will take based on the total dollars scheduled. Don’t worry, once ResponsiBid has guessed, you will still be able to change the amount of time if you want.
7. When ResponsiBid creates a calendar event or updates it in Google Calendar, you can control 3 fields: The title, the event location, and the description area. We preload that with merge fields that most people would find suitable and useful. Feel free to delete any merge fields that you want, or add merge fields if you wish with the dropdown menu above the title, location, and description. Simply put your cursor where you’d like the merge field to appear, and then select your merge field that you desire from the dropdown. Once you do this, ResponsiBid will place the merge field where your cursor is placed.
8. The 4 bottom dropdowns allow you to tell ResponsiBid what you’d like to happen if an event changes or is deleted on either ResponsiBid or in Google calendar so that you are always on the same page.

Once you have done all of this, your connection to Google calendar is complete. Now when you schedule an appointment in ResponsiBid you will be able to control the calendar that it goes on as well as the length of time.

If you choose to create a new event in Google calendar as pictured above, you will notice that if that event is moved or changed in Google calendar, your ResponsiBid dates will also change and update all of your follow-up accordingly. For other ninja tricks, check out the video for this article about special considerations for the notes field, what happens if you copy and paste events in Google Calendar multiple times, and some troubleshooting tips if needed.