Important: By enabling syncing between your SimplePractice calendar and an external calendar, you acknowledge and agree to follow HIPAA compliance requirements and protect the calendar information, including the secure Telehealth video link.

SimplePractice offers basic and advanced calendar sync for Google Calendar. With basic calendar sync, you can view your SimplePractice appointments and events in Google Calendar. With advanced calendar sync, you can also connect multiple calendars associated with your Google Account to SimplePractice, allowing you to view personal events and client appointments all in one place.

In this guide, we’ll cover:

• Syncing your SimplePractice calendar with Google Calendar
• Managing your Google Calendar visibility
• Scheduling clients using Google Calendar
• Modifying appointments and events
• Removing your Google Calendar sync 
• Troubleshooting Google Calendar sync

Note: At this time, calendar sync is only available on the Plus plan. To learn more about calendar sync for Apple Calendar or Microsoft 365, see Getting started with calendar sync.

Syncing your SimplePractice calendar with Google Calendar

To connect SimplePractice with Google Calendar:

• Navigate to Settings > Scheduling and inquiries > Calendar
• Click Connect next to Google Calendar

• You’ll be prompted to sign in with Google to grant simplepractice.com access
  • If you’re already signed into Google, you can select the account you want to sync calendars with or Use another account

• • • If you’re not signed into Google, you can enter your email and password before continuing

• Click Allow to let SimplePractice access your Google Calendar

Important: This step is required to complete the connection. You can remove this access at any time by disconnecting your calendars. To learn more, see Removing your Google Calendar sync.

• For advanced calendar sync, you can check the box next to each Google Calendar you want to sync to SimplePractice
  • All events, out of office, and focus time from synced calendars will be viewable on your SimplePractice calendar

• Click Save

If you don’t want to sync your personal Google Calendars to SimplePractice, you can click the X in the top right corner. Even if no calendars are selected, your SimplePractice appointments and events will still sync to Google Calendar via basic calendar sync.

After your calendars are connected, a new SimplePractice calendar will appear under My calendars in Google Calendar.

All SimplePractice appointments and events from 30 days before the sync date and onward will be published to this SimplePractice calendar in Google Calendar.

If you have advanced calendar sync enabled, all events, out of office, and focus time from your synced calendars will also appear in SimplePractice. These external events are light blue, to differentiate them from appointments and events created in SimplePractice. External event details are only visible to the calendar owner. If you're in a group practice, it will appear to team members as Busy.

Note: Out of office blocks added in SimplePractice won’t appear in your Google Calendar. However, out of office events in Google Calendar will sync to SimplePractice through advanced calendar sync.

With advanced calendar sync, event visibility in Google Calendar will affect your scheduling availability. If an external event is marked as Busy in Google Calendar, it'll block off your availability for online appointment requests in SimplePractice.

Events with a Free status in Google Calendar won’t block off your SimplePractice availability.

Managing your Google Calendar visibility

In Google Calendar, you have the option to make any of your calendars available to the public. Make sure to deselect this option to prevent your SimplePractice calendar from being visible to others. To do this:

• Open Google Calendar
• Select the gear icon > Settings

• In the left navigation menu, choose SimplePractice under Settings for my calendars
• Scroll down to Access permissions for events
• Uncheck the box for Make available to public

Note: These calendar settings will save automatically.

Scheduling clients using Google Calendar

Any event you create on the SimplePractice calendar in Google Calendar will appear in your SimplePractice account as a non-client event. You can use this event as a placeholder for the appointment, then recreate it in SimplePractice. To do this:

• Open Google Calendar
• Create an event during the time slot you’d like to reserve for your client
• Add a title, and any event details
  
  • The title can include the purpose of the appointment and client name (ex: "Schedule Jamie Appleseed for therapy")
• From the calendar name dropdown menu, select SimplePractice as the calendar you're creating an event for

• Click Save
• Return to your SimplePractice account, where the event you created will be shown as dark gray

• Delete the placeholder event and schedule a new client appointment in its place
  
  • Once the appointment is recreated, it’ll sync to your Google Calendar

Note: Events created in Google Calendar must be between 5-999 minutes in duration to sync to SimplePractice.

Modifying appointments and events

As long as a SimplePractice appointment isn’t locked, you can update the date, start/end time, or duration in Google Calendar.

Locked appointments will have a lock icon in the title when viewed in Google Calendar.

The lock icon is present when an appointment has an invoice, superbill, or progress note attached to it in SimplePractice.

Note: An appointment may appear as locked in an external calendar, but not within SimplePractice. To learn more about locked appointments in SimplePractice, see Editing an appointment.

Recurring appointment series

Appointments that are part of a recurring series created in SimplePractice will appear as individual appointments on Google Calendar. While individual appointments in the series can be updated in both SimplePractice and Google Calendar, updates to the entire recurring series can only be made in SimplePractice.

Note: If you create a recurring appointment series on the SimplePractice calendar within Google Calendar, it’ll automatically be deleted and won’t appear in SimplePractice.

Telehealth appointments

Telehealth appointments that you schedule in SimplePractice will sync to Google Calendar, along with the corresponding secure Telehealth video links. You can use these links to join your Telehealth appointments directly from Google Calendar.

Note: For more information, see Getting started with Telehealth.

External events

With advanced calendar sync, you can view external events from your synced Google Calendars in SimplePractice. To make changes to an external event, select View in Google Calendar from the event flyout.

This will take you to Google Calendar, where you can edit or delete the event.

Removing your Google Calendar sync

You can either remove individual Google Calendars from your advanced calendar sync or disconnect Google Calendar entirely at any time.

Removing individual Google Calendars

If you have advanced calendar sync enabled, you can remove your synced Google Calendars, so that the external events no longer appear in SimplePractice. To do this:

• Navigate to Settings > Scheduling and inquiries > Calendar
• Next to Google Calendar, select Edit calendars

• Uncheck the box next to each Google Calendar you want to remove from SimplePractice
• Click Save

Disconnecting Google Calendar

To disconnect your Google Calendar sync:

• Navigate to Settings > Scheduling and inquiries > Calendar
• Next to Google Calendar, click Disconnect

• Open Google Calendar
• From the left navigation menu, hover over SimplePractice under My calendars
• Click the X icon next to SimplePractice

• Click Remove calendar

If you don’t remove the SimplePractice calendar within Google Calendar, an additional SimplePractice calendar will be created each time you resync your calendars.

After your calendar sync is disconnected, your connection will immediately end, and any previously synced appointments and events will be removed from your calendars.

Tip: If your sync is disconnected but SimplePractice appointments are still appearing on your Google Calendar, you'll need to manually delete these appointments in Google Calendar.

Troubleshooting Google Calendar sync

External calendars may occasionally experience delays in recognizing updates made in SimplePractice.

If these updates don’t appear after a few minutes, we recommend refreshing the page or Google Calendar app. If you’ve noticed that your calendars haven’t updated in over a day, you can try disconnecting your Google Calendar sync, then reconnecting it.

Important: Our Customer Success Team can’t help with troubleshooting issues related to third party calendars. If you’re experiencing difficulties with syncing your third party calendar to Google or to SimplePractice, please reach out to their support team directly.