Sometimes you need to make yourself unbookable, whether that's for a lunch break, a vacation, or an internal team meeting. Practice Better gives you four ways to do this, and choosing the right one depends on what you're blocking and for how long.
In this article:
- Choosing the Right Method
- Setting an Out-of-Office Notification
- Adding a Personal Event to Your Calendar
- Adjusting Your Availability for a Specific Day
- Linking an External Calendar
Choosing the Right Method
| Method | Best for | What it does |
| Out-of-Office Notification | Vacations, extended time away | Displays a banner in the Client Portal and disables Bookings Page dates for the period. |
| Personal Event | One-off blocks, recurring commitments, team meetings | Blocks the time on your calendar; clients can't book over it. |
| Adjusting Availability for a Day | A single exception to your recurring schedule | Removes or modifies your bookable slots for one specific day. |
| Linked External Calendar | Time already blocked in Google Calendar | Syncs "Busy" events from Google Calendar to block matching time in Practice Better. |
Setting an Out-of-Office Notification
If you're planning a trip or will be away for an extended period, an Out-of-Office notification does more than block your calendar: it displays a banner at the top of your clients' Client Portal for the duration, and disables those dates on your Bookings Page entirely. You can set up to 5 out-of-office periods at once, each with an optional note for clients.
For the full setup steps, see Setting an Out-of-Office Notification →
📍 How this differs from a personal event: A personal event blocks time on your calendar without saying why. An Out-of-Office notification is visible to clients directly, and is built for longer stretches away rather than a single blocked hour.
Adding a Personal Event to Your Calendar
Blocking off a single event, like a lunch break, an internal meeting, or a one-time commitment, is often the fastest way to make a stretch of time unbookable. Practice Better's own description of this feature says it plainly: adding a personal event blocks off time in your calendar.
- Go to My Schedule > My Calendar.
- Click the Fast Action Button in the bottom-right corner and select Add an Event.
- Enter the event details:
- Event name: Short descriptive title.
- Color: Choose a colour to identify this event on your calendar.
- Team members: (Plus and Team plans only). Include team members to add this event to their Practice Better calendar(s).
- Zoom meeting: (Requires the Zoom integration). With this checked, automatically create a Zoom meeting when the event is saved.
- Time zone: Optionally update the time zone for this event.
- Date and time: Set the date and time for this event.
- Recurrence options: Optionally, select when and how often this event will recur.
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Notes: Enter a note about this meeting (ie. add a link to an agenda doc).
- Click Save to add the event to your calendar.
This works whether the event is one-off or recurring.
Sharing an Event with Your Team
By default, a personal event is only visible to you. If you'd like teammates to see it on their calendars too, share it in the event's settings, this is what makes it a "team event." Sharing an event this way is also how you can meet virtually with team members using Practice Better's Zoom integration.
Learn more about Creating Zoom Meetings for Personal or Team Events →
Editing or Deleting a Personal Event
To edit or delete a personal event, click the time block on your calendar, then Edit in the preview pop-up.
If the event is recurring, you'll be asked whether your change applies to This instance only or the Entire series.
📍 If you'd rather keep the event's details private from teammates while still blocking your time, use the Hide personal event details when team members view my calendar setting instead of relying on the event type alone. See Managing Your Calendar Options and Filtering Events in Practice Better →
Adjusting Your Availability for a Specific Day
If you have recurring availability set up and just need an exception for one day, you can adjust that single instance without touching your overall schedule.
Delete a Single Instance of an Availability Slot
- Go to the day on your availability calendar and select the slot. A pop-up will open, allowing you to edit the availability slot.
- Click the Delete button at the bottom-left corner of the pop-up.
- Select This instance only from the options provided.
If you're still available for part of that day, create one or more non-recurring availability slots by clicking or clicking-and-dragging your cursor over a time range. Leave the This time slot recurs checkbox unchecked in the Edit Availability pop-up.
📍 Only using one-off availability slots already? This method is for adjusting a recurring schedule. If you don't have recurring availability set up, you don't need to do anything extra to block a day: without an availability slot on the calendar, clients simply can't book that day at all. For the full steps on creating availability from scratch, see Managing Your Availability →
Linking an External Calendar
If you keep your schedule in Google Calendar, syncing it to Practice Better blocks matching time automatically, so you don't have to duplicate the same block in two places.
Events marked Busy in Google Calendar block your Practice Better availability. Events marked Free don't.
For the full integration setup, see Setting Up Your Google Calendar Integration →
📍 All-day events like birthdays and holidays can unexpectedly block a whole day if your calendar doesn't let you mark them "Free." To ignore all-day events when determining your availability, enable Exclude external calendar all-day events in My Schedule > Booking & Cancellation Settings, under Availability Options.
For more granular control over your booking page settings, see Managing Your Booking & Cancellation Settings →
Want to double-check whether an external event is actually blocking you? See Testing and Troubleshooting Your Availability → for how to confirm what's affecting a specific time slot.