The calendar is the central hub for managing your day in Tacklit. This guide covers the key setup steps to get your calendar working smoothly, along with practical tips for daily use.

Before you can start booking appointments, a few things need to be configured.

Set up your working schedule. Your working schedule tells Tacklit when you are available for appointments. Go to your profile settings and define your available days and times. Without a working schedule, clients will not be able to book you online, and admin staff will see no availability when trying to create bookings. See the article on Setting up practitioner availability for a detailed walkthrough.

Configure appointment types. Appointment types define what services you offer and how long each session runs. These are set up by a Superuser at the account level and assigned to individual practitioners. Make sure the appointment types relevant to your practice are created and assigned. See the article on Setting up appointment types.

Connect your external calendar. Tacklit integrates with Microsoft 365, Outlook, Gmail, and Apple iCal. Connecting your external calendar ensures that personal commitments show as blocked time in Tacklit, and Tacklit appointments appear in your regular calendar. This prevents double-booking across systems.

Tacklit offers several calendar views to suit different workflows:

Day view. Shows a single day with all appointments in time-slot order. Best for practitioners managing their own schedule during the day.

Week view. Shows a full week at a glance. Useful for planning ahead and spotting gaps in your schedule.

Multi-column view. Displays multiple practitioners side by side for the same day. This is particularly valuable for practice managers and admin staff who need to coordinate bookings across the team. See the article on Multi Column Calendar View for more detail.

Check your day first thing. Open the day view each morning to see your full schedule, including any changes made overnight (e.g., client self-bookings or cancellations).

Use colour coding. Appointment types can have different colours, making it easy to distinguish between initial assessments, follow-ups, group sessions, and other service types at a glance.

Block out non-clinical time. Use the block time feature to protect time for admin work, supervision, lunch, or personal commitments. Blocked time prevents clients from booking into those slots. See the article on How do I block time out in my calendar.

Mark attendance as you go. After each session, mark the client as attended, DNA, or late cancellation. Doing this in real time keeps your records accurate and ensures invoicing and reporting reflect what actually happened.

Start case notes from the calendar. Clicking on a completed appointment gives you a direct link to create a case note for that session. This automatically links the note to the correct client, date, and appointment, saving you from navigating to the client profile separately.

If you need to change your availability for a specific date without altering your regular working schedule (for example, taking a day off or extending hours for a particular week), use a Schedule Override. This lets you make one-off changes that apply only to the selected date. See the article on Schedule Override for instructions.

When a client cancels or does not attend, always record the outcome on the appointment rather than deleting it. This maintains an accurate history of the client's engagement and feeds into reporting. For at-risk clients, a DNA should trigger a follow-up check, as missed sessions can be clinically significant. See the article on Booking cancellations for more on cancellation workflows.