Do not list the days you are free. Cross out the days you are gone.
The Availability tab is a month you click. Every date starts open, the ones you cross stay crossed, and whoever on your team answers the booking emails sees them on the shared calendar before they say yes to a Friday you are already 400 miles from.
Availability
September
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 Out | 15 Out | 16 Out | 17 Out | 18 Out | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 Out |
| 27 Out | 28 | 29 | 30 |
Hatched cells are the dates you marked. Everything else is simply available, because that is what an untouched date means.
7 dates crossed this month, stored against your name on this schedule. Nobody outside the schedule can see this card.
The direction
An hours board is the wrong way round for a performer.
A shop posts the hours it is open because the rest of the week it is shut. A working performer is the other way round: most dates are possible, and the short list is the one nobody can guess.
The default
Available
Nothing has to be entered for a date to be open. There is no weekly pattern to fill in first and no hours to publish, so an empty calendar already says the true thing.
The exception
One click
A date you cannot work takes one click, and a second click takes the mark back off. The work is proportional to how much of your year is actually spoken for.
The upkeep
Nothing to renew
Because marks are individual dates rather than a repeating rule, none of it silently keeps applying next year. A month you never touch stays completely open.
It also means there is nothing to switch off when a plan changes. Take the mark away and the date is open again.
The record
A crossed day carries a date. That is all.
Under the calendar, your availability is a plain list of dates kept against your membership of the schedule. Knowing that is worth more than a longer feature list, because it tells you exactly what the tab can and cannot answer.
- No times. A date is out or it is not, so there is no morning-only and no after-six.
- No reason. Nobody has to be told whether it is a tour, a wedding or a Tuesday you need back.
- No repeating rule. Every Sunday of a long season is a click each, which is the honest cost of the simplicity.
What Save writes
EnterpriseSave also remembers which month you were working in and puts you back there, so marking a long stretch is a few short passes rather than one enormous form.
Two faces of one door
The card hangs on the inside.
This is the part first-time users get wrong, so it is worth drawing. The same week, seen from both sides.
Inside: your Schedule tab
Members onlySame week, same two gigs, one extra thing: a date somebody has marked is tinted, and the icon on it names who is out. That tint is the product's own colour for the state, and it is the whole reason the marks exist. The person holding the diary can see the day before they answer the email.
Outside: your public page
EveryoneThe same two gigs, and nothing else. No tint, no gap explained, no hint that a mark exists. The public page, the embedded calendar and the feeds all behave this way, because availability is never published. And it is worth knowing exactly who is out here: guests, yes, but also the venue about to pitch you that Wednesday. Nothing on their side of the door shows your marks.
So the honest summary is: this is an internal diary, not a shop window. What else stays private
One card each
Your dates are yours. The month is everyone's.
A duo, a band with a sound engineer, a performer plus the person who answers the enquiries: each of them keeps their own card, and the shared month adds them up.
You edit yours
EnterpriseThe Availability tab always shows the dates of whoever is signed in, and Save only ever writes that person's dates. Nobody can cross a day out on your behalf, and you cannot clear theirs.
The month adds up
EnterpriseOn the Schedule tab, every member's marks land on the same calendar and each affected date names the people who are out, so two absences on one Friday read as two names rather than one vague warning.
Up to five names
EnterpriseOn the Enterprise plan a schedule on eventschedule.com holds up to five team members, and each one is either an admin who edits the calendar or a viewer who only reads it. Viewers see the marks without being able to change anything. A free or Pro schedule has exactly one member, which is you.
Multiple team members are an Enterprise feature too, which is the real reason this tab sits where it does: a card nobody else can read is not worth much. How team members work
Two locks
Both have to turn.
Most feature pages bury the conditions in a footnote. These two decide whether the tab exists for you at all, so they get a section of their own.
Lock one
RequiredA talent schedule
The Availability tab is offered on talent schedules only. Curator schedules are sent back to the Schedule tab if they try the address, and a venue schedule is never given the tab in its navigation: a venue's opening pattern is a different problem, and the product does not pretend this tab solves it.
Lock two
RequiredThe Enterprise plan
Availability management is an Enterprise feature on eventschedule.com, and every feature is included on a selfhosted deployment. On the free and Pro plans the tab prompts an upgrade rather than saving, so nothing is half enabled.
And one practical thing
The calendar becomes clickable once the schedule's email address is verified, and the Save button only appears then too. If the dates are not responding to a click, that is almost always the reason. The verification email goes out when the schedule is created, and a banner at the top of the schedule will send it again.
What it will not do
A note to your team, not a lock on the date.
A crossed date changes what the shared calendar looks like. It does not change what the software allows. Nothing is validated against your marks, so no event is refused, moved or flagged because of them.
- A venue or a curator can still add you to an event on a date you crossed. They never saw the mark, so the request turns up on your Requests tab like any other, to accept or decline.
- Nobody is emailed when you mark a date. The marks are read on screen, by the people already looking at the shared month.
- Your own events are unaffected. Marking a date does not hide, move or cancel anything already on the calendar for that day.
If what you actually want is for a date to be genuinely untakeable, the thing that does that is appointment booking, where open times are the only times a guest can pick. Section 09 puts the two side by side.
Around the card
What the same calendar is already doing.
The month everyone shares
EnterpriseThe Schedule tab is where the marks are actually useful. Your accepted events and every member's crossed dates sit on the same month, so the answer to "can we do the 14th" is on screen instead of somewhere in a group chat.
The calendar starts the week on whichever day your schedule is set to start it, so the grid matches the way your part of the world reads a month.
Your own calendar
FreeEach member can sync the schedule into the calendar they personally live in, so the gigs sit next to the day job that made you cross a date out in the first place.
Months ahead
EnterpriseMove with the calendar arrows and mark next spring today. Save brings you back to the month you were in, ready for the next handful of dates.
Requests keep arriving
FreeA curator or a venue putting you on their bill shows up as a request you accept or decline, whatever your card says about that date. The mark is context for your decision, not a filter on your inbox.
Accepting puts the event on your public schedule. Declining leaves it off, and neither answer touches your availability dates.
Bookable time instead
ProWant a guest to take a slot rather than read a diary? Appointment types publish open times on a booking page and take the booking there.
The part guests do see
FreeWhile the card stays inside, your dates that are public work hard: a schedule page of your own, an embeddable calendar for the site you already have, and a follow button that lets you email the people who pressed it.
Newsletters are free at 10 emails a month, counted per recipient, and rise to 100 on Pro and 1,000 on Enterprise. What following does
Two tabs, similar names
Availability, or appointments?
They sound alike and they solve opposite halves of the problem. One is a diary your team reads. The other is a door guests can walk through.
| What is being compared | Availability | Appointments |
|---|---|---|
| What it records | Whole dates you cannot work | Bookable time slots guests can take |
| Who marks it | Each member, for themselves | You, once, as an appointment type |
| Who can read it | Signed-in members of the schedule | Anyone with your booking page |
| What a guest can do with it | Nothing. It is never published | Pick an open time and book it |
| Where it lives | The Availability tab | The Appointments tab, plus a public booking page |
| Plan and schedule type | Enterprise, talent schedules | Pro, any schedule type |
Plenty of performers end up running both: the diary for the dates the band is away, the booking page for the lessons and the studio hours. Read about appointments
Three steps
From nothing marked to a month your team can read.
Open the tab
On a talent schedule with the Enterprise plan, the Availability tab sits beside Schedule. It opens on the current month with nothing marked.
Click the days you are gone
One click marks a date, a second click clears it. Use the arrows to reach the months you already know about.
Save
Your dates are stored against your name and appear on the shared Schedule tab. Save puts you back on the month you were working in.
Free forever. Upgrade when you're ready.
Zero platform fees on ticket sales. You only pay Stripe's processing fee.
See all plansFrequently asked questions
What performers ask before they start crossing dates out.
How does availability management work?
The Availability tab on a talent schedule is a month calendar. Every date on it starts available. Click a date to mark it unavailable, click it again to clear it, then press Save. Your dates are stored against your own membership of that schedule, and they appear for the rest of your team on the Schedule tab.
Who can set availability?
Every member of the schedule sets their own dates, and a member can only edit their own. Viewers can read the calendar without changing it. Availability management is an Enterprise plan feature on eventschedule.com and is included on selfhosted deployments.
Can I set different availability for different days?
You can mark any date you like, in any month, but a mark is a whole date rather than a set of hours. There are no half days, no time ranges and no reason field: a crossed day stores the date and nothing else. If you want guests to pick a time inside a day, that is appointment booking rather than availability.
Can guests see the dates I have crossed out?
No. Availability is not published anywhere. Your public schedule page, the embedded calendar and the feeds show your events and say nothing about which dates you marked. Only members of the schedule who are signed in can see the marks.
Does marking a date stop somebody booking me on it?
No, and this is worth being straight about: a crossed date is a note to your team, not a lock. Nothing is blocked and nothing is checked against it, so a venue or a curator can still add you to an event on a day you marked. They never saw the mark either: the marks are only visible to signed-in members of your own schedule, so the tab is there for the person on your side who answers the email, not for the person sending it.
Why are the dates on my calendar not clickable?
The Availability calendar becomes clickable once the schedule email address has been verified, and the Save button appears at the same time. The tab itself is only offered on talent schedules: curator schedules are sent back to the Schedule tab, and a venue schedule is never given the tab in its navigation.
How far ahead can I mark dates?
As far as you like. Move between months with the calendar arrows and mark dates in each one. Save returns you to the month you were working in, so a run of months takes a few passes rather than one long form.
Free to start
Put your dates somewhere your team can read them.
A schedule, a public page and a calendar are free forever. Availability marking arrives with the Enterprise plan, alongside the extra team members who make it worth keeping.
No credit card required