Import Your Calendar Updated March 23, 2021 15:29

Overview

The calendar import is a tool that can be used if you already have an existing calendar (such as a Google, Microsoft, or Apple calendar) to move the events into Jobber as jobs. This calendar import walks you through bringing your external calendars into Jobber without having to navigate between different programs or tabs.

The calendar import is different that a calendar sync as it's a tool used to bring your job history from an existing calendar into Jobber. Syncing your calendar is a means to bring your Jobber calendar to another calendar app where it updates on an ongoing basis. Click here to learn more about calendar syncing. 

Note: We recommend that you add your clients first before importing your calendar. Clients can be added manually, by importing a spreadsheet, or by syncing with QuickBooks Online.

Import my calendar

To start the import process, navigate to one of the calendar views from the side navigation. There will be a section towards the top of the page highlighting the calendar import, click Import my Calendar. 

You will be asked which calendar account you would like to connect to. In this article, we're going to show connecting to a Google calendar, however most online calendars can be imported.

Note: If you don't use Google, iCloud, or Outlook; your calendar of choice very likely has a CalDAV export option.

If you are importing an iCloud Calendar, you may be prompted to enter an app specific password. 

You will be asked to give Jobber access to your calendar account to view the calendars and the events on them, click Allow. 

If you have multiple calendars in your other calendar program, you can pick and choose from the calendar menu which ones you would like to see by checking the box for those calendars. The events from those calendars will appear on a calendar preview in Jobber as placeholders. 

These events aren't imported yet, this screen previews your schedule from the other program so that you can pick which items you'd like to import.

Map the events to jobs

From the calendar preview in Jobber click the event you would like to import.

For example, let's click this event with a client named Terry Patcharski and walk through importing it.

You will be taken to the job creation screen where you can assign a client and make any changes.  The information brought over from over from your other calendar includes:

• Title and description:
  • The name of the event from your external calendar becomes the job title in Jobber.
  • The description of the event becomes the job instructions. 

• Schedule:
  • The date, duration, and start and end time are brought over from your external calendar.
  • If the event repeats it is imported as a recurring job in Jobber.
  • If the external event does not have an end date, it will be imported with a one year duration.

• Team: 
  • If one of the attendees of the event from your external calendar matches the email address that one of your team members uses for Jobber, they will be automatically assigned to this job. 
  • If there is an attendee who is not one of your team members in Jobber, their email address will appear as an option as someone who can be invited to your team. 

There are some fields that do not come over from your existing calendar, so you will need to make some decisions about how to fill these fields out in Jobber:

• Client name: a client will need to be assigned to this job.
• Invoicing details: If nothing is added here, Jobber will use our invoicing defaults (for one-off jobs the default is invoicing once the job is completed. For recurring jobs the default is to invoice per visit, monthly on the last day of the month).
• Line items: by default the job won't have any line items, so line items with quantities and costs will need to be added. 
• Notes & attachments: If the event from your external calendar has an attachment such as an image in Google drive, the attachment's URL gets added to the instructions field on the job.

When you're done hit Save Job. You will be taken back to the calendar preview where you can select another placeholder event to import. Any jobs that have already been imported will be removed from the calendar.

Note: If you click a job and navigate away without saving it, the placeholder event will be removed. In this case, you can still create the job manually. 

Continue import

If you need to leave the import process, or you decide to import your calendar in phases you can come back to the calendar import for 30 days to continue your process.

A Continue Import button will appear above each of the calendar views, where clicking it will take you back to the Calendar Import screen displaying the placeholder events from your external calendar. 

If you dismiss the Continue Import prompt from the x in the top right corner, you can come back to it from within the 30 day window by navigating to Jobs from the side navigation. On the Jobs page, click More Actions > Import Calendar to re-enter the calendar import process.