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Help guides and articles for your catering business.

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Calendar & Google Calendar

View all your upcoming orders at a glance and sync them automatically to Google Calendar.

The Puree Calendar

The calendar gives you a visual overview of all your accepted and pending orders. It's accessible from the main navigation under Orders β†’ Calendar, and a compact version also appears on your dashboard showing the next three weeks of menu item volumes.

On desktop, the calendar displays as a traditional monthly grid with orders shown on their event dates. On mobile, it switches to an agenda-style list for easy scrolling. You can navigate between months and jump back to today at any time.

Click on any order in the calendar to go directly to that order's detail page.

Dashboard Calendar

The dashboard includes a compact calendar strip showing the next three weeks. Each day displays a bar representing the volume of menu items for that date, giving you a quick sense of how busy upcoming days are. Click on a day to see the orders for that date.

Unavailable Dates

Public holidays, your Christmas shutdown, a day you're already fully booked: mark them on the calendar and the rest of Puree knows about it. Hover any day and click the βœ• beside the date to close it. Closed days show shaded, with a label if you gave one. Click the βœ• again to reopen the day.

To close a run of days at once, open the calendar icon in the toolbar and use Block these dates. Give it a start date, an end date and an optional reason such as "Christmas shutdown". The same panel lists everything coming up, so you can remove a single day or lift a whole shutdown in one click.

Closed days are shared across your whole business, and each place that uses them decides whether to:

  • Online order forms β€” Customers can't pick a closed day, and an order can't be submitted for one. Switch it on per form on its Settings tab.
  • Enquiry forms β€” Date questions won't accept a closed day. Switch it on per form when you edit it.
  • Writing a quote yourself β€” You get a warning beside the date, but it never stops you saving. Someone has to be able to take the exception booking. Turn the warning off in the calendar's unavailable dates panel.
  • Logging an enquiry β€” Same warning on the event date, same rule: it never blocks you.
  • Google Calendar β€” Optionally push each closed day across as an all-day event, alongside the orders that already sync. Switch it off again and those events are removed for you.

Every one of these is a switch in the same panel, so you can see at a glance which forms are honouring your closures and which aren't.

Connecting to Google Calendar

Puree integrates directly with Google Calendar so your catering events appear alongside your personal and business calendars. Once connected, every accepted order is automatically synced as a Google Calendar event β€” no manual entry required.

To connect, navigate to Settings β†’ Integrations and click Connect with Google. You'll be taken through Google's authorisation flow to grant Puree access. Once connected, Puree creates a dedicated "Puree.app" calendar in your Google account.

What Gets Synced

Each synced order appears as a Google Calendar event containing:

  • Event title β€” Customer name, order reference, and status
  • Event time β€” Set to the earliest delivery time, event start time, or collection time depending on the order type
  • Location β€” The delivery or event address
  • Contact details β€” Name, email, and phone number of the contact
  • Full item list β€” Menu items grouped by menu header and delivery time, plus beverages, equipment, and miscellaneous items
  • Event format notes β€” Any event format commentary you've added to the order
  • Direct link β€” A link back to the order in Puree for quick access

Colour Coding

Orders are colour-coded in Google Calendar by order type so you can tell at a glance what kind of event each one is:

  • Delivery only β€” Blue
  • Staffed event β€” Red
  • Staffed event with deliveries β€” Orange
  • Customer to collect β€” Yellow

Automatic Sync

Once connected, the sync is fully automatic. When you create, update, or delete an order in Puree, the corresponding Google Calendar event is created, updated, or removed. There's nothing extra you need to do β€” your Google Calendar always reflects the current state of your orders.

When you first connect, all your existing orders are synced to Google Calendar so you're immediately up to date.

Venue Calendars

If you manage venues, you can also create separate Google Calendars for each venue. Venue reservations are synced to their own calendar, keeping venue bookings separate from your main order calendar. Set this up from the venue settings page.

Benefits of Google Calendar Integration

  • See everything in one place β€” Your catering events sit alongside your personal calendar, meetings, and other commitments
  • Share with your team β€” Share the Puree calendar with staff so everyone can see upcoming events without needing a Puree login
  • Mobile access β€” View your catering schedule from the Google Calendar app on your phone
  • Notifications β€” Set up Google Calendar reminders so you never miss an event
  • Full event details β€” Every item, contact detail, and delivery time is right there in the calendar event β€” handy when you're on the go
  • No double entry β€” Orders sync automatically so you never need to manually add events to your calendar

Troubleshooting

If the connection breaks (for example, if you revoke access from your Google account), Puree will notify your account admins. Simply reconnect from Settings β†’ Integrations to restore the sync.

You can disconnect from Google Calendar at any time from the integrations page. Existing events in Google Calendar will remain, but no new events will be synced.