If you've just created your Coachful workspace and you're trying to figure out why clients can't book sessions with you yet, the answer is almost always the same: your availability hasn't been configured. Setting up your coach availability is one of the first things you should do before sharing your booking link, publishing a program, or running your first intake call.
This guide walks you through every step — from choosing your working hours to syncing your calendar — so you can start accepting bookings with confidence.
TL;DR
- Go to Settings → Availability in your Coachful dashboard to set your weekly schedule.
- Connect Google Calendar or Outlook to prevent double-bookings.
- Set your session buffer time, booking notice, and advance limit so clients can only book when it genuinely works for you.
- Once saved, your availability powers all session types: 1:1 sessions, intake calls, and group calls.
Why availability setup matters before anything else
Coachful's scheduling system is built so that clients can book directly into your calendar without any back-and-forth. That's powerful — but only if your available windows are accurate. If you skip this step and share your booking page anyway, clients will either see no available slots (and quietly leave) or, if your calendar isn't synced, book over time you've already committed elsewhere.
Getting your availability right from day one also sets a professional tone. Coaches who present a clean, consistent booking experience convert more discovery calls into paying clients. It signals that you run a tight operation — because with the right setup, you do.
Step 1: Open your availability settings
- Sign in at app.coachful.co/sign-in.
- In the left sidebar, click Settings.
- Select the Availability tab. You'll see a weekly schedule grid with days of the week and toggles for each day.
This is your default availability — the baseline that applies to every session type unless you override it at the individual offer level. Think of it as your standard working week.
Step 2: Set your working days and hours
Toggle on each day you're available to take sessions. For each active day, set a start time and end time. A typical coaching setup might look like Monday through Thursday, 9 AM to 5 PM — but you know your schedule best.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Be conservative at first. It's easier to open up more slots later than to cancel on a client because you over-committed. Start with your non-negotiable available windows.
- Block your admin time. If you need Tuesday mornings to prep client notes or do your own professional development, don't mark those as available.
- Time zone is set at the account level. Double-check that your profile time zone matches your actual location — clients in other time zones will see slots converted automatically.
Step 3: Configure your booking rules
Raw working hours aren't enough. Coachful lets you fine-tune three critical booking rules that protect your schedule and your sanity:
Buffer time
Buffer time adds a gap before or after each session so you have time to write notes, decompress, or prepare for the next client. A 15-minute buffer after each 60-minute session is a popular choice — it keeps your day from becoming an unbroken chain of calls. Set this under Buffer between sessions in the availability panel.
Minimum booking notice
This is how far in advance a client must book before a session starts. Setting this to 24 hours means no one can drop a session on your calendar at 10 PM for an 8 AM call the next morning. Most coaches find 24–48 hours to be the sweet spot — enough lead time to prepare, but not so far out that spontaneous clients are blocked.
Maximum advance booking
This controls how far into the future clients can schedule. If you set this to 60 days, a client visiting your booking page in January can't book a session in June. This is especially useful if your program structure changes quarterly or if you want to keep your pipeline predictable.
Pro tip: If you're launching a new cohort program on Coachful, set your maximum advance booking to align with your program start date. That way, intake calls cluster around the right window and you're not fielding calls weeks before you're ready to enroll anyone.
Step 4: Sync your external calendar
Calendar sync is arguably the most important part of availability setup. Without it, Coachful has no visibility into your existing commitments — dentist appointments, personal calls, other work meetings — and double-bookings become inevitable.
Coachful supports two-way calendar sync with:
- Google Calendar
- Microsoft Outlook / Office 365
To connect:
- In Settings → Availability, scroll to the Calendar Sync section.
- Click Connect Google Calendar (or Outlook).
- Authorize the connection in the popup. Coachful will read your existing events as busy blocks and write new bookings to your calendar automatically.
- Choose which calendar to write new Coachful sessions to — most coaches pick their primary calendar.
Once synced, any event on your external calendar will mark that slot as unavailable on your Coachful booking page in real time. No manual blocking needed.
For full details on how calendar sync works, see Google's own documentation on sharing and syncing Google Calendar.
Step 5: Set up session types (1:1, intake, group)
Availability is the foundation, but your clients actually book specific session types. Coachful supports three:
1:1 sessions
Standard one-on-one coaching calls. You define the duration (30, 45, 60, 90 minutes), the meeting format (Coachful video, phone, or in-person), and whether they're bookable by all clients or only those enrolled in a specific program.
Intake calls
Intake calls are short discovery sessions — typically 20–30 minutes — used to qualify potential clients before they purchase. They're often attached to a lead-magnet page or your coaching website on Coachful. Set a separate duration and booking notice for intake calls since the dynamic is different from a paid session.
Group calls
Group calls are tied to a program or squad. They have a fixed date and time rather than pulling from your rolling availability. Once you schedule a group call, enrolled clients get a notification and can add it to their own calendars.
Already on Coachful and not sure where to go next? Coachful's all-in-one platform lets you manage availability, run programs, and get paid — all from one dashboard. Start your free trial if you haven't already.
Step 6: Preview your booking page
Before you share anything with clients, preview how your booking page actually looks. In your dashboard, click Bookings → Session Types, then click the share icon on any session type to open the public booking link. Walk through it as if you were a client:
- Do the available slots look correct?
- Is the time zone shown clearly?
- Is the session description compelling enough to make someone want to book?
If something looks off — wrong slots showing, time zone mismatch, no slots at all — go back and check your availability settings and calendar sync status before sending the link to anyone.
Pro tips for a better booking experience
Setting up availability is a one-time task, but a few extra minutes of polish pay dividends every week.
- Use Coachful instant calls for async flexibility. Instant calls let clients jump into a session without pre-booking, which works well for existing clients who need a quick check-in. Enable this separately from your scheduled availability.
- Write a short session description. The text a client sees on your booking page is often the first real impression of your coaching style. Two or three sentences explaining what the session covers and who it's for can meaningfully lift your conversion rate.
- Revisit availability every quarter. Your schedule will change. Block time in your calendar to review and update your Coachful availability settings at the start of each new quarter so your booking page always reflects reality.
- Create separate session types for different client tiers. If you have both a high-touch 1:1 offer and a lighter-touch group program, give each its own session type with appropriate durations and booking rules. This keeps the experience clean for each client segment.
Troubleshooting common availability problems
No available slots are showing on my booking page
This almost always means one of two things: your working hours haven't been saved, or your minimum booking notice is longer than your next available window. Check Settings → Availability and confirm your hours are toggled on and saved. Then lower your booking notice temporarily to see if slots appear.
Clients are booking over my personal commitments
Your external calendar isn't synced, or the sync authorization expired. Go to Settings → Availability → Calendar Sync and check the connection status. If it shows an error or a reconnect prompt, re-authorize the integration. Calendar sync tokens occasionally expire and need a one-click refresh.
My time zone is showing incorrectly for clients
Coachful detects your time zone from your profile settings, but clients see slots converted to their local time automatically. If the wrong time zone is being used as the base, go to Settings → Profile and update your time zone. Save the change and reload your booking page to confirm.
Buffer time isn't appearing between sessions
Buffer settings apply to new bookings, not existing ones. If you added a buffer after some sessions were already scheduled, those existing sessions won't have the buffer applied retroactively. Going forward, new bookings will respect the new rule.
My availability looks right but a specific client can't book
Check whether the session type is restricted to enrolled clients only. Some session types in Coachful can be gated so only clients in a specific program can access the booking link. If that restriction is on and your client isn't enrolled, they'll see no available slots or an access error.
I connected my calendar but new bookings aren't appearing in it
Confirm that you selected a destination calendar during the sync setup. Coachful needs a specific calendar to write events to — if you skipped that step, events get created but not associated with a visible calendar. Revisit the calendar sync settings and select the correct destination.
Ready to start taking bookings?
Availability setup takes about ten minutes when you know what you're doing — and you now know exactly what you're doing. With your working hours set, calendar synced, and session types configured, your Coachful booking page is ready to convert visitors into scheduled clients automatically, without any inbox back-and-forth.
If you're setting up your workspace for the first time, the next step is to create your first coaching program or connect Stripe to start getting paid. Or, if you're already up and running, sign in to your Coachful workspace and open your availability settings right now.