Three diaries and none of them the whole story
On Mondays you work at a group practice in town using their booking system. Wednesdays you rent a room for your own private clients, booked through your own calendar. Two evenings a week you see clients online through an EAP. You also do a day of supervision and some training work.
Each place has its own diary. The group practice's admin books a new client into your Monday afternoon, not knowing you moved your supervision there this week. Your own calendar has a client at a time the EAP has also offered. You keep a paper diary to hold it all together, and it is the only place that is ever fully right, when you remember to update it.
Why portfolio working breaks calendars
Each practice's system is designed around its own rooms and its own staff. None of them expects a therapist to have a working life outside them. Your availability is the one thing that crosses all of them, and nothing is holding it.
- Practice booking systems that only know about their own sessions.
- Your private calendar that the practices cannot see.
- EAP or insurer portals that offer your time from a separate availability setting.
- Personal commitments (school runs, your own therapy, medical appointments) that nobody else should know about in detail.
- Travel time between locations that no diary allows for.
Sharing your whole calendar with every practice is not the answer. They do not need to see your other clients or your personal life. They just need to know when you are not available.
The cost of diaries that do not talk
| What happens | Effect |
|---|---|
| Double bookings | A client rebooked at short notice, or two clients at once |
| Admin asking you for availability | Messages every week to check what is free |
| Paper diary as master | Hours of updating, and errors when you forget |
| Travel squeezed out | Back-to-back sessions in different places with no time between |
| Offering less than you could | You hold time back just in case, because you cannot trust the diaries |
The last one is easy to miss. Many portfolio therapists block out more time than they need simply because they are not sure what is booked elsewhere, which means fewer sessions than they want to offer.
And the double booking, when it happens, lands on a client. Rearranging a session at short notice is never neutral in therapy, even when the client is gracious about it.
One availability view, shared as busy only
- We connect each diary that allows it: your Google or Microsoft 365 calendar, practice systems that offer calendar feeds or APIs, and EAP availability where there is a way in.
- Every commitment is copied to every other diary as a plain 'busy' block, with no client name, location detail or reason.
- Travel time is added automatically between sessions at different locations, using the gap you choose.
- Personal blocks you add in your own calendar become 'busy' everywhere without revealing what they are.
- Where a system cannot accept external blocks, you get a daily list of changes to enter by hand, and a warning if a clash appears.
- One personal view that shows your whole week, colour-coded by practice, for you only.
What each practice can see is limited to busy and free. Client details stay in the system of the practice they belong to.
Some practice systems accept external calendar blocks cleanly and some do not. We check each one you work with before you commit to anything, and tell you plainly where a manual step will remain.
What your week looks like after
Each practice's admin sees when you are genuinely available and books into those times. Your private clients book into slots that are really free. Travel time is protected, and your Tuesday school run shows as busy everywhere without explanation.
The paper diary can go, or stay as a comfort, but it is no longer the only accurate record. You can offer the sessions you actually have room for, because you trust the diaries again.
Does this describe your working week?
- You work at more than one practice or service.
- Each place has its own diary that cannot see the others.
- You have been double-booked between practices.
- You keep a paper diary to hold everything together.
- You block out extra time because you do not trust the diaries.