Issues with Google Calendar Syncing

[goldenhourmusic]

I subscribe to Square Appointments Plus so my appointments will sync to a calendar feed I can read in Google Calendar. 

About six months ago, I noticed that some appointments I canceled in Square were still appearing in the Google Calendar feed long after they disappeared in Square Appointments, and long after the feed's next sync (e.g. cancel an appointment 7/8, calendar feed sync continuously through 7/22; canceled appointment still appears on Google Calendar 7/23).

The sync issue seems to happen most often with single canceled appointments that are part of a series, but I haven't confirmed the issue is exclusive to that scenario.

Has anyone dealt with this issue and resolved it?

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Additional background:

If I clicked the link in the Notes field of the calendar event in Google Calendar for one of these appointments, it would open the event in Square Appointments and indicate prominently at the top that the appointment had been canceled. So there's no issue with canceling the appointment.

This issue persists despite a long volley of emails with Square Support, who ultimately directed me to take up the issue with Google, where—surprise—help forum users with the same issue have concluded the problem lies with Square.

[Ellie_]

Hi there, @goldenhourmusic,

Thank you for taking the time to explain this, and for your continued patience. We completely understand how frustrating it is to cancel appointments in Square, only to see them persist in your Google Calendar long after they should have been removed.

Based on your description, especially the behavior with canceled single appointments within a recurring series, it does seem like the issue stems from how some third-party calendars (like Google Calendar) interpret and refresh data from the iCal feed provided by Square. While the appointment is clearly canceled in Square (as you noted when viewing the link in the Notes field), that cancellation doesn’t always reflect as expected on Google’s side due to how they handle recurring series and updates within a static feed.

We recognize that directing you to Google after a long thread with Support is frustrating, especially when others have shared similar experiences and identified the issue as likely originating from how Square structures the feed.

Also, welcome to the Square Community, I noticed that this is your first post with us! We are so happy to have you here. 

[goldenhourmusic]

Ellie, I appreciate your reply. But it doesn't address why Square Appointments is unable to remove a single event from a feed of calendar data. Google Calendar uses the iCalendar (.ics) format for general event exchange and RFC3339 for API interactions. Both of those support removing individual events, even when those events are part of a series. It's a pretty basic operation I perform on Google Calendars all the time from third-party apps without issue, so Square's claim that this is a failure on Google's part to correctly parse the cancellation is not credible.

It also doesn't explain why Square Appointments offers third-party calendar syncing as a premium (Plus) feature while only supporting one calendar platform--and still can't even achieve functionality for a basic use case. I imagine canceling single appointments within a series is a pretty common need among Square Appointments users.

Worse, your support staff still struggle to grasp the issue after countless clear and patient explanations. I reported this issue at the end of January 2025. Two days ago, the agent I've interacted with most about this issue over the better part of a year was still describing the issue back to me backward, as in "the canceled appointment showing on your calendar but not on the dashboard," and giving me instructions on filtering the appointments view in your web app.

Whenever I reply to a Square Support agent, I ask the agent to escalate my issue to someone with the technical and product knowledge to explain how Square communicates individual cancelations of series events in the sync feed (or API call) it's sending to Google Calendar. I have the capacity to understand this, and many other users probably do, too. But your support staff does not appear able or willing to escalate technical requests in this way, much less offer that level of support themselves.