Internal Comms & Meetings

How to schedule meetings across timezones as Event Agency Founders

Internal Comms & MeetingsFor Event Agency Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Scheduling a planning call with a corporate client whose team is split across Chicago, London, and Singapore takes you 12 emails and two days. You're manually checking Google Calendar, asking attendees to reply with three times that work, then reconciling conflicts one by one. Meanwhile HoneyBook doesn't have a built-in booking page, and your Calendly free tier only supports one meeting type. When a venue rep in a different timezone wants to hop on a call, you're mentally converting UTC offsets mid-thread. You lose real planning hours — hours that should go into timelines, vendor quotes, and client decks — to the mechanical work of finding a 30-minute window that works for everyone.

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Internal Comms & MeetingsFor Event Agency Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A public booking page that shows your real availability across meeting types (intro call, site walkthrough debrief, vendor check-in) with buffer time built in, so clients and vendors book themselves without a back-and-forth thread

Automatic timezone detection so every confirmation email and calendar invite lands in the recipient's local time — no more 'did you mean London time or Chicago time?' replies

Post-call meeting notes with a summary, key decisions, and next-step action items emailed to every attendee automatically, so nothing from a vendor negotiation call gets lost

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Scheduling Meeting Notes Email Agent

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your Google Calendar data on a schedule to power real-time availability on the booking page. Calendly is also available as a scheduled-sync provider if you already run bookings there. Gmail is synced on a schedule so the Email Agent can read inbound threads and draft replies from your inbox. All three apps wire together — a booking through the Scheduling page triggers the Meeting Notes capture, and the Email Agent drafts the follow-up from the same thread.

Prompts to copy

Build me a booking page with three meeting types: a 15-minute intro call, a 45-minute event planning call, and a 60-minute post-event debrief. Add 15 minutes of buffer between every meeting. Pull my availability from Google Calendar and detect the visitor's timezone automatically. Show the booking link on a page I can paste into my email signature.

After every meeting I take through my booking page, generate a summary with key decisions and action items. Format it as: one-sentence summary, bullet list of decisions, bullet list of action items with the person responsible. Email the summary to everyone on the invite within 10 minutes of the call ending.

Watch my inbox for any email that contains a meeting request or scheduling ask from a client or vendor. Draft a reply with my booking link and a one-line note in my tone. Flag anything where someone already proposed a specific time so I can confirm or counter.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect Google Calendar to Starch — Starch syncs your calendar on a schedule and uses it as the live source of truth for your availability. Any existing blocks, travel days, or hold times are respected automatically.

2 Open the Scheduling app from the Starch App Store and describe your three meeting types: a 15-minute intro, a 45-minute planning call, and a 60-minute post-event debrief. Tell Starch what buffer time you want between meetings and which days of the week you're bookable.

3 Starch generates a public booking page with timezone detection built in. A client in Singapore sees your open slots in SGT; the Chicago venue rep sees CST. No instructions needed on your end.

4 Copy the booking link into your HoneyBook or Dubsado email templates, your Gmail signature, and anywhere you currently paste 'here are three times that work for me.'

5 Connect Gmail to Starch — Starch syncs your messages on a schedule. Tell the Email Agent: 'Watch for any inbound email that includes a meeting request or a proposed time. Draft a reply with my booking link and a one-sentence warm note. Flag anything urgent.'

6 The Email Agent surfaces scheduling threads in a triage view, shows you the draft reply, and lets you send with one click. Threads from vendors proposing a specific time get flagged separately so you can confirm or push back.

7 Set up the Meeting Notes app: describe to Starch that you want every meeting booked through your Scheduling page to generate an automatic summary. Prompt: 'After each call, send a summary to all attendees with: one-sentence recap, key decisions, action items with owner names, and next meeting date if one was set.'

8 Run a test booking yourself — pick a time slot, confirm the invite lands in your calendar and theirs in the right timezone, and verify the post-call summary fires after the meeting ends.

9 For recurring vendor check-ins (florists, AV companies, caterers you work with across events), create a standing meeting type specifically for vendor calls with a shorter 20-minute default length and a different post-call template focused on quote status and delivery dates.

10 At the end of each week, ask Starch: 'How many meetings did I take this week, broken down by meeting type? How many were with clients vs. vendors? Did any action items from last week's calls go unacknowledged?' Use this to see where your actual planning time is going versus coordination overhead.

11 When a new event inquiry comes in, the Email Agent drafts the first-response including your booking link for an intro call — so the first scheduled touchpoint with every new lead happens without you composing an email from scratch.

12 After a site walkthrough or venue tour, the Meeting Notes summary becomes your debrief document — share it with the client directly from Starch instead of retyping your notes into Google Docs.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

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Worked example

November 2026 corporate holiday party — cross-timezone coordination sprint

Sample numbers from a real run

Client kickoff call (client in London, internal team in Chicago)	1
Venue walkthrough debrief (venue rep in NYC)	1
Catering vendor check-in (vendor local)	1
AV vendor intro call (new vendor, timezone unknown)	1
Client budget approval call (London + Singapore stakeholders)	1

You picked up a corporate holiday party for 300 people in Chicago with the client's core team in London and one approver in Singapore. In a normal week, five coordination calls with those stakeholders would mean 10+ emails just to find times. Instead: your booking link goes into the first HoneyBook proposal. The London client books a 45-minute planning call in BST — the Starch Scheduling page shows her your Chicago CST availability converted automatically, and she picks 10 a.m. her time, which lands at 4 a.m. your time — so you have your availability rules block out anything before 7 a.m. CST and she gets redirected to a time that actually works. The venue rep in NYC books a 45-minute debrief for the day after the walkthrough. The AV vendor (timezone shown as UTC+1) books a 20-minute intro. All five meetings book themselves in four days with zero scheduling emails from you. Each call generates a Meeting Notes summary automatically — the catering check-in summary lists three open items: menu confirmation, dietary count, and deposit due date, with the vendor's name next to each. You forward it to your HoneyBook project file and it becomes the paper trail. The Email Agent catches the AV vendor's follow-up email ('does next Tuesday still work?') and drafts a reply linking back to the booking page with a note that Tuesday is blocked. Total time spent on scheduling for a 5-call week: under 20 minutes.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Hours per week lost to scheduling back-and-forth (target: under 30 minutes)

Percentage of meetings booked via self-serve link vs. manually scheduled

Action items captured per planning call vs. items actually followed up on within 48 hours

Average time from inquiry to first scheduled call with a prospective client

Number of timezone-related errors or reschedules per month (missed calls, wrong-time confirmations)

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Calendly (free or standard tier)

Handles single booking-link use well but doesn't connect to your inbox, doesn't generate post-call notes, and doesn't let you describe custom meeting workflows in plain language — you're stitching it together with separate Zapier triggers and a separate note-taking tool.

HoneyBook scheduling feature

Booking is locked inside HoneyBook's client portal flow, which works for proposal-stage clients but isn't shareable with vendors, venue reps, or anyone outside a HoneyBook project — so you end up using two booking tools anyway.

Otter.ai + Calendly + Gmail manual flow

Each tool does one thing reasonably well, but there's no connection between them — you're copy-pasting action items from Otter into emails, manually adding timezone notes to Calendly confirmation templates, and the three tools have no shared context about your events or clients.

Google Calendar appointment slots

Free and already in your stack, but no timezone auto-detection, no meeting types with different lengths, no buffer-time rules, and no post-call automation — it solves only the 'share a link' part of the problem.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — scheduling, meeting notes, email agent all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Does Starch actually detect the other person's timezone automatically, or do they have to set it manually?

The Scheduling app detects the visitor's local timezone from their browser and displays your available slots converted into their time. They don't touch a timezone selector. When they book, the calendar invite goes to both of you with the correct local time in each invite. If you want to double-check how it looks in a specific timezone — say, SGT for a Singapore client — you can preview the booking page from that timezone before sharing the link.

My clients use HoneyBook and Dubsado for the official project record. Does Starch replace those tools?

No — Starch doesn't try to replace your client-management software. You keep using HoneyBook or Dubsado for contracts, proposals, and invoicing. Starch sits on top of your communication and scheduling layer: it handles the inbox triage, the booking page, and the post-call notes. The output from Starch (a meeting summary, a drafted email) lives in your email thread and can be pasted or attached wherever your project record lives.

What happens if a client emails me a specific time instead of using the booking link?

The Email Agent catches those threads and flags them separately from 'please send me a link' requests. It drafts a reply that either confirms the proposed time (if your calendar is open) or suggests using the booking link to find an alternative. You review the draft and send with one click. You're not forced to use the booking page for every meeting — it's a default path, not a gate.

Is Starch SOC 2 Type II certified? I sometimes share sensitive event budget details on planning calls.

Not yet — Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. If your clients have enterprise security requirements that mandate certified vendors for any tool that touches their data, that's worth flagging before you wire in sensitive budget information. For most independent event agencies working with mid-market corporate clients, this isn't a blocker — but it's an honest limit worth knowing.

Can Meeting Notes capture calls that weren't booked through Starch's Scheduling app — like a Zoom call I set up manually?

Yes. You can tell Starch to capture notes for any meeting, not just ones booked through the Scheduling app. Describe the meeting type — 'any Zoom call where I'm a host' or 'any call with a vendor in my calendar' — and the Meeting Notes app will generate a summary and action-item list after the call. You're not locked into only the calls that came through the booking page.

I use Calendly already and have a paid plan. Should I switch to Starch's Scheduling app?

If you're happy with Calendly's booking-page functionality, you don't have to replace it — Starch connects directly to Calendly as a scheduled-sync provider, so your booking data from Calendly flows into Starch. The advantage of using Starch's native Scheduling app is that it's connected to the same system as your Email Agent and Meeting Notes, so the three tools share context about your meetings without you wiring them together manually.