The order things happen in
Start a plan
Say what you are planning, give your first name and choose when: the next 4 weeks, 8 weeks or 3 months. There is no account to create.
Add your diary and check it
Add a calendar link, a calendar file or a rota, or tap your busy days in by hand. If Vennado read a rota for you, it shows you the shifts it found. Fix anything it got wrong before it counts.
Send the link
One link goes in the group chat. Each person opens it on their own phone and adds their own diary in the same way. A plan holds up to 30 people.
See when you are all free
The plan shows every free window, and the near misses where everyone but one person can make it. Tell the group, on each free window, writes a message for the group chat so people can hold the date before anything is chosen.
Choose what to do
Pick a window, then say the budget a head, the town you are setting off from and who is coming. Vennado suggests ideas that fit. Put the ones you like on the shortlist.
Vote and lock it in
Everyone votes yes, maybe or no. When there is a winner, press Lock it in, add it to your calendars and book with the seller.
Four ways to add a diary
Most people add a phone calendar. Some tap in the days they cannot do. Some have a rota. You can use more than one: a calendar for most things, say, and a rota for work. Each way in handles your information differently.
| Way in | What happens to it |
|---|---|
| Calendar link: your calendar's .ics address from Google Calendar, Apple iCloud or Outlook | Vennado's server fetches it, because a browser cannot, and strips every event down to its timings before passing it to your browser. The server does not store or log the feed or the link. The link is saved only in your own browser, so you can refresh later. |
| Calendar file: an .ics file saved from your calendar | It is read in your browser. Only the busy times are kept. Event titles, locations, notes and attendees are never uploaded. |
| By hand: taps on the days and times you are busy | Nothing is read. What you tap is what counts. |
| Rota: a screenshot from a rota app, a PDF, a spreadsheet, a Word document, or text pasted from a message | It is sent to Vennado's server and read by an AI model run by Cloudflare (Workers AI) to pull out shift dates and times. The file and the text are not stored by Vennado and not logged. |
If you have never used a calendar link, the guide to getting your calendar link from Google, Apple or Outlook shows where to find it.
What the group sees
The group sees when you are busy and what kind of busy it is: work, on call, personal or rest. Never what, where or who with. That is true whichever way your diary went in, and the privacy notice sets out exactly what is stored.
How free windows and near misses are found
Vennado looks for stretches of time when nobody in the group is busy. These settings decide what counts, and the last two matter only if someone in the group works shifts. Each can be changed under More options when you set the plan up.
- The day runs from 9am to 11pm. Time outside those hours is not offered, so nobody is invited to breakfast at six because it was technically free.
- A window is at least 3 hours long. Shorter gaps are ignored.
- On call counts as busy. If being on call does not stop your group going out, switch that off.
- Allow sleep after a night shift. With this on, the seven hours after a night shift count as busy, so someone who finished at 8am is not shown as free until 3pm. It can be switched off.
Near misses are listed after the true free windows, each with the name of the one person who cannot make it. When the whole group is free from the morning of one day to the late afternoon of the next, nights included, the suggestions change to city breaks and weekends away. There is more on the sleep setting in planning around night shifts.
How ideas are matched to a window
For the window you pick, Vennado checks each idea in its catalogue against the hours it needs, the time of day and time of year it suits, the size of your group and the budget a head. A twilight nine holes needs about three hours between April and September. Five-a-side needs at least eight of you.
Every idea carries a guide price a head, which is an estimate for a typical UK city. Each idea links out so you can book the real thing with the seller, at the seller's price. Ideas by type and budget explains guide prices, and how we make money explains the links.
Sharing, voting and locking it in
A plan is reached by its link, which contains an id that cannot be guessed. Anyone with the link can open the plan and add themselves, so send it to the group and nobody else. There are no accounts, so no password and no email address.
Everyone votes yes, maybe or no on the shortlist. Locking it in fixes one idea in one window as the plan, and each person can add it to their own calendar. Then somebody books.
How long a plan is kept
A shared plan is deleted automatically 90 days after it was last changed. The person who created it can delete it sooner, or remove someone from it, from the browser they started it in. They are also given a private organiser link that does the same from any other browser. The key in that link sits after the # sign, which browsers never send to a server, so Vennado never sees it. Keep the organiser link to yourself; the group needs only the ordinary link. If neither is to hand, email us and we will delete the plan.
A plan you never share stays in your own browser. The privacy notice has the rest.
What it costs
Nothing, and there is no paid version. Today every link to a seller is an ordinary link that earns us nothing. When a link is paid it will be labelled "Paid link" where it appears, and Vennado never adds a fee. How we make money explains who pays.
If you add a rota
Once you tick the box to agree, Vennado reads your rota for the plan's dates and lists what it found: each shift with a date, a start time and an end time, as work or on call. If the rota covers several people and you have not said which one you are, it asks. If it meets a code it does not recognise, it says so and gives its best guess.
Days off and leave, including annual leave, study leave and sickness, are left out on purpose: only work and on call become busy time. So the plan never records why you were not working, and the group sees nothing of it. A rota that runs for months is read only for the weeks the plan covers.
Where it can go wrong
Rota reading can misread. Vennado cannot know what a local code means unless the rota says so, and a photo taken at an angle under strip lighting is not much to go on. When you check, look hardest at these.
- Codes it guessed. A guess at what "LD" or "Z" means is still a guess. You know; it does not.
- Night shifts. A night starts on one date and ends on the next. Check each one sits on the right evening.
- The row. On a rota with several names, make sure the shifts are yours.
- The weeks. If the rota does not show the month, check the shifts have landed where they should.
- Photos of paper rotas. These are often misread, even when sharp: a wide grid photographed at an angle loses which cell is under which date. If you have the original PDF, spreadsheet or app, use that.
If what you give it does not look like a rota, Vennado says so and does not invent shifts. Free rota reading also has a daily allowance. If it has run out you are told, and you can tap your shifts in by hand or try again the next day.
Why you check it before it counts
A missed shift is worse than no rota at all. It creates a free window that is not free, the group books for it, and one of you is at work. So nothing read from a rota joins the plan until you have looked down the list and confirmed it. The guide to turning a rota into a calendar covers the same job from the start.
What Vennado does not do yet
- Book or take payment. You book with the seller, on the seller's site.
- Buy tickets, or alert you when they go on sale.
- List live events. Ideas are kinds of outing, such as a comedy club night, not this month's line-up.
- Accounts or apps. It is a website that works in a phone browser.
- Two-way calendar sync. Calendars come in by link or by file. There is no signing in with Google, Apple or Microsoft.
If any of these change, this page will say so.
Questions people ask
Do we all have to add our diaries the same way?
No. Each person adds whatever describes their time: a calendar link or file from Google Calendar, Apple iCloud or Outlook, a rota, or busy days tapped in by hand. Someone with an office job might only connect a calendar. Someone whose rota comes from an app might only add a screenshot. Once they are busy and free times, the plan treats them all the same.
What happens if Vennado reads my rota wrong?
You catch it at the check. Before a rota counts, Vennado lists every shift it found, with dates and times, and tells you which codes it had to guess. Correct or remove anything that is wrong, add anything it missed, then confirm. If your rota changes later, add the new one and check it again.
Can the rest of the group see what is in my calendar?
No. They see when you are busy and whether it is work, on call, personal or rest. Event titles, locations, notes and attendees are not shared. A calendar file is read in your own browser, and a calendar link is stripped down to timings before it reaches the plan. The privacy notice sets it out in full.
What is a near miss?
A near miss is a window where everyone in the group is free except one person. Vennado lists near misses after the windows when the whole group is free, and names the person who cannot make it. They are worth a look, because one moved appointment or swapped shift can turn a near miss into a plan, and sometimes the group would rather go ahead with one person missing than wait two months.
Does Vennado work outside the UK?
Yes. A plan runs in the time zone of the person who started it, so a group in New York sees New York times. Anyone who opens the plan somewhere else sees the same times, with a note saying whose clock they are on. The ideas and guide prices are UK ones for now.
Does Vennado book the tickets or the table for us?
Not yet. Vennado finds the time, suggests what fits and links out to the seller. One of you then books with the ticket seller, restaurant, golf club or travel company directly, at the price on their site. There is no payment inside Vennado, and it does not buy tickets or watch for on-sale dates.