Getting started with Acuity Scheduling

Essential first steps to add Acuity to your site and start booking appointments.

With Acuity Scheduling, clients can book appointments or classes seamlessly online. You can display the times you're available and capture any details you need from the client when they book. Use this guide to help you get your scheduling page up and running, and start booking appointments.

Tip: Register for our Acuity Scheduling webinar series where we'll teach you how to use Acuity. The How to Start Scheduling webinar is ideal if you’re new to Acuity. The Preparing to Book webinar explains how to perfect your scheduler.

Watch a video

Before you begin

• You can use Acuity with a Squarespace site through the scheduling block, use it on its own, or use it with another provider's website. If you log in with an Acuity account, you can still use the scheduling block to embed your scheduler on a Squarespace website.
• If you get started and decide you want more hands-on help setting up Acuity Scheduling, you can hire a vetted expert.

Start a trial

All Squarespace sites have access to a free Acuity trial, but you can start an Acuity trial even without having a Squarespace site.

To keep using Acuity after the trial, upgrade to a paid Acuity subscription.

Log into your account

Navigate to acuityscheduling.com/login.php, enter your username, and click Next. Follow the prompts to log in.

If you have more than one Acuity subscription connected to your email address, you can select which one you want to use after you log in.

Other ways to access Acuity

You can also access Acuity from the Home menu or your account dashboard. If you have more than one Acuity subscription, there will be an Acuity Scheduling button for each subscription in the account dashboard.

View your calendar

When you log into your Acuity account, your calendar will appear. Use the Calendar panel to view or edit upcoming appointments, schedule an appointment for a client, block off time, and more. Use the view filter to switch to Day View, Week View, or Month View. You can also use the calendar filter to decide which calendars display, and the zoom filter to change the size of the calendar.

Add appointment types and classes

After you've familiarized yourself with your calendar, you can set up appointment types. Appointment types represent the different services that clients can book with your business. You can create one-time or recurring appointment types, or offer classes that multiple clients can sign up for at the same time.

For example, if you own a coaching business, you can create an appointment type for a one-on-one consultation and an appointment type for a group coaching session. When a client visits your scheduling page, they can browse and select the appointment type they want to book.

Set your availability

After setting up your appointment types, you can use Acuity's availability settings to decide when you're open for appointments. You can:

• Set regular weekly hours.
• Cancel regular weekly hours on particular days using override hours.
• Set different hours for each day.
• Set specific hours for each appointment type.

You can also use scheduling limits to decide when clients can book, edit, or cancel their appointments.

After you've set your availability, a small version of your Acuity calendar will appear in the top-left. Specific days will be highlighted as clients book appointments.

Customize your scheduling page

When your appointment types and availability are set, customize the look and feel of your scheduling page so it matches your brand. Choose between different scheduling page templates, and use the available styling options to manage how your appointments and calendars appear to clients.

Add your staff

Now that your scheduling page is set up, you can invite your staff as contributors so they can help manage your account. You can choose their access level when first adding them to your account, which ensures they only have access to the tools and features necessary to their role.

You can also set up a separate calendar for each staff member so clients can choose a specific staff member when booking their appointment.

Add Acuity to your site

To start booking appointments, you can add your scheduler to your website so clients can book with you while visiting your site. There are three different ways you can add your scheduler to your website:

• Embed the scheduler - use an embed code to add the scheduler to a non-Squarespace site, or add a scheduling block to your Squarespace site.
• Booking button - Add a button to your website that links to your scheduling page.
• Booking bar - Add a bar to the top of your site that links to your scheduling page.

You can also share a direct link to your scheduling page, or to specific appointment types, calendars, and more.

Tip: To make an appointment type exclusive to certain visitors, add the scheduling block to a member site.

Collect payments

You may want to collect payments for your services, in which case you should connect with a payment processor so clients can pay for appointments while booking. Learn more about accepting payments.

Integrate Acuity with other applications

In addition to using Acuity with Squarespace websites and Email Campaigns, you can also connect directly to dozens of third-party applications. API services like Zapier enable you to integrate with hundreds more. You can:

• Sync your appointments with your personal or business calendars
• Set up video conferencing
• Integrate with social media, email marketing, accounting, conversion tracking, CRM, or client engagement applications

Note: It's not possible to directly integrate Acuity with any electronic medical record or electronic health record software.

Paying for Acuity

As you continue to use Acuity, you might want to explore the different plans that are available, or make changes to how you pay for your subscription.

Sign up for a Squarespace site

You don't need a Squarespace website to use Acuity, and you can embed Acuity on any Squarespace site, even if the two aren't connected in your account dashboard.

To attach a new website to your Acuity subscription:

1. Log into Acuity at acuityscheduling.com/login.php.
2. Click your account profile in the bottom-left corner.
3. On your Squarespace account dashboard, click Create website.
4. Follow the prompts to choose a template and begin your website trial.

Log out of your Acuity account

To log out of your Acuity account:

1. Go to your Squarespace account dashboard.
2. In the top-right, click your profile picture or initials and click Log Out.

More help

After completing the steps in this guide, you're ready for clients to book appointments. In addition to our guides and video tutorials, we offer other resources to help you get the most out of Acuity:

• Visit Acuity Scheduling FAQ for answers to common questions about Acuity.
• Hire a vetted Squarespace Expert to set up your Acuity account.