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 encourage clients to book appointments on their own while capturing all the information you need.

Tip: Register for our Acuity Scheduling webinar series where we'll teach you how to use Acuity. The Fundamentals webinar is ideal if you’re new to Acuity. The Next Steps webinar includes topics like customizing a scheduler and appointment notifications, using multiple staff members, syncing third-party calendars, and more.

Watch a video

Note: As of May 1, 2023, Squarespace Scheduling is now known as Acuity Scheduling. You'll begin to see the Acuity name and logo replace Squarespace Scheduling in the Help Center. These changes will take time, so you might see a mix of both names, like in the video below, while we work through the many updates. 

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.

Acuity trials

All Squarespace sites have access to a free trial, or you can start an Acuity trial without having a Squarespace site. To learn more, visit Starting an Acuity trial.

Subscribe after your trial ends

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

1. In Acuity, click the prompts to upgrade.
2. Choose Pay monthly or Pay annually, then click Select for the plan you want.
3. Click Confirm payment.

Log into your Acuity account

To log in, navigate to acuityscheduling.com/login.php, enter your username, and click Next.

If you use the same email address to log into an Acuity account and a Squarespace account, you'll select which account you want to log into.

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

Other ways to access Acuity

If you log in with a Squarespace account, 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

In Acuity, you can 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. 

Set your availability

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.
• Use override hours in place of regular weekly hours to set hours day-by-day.

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.

To learn more, visit Managing availability and calendars.

Add appointment types

Create appointment types for the different services you offer. Clients usually begin the scheduling process by choosing the appointment type they want to book.

To learn more, visit Creating and editing appointment types.

Add Acuity to your site

Share your scheduling page with clients by adding a scheduling block to your Squarespace site. Connect the scheduling block to your general scheduling page to show clients all of your appointment types that are public and available to book.

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

As your Acuity set up grows, you can use a drop-down menu that will appear here to connect the block to specific calendars, categories of appointment types, and more.

You can also share your scheduling page outside of Squarespace.

To link to your scheduling page:

1. In Acuity, click Scheduling page link.
2. Under Direct links & embedding, click Direct link.
3. Use the drop-down menu to select either the general scheduling page or direct schedulers for specific appointment types, calendars, and more. If you have only one appointment type and one calendar, this drop-down menu won't appear.
4. Click Copy to copy the link.
5. Paste the link wherever you're sharing your general scheduling page.

You can then customize the direct link to your general scheduling page, specific appointment types, and individual calendars. Learn more in Customizing your Acuity links.

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.

But if you've set up Acuity and want to add a Squarespace site, you can attach a new website to your Acuity subscription. To add a website:

1. Log into Acuity at acuityscheduling.com/login.php, then click ☰ in the top-left corner.
2. In the Available to add section, click Website, then click Explore templates.
3. Follow the prompts to choose a template and begin your website trial.

Integrate Acuity with other applications

Acuity connects with Squarespace websites and Email Campaigns, but you can also connect directly to dozens of third-party applications, and connect to hundreds more through API services such as Zapier.

You can sync calendars with:

• iCloud
• Outlook
• Google Calendar

You can collect payments through:

• Stripe
• Square
• PayPal

You can set up video conferencing with:

• Zoom
• Google Meet
• Join.me
• GoToMeeting

Acuity also integrates with social media, email marketing options, accounting software, conversion tracking, CRM tools, client engagement applications, and more.

To review all your options and set up an integration, in Acuity, click Integrations.

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

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 Acuity questions.
• Hire a vetted Squarespace Expert to set up Acuity for your site.