Booking appointments for clients

Manage the client booking experience from your account. 

This guide covers how to schedule, change, or cancel appointments for clients from your account. To see your clients' online booking experience, visit How clients book appointments. 

Before you begin

Before booking appointments, you'll need to:

• Set your availability to choose the hours you're available for appointments.
• Create at least one appointment type for a service you offer.
• Connect at least one payment processor, if your service requires payment at booking. 
• Enable email notifications to send confirmation emails to clients. 

Schedule an appointment

To schedule appointments for clients:

1. In Acuity, click Calendar.
2. Above the calendar, click the Add new dropdown menu, then select Appointment.
3. Select an appointment type.
4. If you have multiple calendars, select a calendar.
5. Select a time zone.
6. Choose a date and time. To choose a date and time outside your availability, click Custom. If you choose a date and time outside your availability, a warning will appear, but that doesn't prevent you from scheduling the appointment. To create a repeating appointment, click Recurring.
7. Enter your client’s name and contact information. Include an email address to send the client email notifications about the appointment. If you're on a free trial, the first name and last name fields have a 35-character limit.
8. Optional: Click the Forms, Code and Notes section to apply a coupon or package code, add private notes about the appointment, or fill out intake form questions.
9. Click Schedule appointment or use the arrow to select Schedule, but don’t send confirmation notifications. (If you select Schedule, but don't send confirmation notifications, other notifications, like reminders or follow-up emails will still be sent.)
10. After scheduling, a summary of the appointment displays. From here, you can add notes, edit details, or take payment.
11. Click Save, then click Close.

Tip: If you're scheduling a new appointment as an existing appointment on your calendar is ending, you can pre-fill the appointment type and client details from the concluding appointment. To do this, click the client name that appears with the prompt “This appointment is ending, would you like to schedule another one?” This prompt will be available up to 15 minutes after the existing appointment has ended.

Request form responses after booking

You can use ‌the Forms, Code and Notes section to fill out intake forms when scheduling appointments for clients, or edit the appointment details after it’s booked.

You can also add an Edit Forms button to the confirmation email so clients can complete the form on their own after you book an appointment on their behalf. For example, you scheduled a new client for a dog grooming appointment over the phone, but you need to collect more details about their pet to prepare, like their veterinary records or shampoo preferences. You won’t be notified when they submit or edit their forms, but you can review their answers in the appointment details.

To collect form responses from the client after booking an appointment on their behalf:

• Ensure your global scheduling limits allow clients to edit their forms.
• Customize your confirmation and reminder emails to include an Edit Forms button. You can change the wording of this button to encourage clients to complete the form, like Complete this form before your appointment, or Review and sign our terms & conditions.

Reschedule appointments

You can reschedule appointments singly or in bulk.

Reschedule a single appointment

To reschedule a single appointment:

1. In Acuity, click Calendar.
2. Click the appointment in the calendar or agenda list. 
3. Click Reschedule.
4. Choose a date on the calendar, then choose a new time. To choose a date and time outside of your availability, click Custom.

Note: When using the Zoom integration to create meeting links, if you reschedule an appointment and move it to a different calendar, the Zoom link will update automatically. The link won't update if you edit the appointment.

5. Click Reschedule appointment or use the arrow to select Reschedule, but don’t send confirmation notifications. (If you select Reschedule, but don't send confirmation notifications, other notifications, like reminders or follow-up emails will still be sent.)
6. After rescheduling, you can add notes to the appointment or take payment.
7. Click Save, then click Close to return to your calendar. 

Note: You can only reschedule a client who booked a spot in a group class into another session of the same group class. It's not possible to reschedule a client into a different group class.

Reschedule appointments in bulk

When you reschedule appointments in bulk, it's not possible to reschedule them to a different calendar.

The process is slightly different for rescheduling group classes and non-class appointments.

To reschedule a client's non-class appointments in bulk:

1. In Acuity, click Clients.
2. Click the client's name.
3. Check the boxes next to the appointments you'd like to reschedule, then click Reschedule selected.
4. Use the menu to decide the appointments' new times. If the appointments are all at the same time on the same day of the week, choose a new time and day of the week. If they aren't, choose to add or subtract time, and how many days and minutes you want to add or subtract.
5. Click Reschedule appointments, or use the arrow to select Reschedule, but don't send confirmation email.

To reschedule class attendees in bulk:

Note: You need to have at least one upcoming group class session to be able to reschedule class attendees in bulk.

1. In Acuity, click Appointment types.
2. Click the group class appointment type, then click the group class session on the right.
3. Check the boxes next to the attendees you want to reschedule, then click Reschedule Selected.
4. Use the drop-down menu to select the new class session, then Click Reschedule Appointments, or use the arrow to select Reschedule, but don't send confirmation email.

Edit an appointment

When you edit an appointment, your changes won't affect other appointments from the same client. To update a name, email address, or phone number across all of a client's appointments, update the client profile in your client list instead.

To change other appointment information or add internal notes:

1. In Acuity, click Calendar.
2. Click the appointment in the calendar or agenda list to open its details.
3. Click Edit.
4. Update the fields you want to change.
5. Click Save, then click Close.

Tip: If you edit the client’s email address then save your changes, a Resend confirmation email button will appear. Click the button to send a copy of the appointment confirmation email to the new email address. 

Cancel an appointment

You can cancel appointments for clients by individual appointment or in bulk. After canceling, you may want to charge a no-show fee or refund the client, depending on your policies. 

To cancel a client's appointment:

1. In Acuity, click Calendar.
2. Click the appointment in the calendar or agenda list.
3. Click Cancel.
4. Check Mark as no-show and/or Send email to client, if applicable. If you choose to send an email, you can add a message.
5. Click Cancel Appointment.

Tip: To cancel just one attendee in a class, click on their name to bring up their individual details, then follow steps three through five above.

To cancel a client's appointments in bulk:

1. In Acuity, click Clients.
2. Click the client’s name.
3. Scroll down the list of appointments and check the boxes next to the appointments you want to cancel.
4. Click Cancel Selected.
5. Click Yes, cancel appointments to send a cancellation email for each appointment selected or Yes, but do not email client.

View canceled appointments

While it's not possible to undo canceling appointments, you can still view the appointment details.

If you know the client's name, click Client list, then the client's name, to bring up a list of all the client's appointments, including canceled appointments.

If you don't remember the client's name, use reports to find the canceled appointment:

1. In Acuity, click Reports.
2. Use the Date Range and Calendar drop-down menus to limit your search if possible.
3. Use the Show drop-down menu to choose All canceled appointments, then click Show.
4. Click View appointments to review a list of canceled appointments that meet your search criteria.

Delete appointments

After you cancel an appointment, you can delete it from the client's profile. Keep in mind that this action is permanent and the deleted appointment will no longer appear anywhere in your account. 

1. In Acuity, click Clients. 
2. Select the client's profile.  
3. In the Upcoming Appointments section, select the canceled appointment. If the appointment doesn't appear, ensure that Show canceled appointments is checked. 
4. In the top-right, click Delete. 
5. Type DELETE then click Ok.