Sending internal appointment notifications and agendas

Send automatic email and text message notifications to yourself and your staff. Your notifications can keep you up-to-date, show you the week ahead at a glance, and remind you of upcoming appointments.

Note: Text messages have some limitations on deliverability.

Notifications about booking activity

You can set each of your calendars to send a notification when appointments are booked, canceled, or rescheduled. You can send these calendar-specific notifications to any email address or phone number.

Or, if you’re the account owner, you can use the Booking Alerts or Admin Alerts panel to set up notifications for appointments on all calendars, and for all packages, gift certificates, and subscriptions sold.

The panel where these alerts are housed may be labeled Booking Alerts or Admin Alerts. The settings are the same regardless.

Note: If you set up calendar-specific appointment notifications for a person who also gets the Booking Alerts or Admin Alerts panel appointment notifications, they’ll receive two emails every time someone books, reschedules, or cancels an appointment.

Calendar-specific appointment notifications

You can send email or text message notifications about a specific calendar to keep your staff informed about their upcoming appointments. Whenever clients schedule, reschedule, or cancel an appointment on a particular calendar, Acuity can send notifications. These notifications are disabled by default.

For email notifications, Acuity sends copies of the emails sent to your clients, excluding follow-ups. Booking confirmation emails also include information from any intake forms the client filled out at booking. The questions they answered, and their responses, are included. The form description isn't included.

For text message notifications, Acuity sends the subject lines of those emails as text messages. For information about text message reminders, read the section below. 

Text message notifications are available in the Standard or Growing and Premium or Powerhouse plans.

When to enable calendar-specific appointment notifications

We recommend these notifications if:

• You want to keep staff updated about their upcoming appointments.
• You want to set up notifications for staff who have view-only access.
• You’re a business owner who wants text message notifications instead of emails.
• You’re a business owner who only wants appointment notifications for certain calendars.
• You need a time- and date-stamped record of intake questions and answers.

Enable calendar-specific appointment notifications

To enable calendar-specific text and email notifications:

1. In Acuity, click Availability.
2. Above a calendar, click Calendar settings.
3. In the Send booking notifications to field, enter email addresses, phone numbers, or both. Separate multiple entries with commas. If you're entering a phone number outside the United States and Canada, ensure you've formatted it correctly.
4. The Send replies to field is required, so ensure you enter an email address.
5. Click Save.
6. Optional: Repeat Steps 2 through 4 until you’ve set up all the notifications you want.
7. To send confirmation text messages to the admin, set the confirmation email for the appointment type to active. If it's inactive the admin won't receive the text messages.

Appointment notifications in the Booking Alerts or Admin Alerts panel

These notifications keep you informed about appointments and booking codes for an entire Acuity account. They’re only available to the account owner.

Acuity sends an email whenever someone schedules, reschedules, or cancels an appointment, and whenever someone buys a booking code.

These alerts are a great way to keep track of what's happening across your business, but they don’t include reminders about upcoming appointments. Appointment notifications are enabled by default.

We recommend appointment notifications if:

• You’re a solo provider.
• You’re a business owner who needs a comprehensive overview of Acuity activity.
• You want to be notified whenever someone buys a booking code.

To enable or disable the emails:

1. In Acuity, click Booking Alerts or click Emails & Texts, then click Admin Alerts.
2. Switch the Send appointment notifications toggle On or Off.

Appointment reminders and summaries

Summary emails

Review what’s on your agenda for the coming day or week with summary emails. Weekly emails are enabled by default, but you can switch to daily emails or opt out.

Anyone with view and edit access, or higher, can receive these emails.

We recommend these notifications if you want information about your upcoming appointments all in one place.

If you don't have any appointments the next day, you won't receive the daily summary email. Similarly, if you don't have appointments scheduled in the next week, you also won't receive the weekly summary email. 

To enable or disable appointment summary emails:

1. In Acuity, click Booking Alerts or click Emails & Texts, then click Admin Alerts.
2. Switch the Send summary emails toggle On or Off.
3. If the emails are enabled, use the radio buttons to select Weekly or Daily emails.
4. If you choose daily emails, use the dropdown menu to choose what time Acuity sends the emails. You can choose to send daily summary emails between 4:00 PM and 11:00 PM. 

Calendar-specific email reminders

Send email reminders about upcoming appointments to yourself or your staff.

When Acuity sends an appointment reminder to a client, it can also send a copy to any email addresses that get notifications about the relevant calendar. These notifications are disabled by default, but you can turn them on or off for each of your client reminder emails.

We recommend these notifications if you want email reminders about individual upcoming appointments.

To enable email appointment reminders:

1. Enable calendar activity notifications by entering an email address in the calendar settings.
2. In Acuity, click Client Emails.
3. Click Reminders.
4. At the top of the page, select a reminder email template. 
5. In the Send to field, select Send this reminder to clients and admins.
6. Click Save settings.
7. (Optional) Repeat Steps 4 through 6 until you've enabled all the reminders you want.

Calendar-specific text message reminders

Send text message reminders about upcoming appointments to yourself or your staff.

Text message notifications are available in the Standard or Growing and Premium or Powerhouse plans.

When Acuity sends an appointment reminder to a client, it also sends a copy to any phone numbers that get notifications about the relevant calendar. These notifications are disabled by default, but you can turn them on or off for each of your text message reminder templates.

We recommend these notifications if you want text message reminders about individual upcoming appointments for yourself or your staff.

To enable text message appointment reminders:

1. Enable calendar activity notifications by entering a phone number in the calendar settings.
2. In the left menu, click Client Text Messages.
3. Click a template.
4. Switch the Send a reminder to admins toggle On.
5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 until you’ve enabled all the reminders you want.

Verify your phone number

If you set up internal text message notifications and haven’t already verified your phone number, Acuity will prompt you to verify it. To learn how to verify your phone number, visit Sending appointment reminders via text.

Limits

Acuity only sends internal notifications if it also sends the matching client notification. Acuity won’t send client notifications if there’s no client email address in the appointment details. It also won’t send client notifications if you or your staff choose the option to make changes without sending notifications when booking, rescheduling, or canceling an appointment.

Replies

Internal notification emails are sent from no-reply@acuityscheduling.com. If you reply to a booking confirmation or reminder email, your reply will be sent to the client. Replies to other emails will bounce without being delivered.

Troubleshooting

Review the information below for tips to ensure your notifications arrive.

Expected notification didn’t arrive

If you expected an Acuity email notification but didn’t receive it, start by checking the list of notifications Acuity has sent about the appointment in question:

1. In Acuity, click Calendar.
2. Click the appointment to open appointment details.
3. Click View all changes & notifications sent.

If you find the entry Admin chose not to send emails, you or your staff opted to make the change to the appointment without sending notifications.

If ‌Acuity did send an email notification, but you never received it, check your spam folder for the missing email. If your spam filter is catching Acuity emails, add no-reply@acuityscheduling.com to your safe senders list.

If your spam filter isn’t catching the missing Acuity notifications, contact your internet service provider or hosting provider. Ask them to add Acuity’s email addresses and IP addresses to a trusted sender list. Our IP addresses are:

• 149.72.52.197
• 149.72.90.69
• 149.72.227.216
• 149.72.242.200
• 168.245.51.104
• 198.37.159.6

Email dropped

If you find the entry Email dropped in the appointment changelog, the email may have been sent to an address that has been unsubscribed from Acuity emails.

You can opt to unsubscribe from Acuity appointment reminders and agenda summary emails by clicking Unsubscribe at the bottom of those emails. If you open one of those emails and click Unsubscribe again, Acuity will prompt you to resubscribe.

If you unsubscribe from appointment reminders, you'll still receive transaction notifications, such as appointment booking confirmations, reschedule confirmations, and subscription receipts. 

Notifications all come from one client

If all your Acuity appointment notifications appear to come from one particular client, you may have saved our email address in your contacts under that client's name.

Search your contacts for no-reply@acuityscheduling.com, and ensure that email address is only associated with "Acuity Scheduling."

Duplicate emails

If you’re the account owner and you’re getting two emails about each appointment booked, rescheduled, or canceled, check if you have both the appointment notifications in the Booking Alerts or Admin Alerts panel and calendar-specific appointment notifications turned on. When both of these settings are enabled, Acuity sends you two emails every time someone books, cancels, or reschedules. Choose one to use and disable the other.