Offering clients pay-what-you-want pricing

Empower your clients to set the price they pay for appointments with pay-what-you-want pricing. Clients can decide to pay your minimum price or a higher amount.

Before you begin

• To use pay-what-you-want pricing, you need to have either Stripe or Square as your payment processor. Pay-what-you-want pricing isn’t available if your Acuity account is connected to PayPal, either on its own or in combination with Square or Stripe.
• It isn’t possible to accept tips and have pay-what-you-want pricing.

Choose pay-what-you-want pricing

To use pay-what-you-want pricing for all your appointment types:

1. In Acuity, click Payments, then click Payment at Booking.
2. To enable pay-what-you-want pricing for all appointment types, switch the Use the same method for all appointment types toggle On and select Collect deposits or full payment. To enable pay-what-you-want pricing for a specific appointment type, switch the Use the same method for all appointment types toggle Off, click an appointment type, and select Collect deposits or full payment.
3. Use the Type of payment drop-down menu to choose Full payment + allow clients to pay extra.
4. Click Save.

Tips:

• The Customize for each appointment type payment option appears after you create your second appointment type.
• The Full payment + allow clients to pay extra option appears if you have Stripe or Square selected as your payment process.

Set minimum prices

When you enable pay-what-you-want pricing, you can set minimum prices for appointments. If you had prices established before moving to pay-what-you-want pricing, those prices become your minimum prices. To set minimum prices:

1. In Acuity, click Appointment Types.
2. Click Edit for an appointment type.
3. Change the value in the Min Price field (for group classes) or Price field (for all other appointment types) to your minimum price.
4. Click Update Appointment Type.
5. Repeat steps 2-4 until all your appointments are updated.

Note: If you leave the Min Price field blank, the minimum price will be $0. Clients can still choose to pay more.

How clients pay

Clients have the option to pay more, but can book by paying your minimum price. If you don't have a minimum price, they can book by confirming without payment, just as they would for a free appointment, or can pay more.

Appointments with a minimum cost

An appointment has a minimum cost if:

• The appointment type has a minimum price.
• Your client adds an add-on to an appointment type without a minimum price.

Clients book appointments as normal, but their order summary includes an extra line where they add an additional payment at checkout. 

Appointments without a minimum cost

Your appointment doesn't have a minimum cost if you didn't set a minimum price and your client didn't pick an add-on that has a price.

Clients can click Confirm appointment to continue without paying or Pay what you want to pay more. 

If they opt to pay, they can enter the additional payment amount and their payment details, then click Pay & Confirm.

Add-ons and coupons

Add-ons and coupons both work with pay-what-you-want pricing. Both are applied to the minimum price that you set, and clients can still opt to add an additional amount to their payment at checkout.

Maximum prices

If you charge clients manually through Acuity, the cost of a pay-what-you-want appointment can be up to 100 times the minimum price. If the minimum price is $0, you can charge up to $100. If clients pay on their own through the scheduler, they can pay any amount they wish.

How payments appear in Acuity

When you view payments in Acuity, the cost of the appointment will be updated to include both the minimum price (if there was one) and the extra amount the client paid. The amount the client chose to add isn't broken out as a separate line.