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Tracking appointment referral sources

You can track how clients reach your scheduler. For example, you can track whether they clicked a link in an email or navigated to your website. This is called tracking referral sources.

This guide explains how to:

  • Create an internal form to track the referral source of each appointment
  • Edit your Acuity links to enter data in that internal form automatically
  • Run reports to learn which referral sources generate the most appointments.

This process is intended for people with advanced knowledge of Acuity. It measures where people are accessing your scheduler, even if it isn’t embedded in a website. If you use a Squarespace website, people accessing direct links in emails and other channels other than your website won’t show up in your traffic sources, but will show up with this method.

Step 1 - Create an intake form

Create an internal form that’s attached to all of your appointments. Internal forms are never visible to clients, but you and your staff can view and edit them.

You’ll use customized web addresses to automatically fill out this form, then run reports to track the answers. To create the form:

  1. In Acuity, click Intake forms.
  2. Click New custom form.
  3. Enter Referral Source as the form name.
  4. Click Textbox to add a textbox question to the form.
  5. Enter Source as the question, and leave the Size drop-down menu on Small.
  6. In the Internal use only section, check This form is for internal use only, don't show it to clients.
  7. In the Show this form when scheduling section, ensure the boxes for all your appointment types are checked.
  8. Click Save Question and form.

Step 2 - Find your question’s ID number

Every question on every Acuity form has an ID number. In this step, you’ll find the ID number for the question you created in Step 1.

Use the Acuity email template editor to find the question ID number. The template editor can add code to email templates to pull in specific details about upcoming appointments. The template editor’s code for the question you created includes the question ID number.

To find your question’s ID number:

  1. In Acuity, click Client Email. (Client Email may be under Emails & Texts.)
  2. One of your email notification templates will load. Click the template to enter the template editor.
  3. Click Insert field.
  4. Scroll down to the Intake form answers section, and click Source. The code for your question will appear in your email template.
  5. Copy the code for your question, and paste it somewhere you'll be able refer to later.
  6. Save the ID number from the code you copied, and delete the rest. For example, if your code was %form:10306936%, you’d save 10306936 and delete the rest.
  7. Leave the template editor without saving your changes.

Step 3 - Create customized scheduling page links

Structure your links so that your internal form is filled out automatically when clients book:

  1. Get your scheduling page link. For example, https://example.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=123456.
  2. Edit your scheduling page by adding &field: to the end of the link, then pasting your ID number. For example, https://example.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=123456&field:10306936.
Note: You must type the &field parameter in lower case because parameters are case sensitive. 
  1. Add = to the end of the URL.
  2. Add the text you want returned in the internal form after the =. To see example URLs, visit these instructions.

Step 4 - View referral sources

With your URLs in place, you can track where clients are scheduling appointments.

View an individual referral source

When clients use your links to schedule appointments, the words from the end of the URL will prefill as answers to the question you created. To see the answer for a specific appointment, open the appointment details. Your question will be near the bottom of the page, with the word from the URL as the answer.

Use reports to track all referrals

You can run reports using the internal form to see how many appointments came from each referral source and how much revenue they generated. You can also export a spreadsheet that includes referral sources.

To run a report:

  1. In Acuity, click Reports.
  2. Click Intake forms.
  3. Use the Form Question drop-down menu to select Source.
  4. Use the other controls to choose a date range, calendars, and types of appointments shown, then click Show.

To export a spreadsheet:

  1. In Acuity, click Reports.
  2. Click Import/export.
  3. Choose a date range.
  4. Optional: Check the box to include canceled appointments.
  5. In the Forms section, check the box for Referral source.
  6. Click Export appointments to download a .csv file.

Example URLs

These examples show how you could edit your scheduler’s URL to automatically provide different answers in your internal form tracking referral sources.

  • A holiday sale - https://example.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=123456&field:10306936=HOLIDAY.
  • Halloween promotion - https://example.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=123456&field:10306936=HALLOWEEN
  • Embedded in your website - https://example.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=123456&field:10306936=WEBSITE
  • Linked in Acuity's automated follow-up emails - https://example.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=123456&field:10306936=FOLLOWUP
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