Acuity Scheduling is an all-in-one appointment management system designed to make online booking seamless for you and your clients. When moving from SpotOn Appointments to Acuity Scheduling, take time to understand some of the differences between the two platforms, and then learn how to set up your Acuity Scheduling account.
If you have any questions when setting up your account, you can contact Acuity Scheduling Customer Support. A member of our team would be happy to help you.
What’s different?
Acuity Scheduling includes many of the booking features that you’re already familiar with, such as online scheduling, custom calendar availability, recurring appointment types, appointment reminder notifications, no-show protection, and collecting payments for appointments.
In this section, review the key differences between the two platforms, and the different terms we use to describe particular features.
Feature differences
- Currently, we only offer email support.
- There’s no commission feature that allows a team member to earn a percentage of services rendered. However, you can enable tipping so clients can add a gratuity.
- You can send appointment reminders via text and email reminders with Acuity. However, you can’t send a reminder asking a client to confirm their appointment or live chat in real time with clients.
- You can use intake forms to require clients to agree to specific terms before booking an appointment, but Acuity Scheduling doesn't support electronic signatures.
Key terms
| SpotOn Term | Acuity Scheduling Term |
| Team member | Contributor |
| Customer | Client |
Get started with Acuity
Follow the steps below to set up your Acuity account.
Note: Acuity integrates seamlessly with Squarespace websites, but you don’t need any other Squarespace offerings to use Acuity. You can also use Acuity with nearly any other website, or use it without any website at all.
Step 1 - Create your account
To get started, sign up for a free Acuity Scheduling trial. Your trial lasts for seven days.
Step 2 - Customize your classes, appointment types, and availability
Before you can start booking appointments, select the times you’re available to accept appointments with clients. You can also connect a third-party calendar to keep track of all of your appointments in one place. To prevent clients from booking an appointment when you’re busy, block off time for third-party calendar events on your Acuity calendar.
You can also set up different appointment types and classes for your service offerings. When creating an appointment type, customize the appointment duration, price, and access. Clients can then select which appointment type they want to book when they visit your scheduling page.
Step 3 - Import clients and appointments
When moving from SpotOn to Acuity, you can import your existing customers and upcoming appointments into Acuity to keep all of your information in one place.
To download your customer list from SpotOn:
- In Appointments, navigate to the Customer’s tab.
- Click Download in the top-right corner.
To download a list of future appointments, contact SpotOn support and they can work to pull a list of future appointments for you.
After exporting your data, you can import your clients and appointments into Acuity. You'll need to prepare your spreadsheets and follow the required formatting instructions. Make note of the columns and data you need to include, or download a sample spreadsheet.
If you have any questions during the import process, you can contact us here.
Step 4 - Start booking appointments
When you’re ready to start booking appointments, there are a few different ways you can share your scheduling page with your clients. You can copy a direct link to the scheduler and send it via text or email. Or you can embed the scheduler on your site pages so clients can book time with you when visiting your website.
Step 5 - Upgrade to a paid service
When your trial is about to expire, you can decide to upgrade to a paid plan and continue using Acuity.
Next steps
If you have questions as you get set up with your Acuity account, visit our dedicated Acuity Scheduling Help Center. Below are a few selected guides to help you as you get started:
- Getting started with Acuity Scheduling
- Switching to Acuity Scheduling
- Importing appointments and clients to Acuity Scheduling
If you can't find what you're looking for in our guides, contact us here.