I’ve tested Squarespace’s Acuity Scheduling: should your business use it?

Is Acuity Scheduling any good for your business?

I tested Squarespace’s Acuity Scheduling via my existing Squarespace account. Source: Startups.co.uk

Before I dive into my experience using Acuity Scheduling, here’s a quick overview of the tool’s main pros and cons:

My experience using Acuity Scheduling

I worked through the three steps, from creating appointments to designing my scheduling page. Source: Startups.co.uk

I could sign up for Acuity Scheduling from its dedicated page on the Squarespace website by clicking the ‘Try Scheduling’ button. Alternatively, I could navigate to the tool through my existing Squarespace website – you can find it under ‘Scheduling’ in the account dashboard sidebar. That said, you don’t need a Squarespace website to use the tool.

Once on the Acuity Scheduling page, I was presented with three onboarding steps to help me get started, which I’ll walk through below:

1. Create appointments

Acuity Scheduling first asked me to create the appointments I wanted. By clicking on the instruction, a drop-down box appears. From here, I could choose the appointment size (personal or class), set the duration length, and assign pricing to the appointment. All in all, this took me seconds to set up.

The additional settings accessible from this step let me make further changes, such as adding new appointment types, and creating add-ons or coupons. This page also gave me the chance to set ‘Global Scheduling Limits’, which basically means I could create rules to apply across all appointment types. For example, I decided to allow customers to reschedule or cancel bookings if needed.

I found the appointment creator incredibly simple and quick to use. Source: Startups.co.uk

2. Set availability

The next thing Acuity Scheduling asked me to do was set my schedule. This helps customers know when you’re available so they can find an appointment that best suits their calendar.

At this stage, I could set which days and times I was available. I could even add rows for each day if I had multiple time windows to display – as you can see from the image further below. This let me create a unique calendar based on my schedule and business needs.

And, similar to creating appointment types, there are additional settings with this step too. For example, I could create more calendars if I had multiple employees with different availability, and I could set resources or rooms for different appointment types.

I had so much flexibility when setting my availability as Acuity Scheduling let me customise my calendar completely. Source: Startups.co.uk

3. Design your scheduling page

The final onboarding step is to customise your scheduling page. This is what customers and clients see when booking an appointment with your business. For such a design-focused website builder, I expected more styling options when I first reached this stage.

Instead, I had very limited options. I could pick between two templates: monthly or daily. I chose the monthly template as it provided a clear overview of what’s available long-term, as opposed to the focused daily view. The only other areas I could customise were the font type, colour scheme, business information, and business logo. Unfortunately, Acuity Scheduling didn’t pull my brand colours through from my existing Squarespace website (despite working from the same account) so I had to enter these again.

If you have good coding knowledge, you can add custom code to the ‘Advanced CSS’ section, but this isn’t something I’d recommend beginners play around with.

I had limited customisation options when designing my scheduling page. Source: Startups.co.uk

While working through this step, I appreciated the box to the right which gave me a preview of the page so I could see my edits immediately. This can be expanded to give a better view, or you can see the live page.

Before wrapping up the third suggested step, I also clicked on ‘Scheduling Page Options’ in the sidebar. This presented a list of checkbox options for me to toggle on or off and personalise my scheduling page.

‘Show “Schedule another Appointment” button’ (in case customers want to book multiple classes or meetings) and ‘Services: Hide Spots Left’ (so customers can only see availability and not the demand) are the only two selected by default. Other options are available, such as ‘Require Phone Number’ and ‘Hide Prices’.

Once I’d completed these three steps, I could then browse further customisation options and Acuity settings. After the initial set-up, I would definitely recommend following up with these – setting up payments and syncing your calendar are particularly useful for small businesses.

Acuity Scheduling features

Acuity Scheduling boasts a wealth of features to help simplify and streamline appointment management. It’s self-described as a tool with “everything you need to schedule anything”.

All three Acuity Scheduling plans include the following features:

• Automatic email notifications – for example, you can remind customers about appointments to keep no-shows to a minimum
• Calendar syncing – I could sync my Acuity Scheduling account to existing calendars, such as Google Calendar, iCloud, and Outlook
• Accept payments online – use popular payment processors like Stripe, Square, or PayPal when customers book appointments with you (these can be set up under ‘Payment Settings’)
• Invoicing – create, customise, and send invoices to clients through your Acuity Scheduling account (this is really useful for freelancers)
• Scheduling reports – get personalised reports which share data on areas like revenue, customers, and the number of appointments flowing through your business

I could set up various email automations, including a new option to send a receipt after the customer has paid for the appointment. Source: Startups.co.uk

The Emerging plan includes one calendar, the Growing plan permits up to six calendars, and the Powerhouse plan includes up to 36 calendars. Most businesses will be fine with a single calendar, but you’ll need to upgrade if you have multiple employees, schedules, and locations.

For example, the Growing plan introduces automated text reminders to customers and subscriptions to help build customer engagement. And, at the next level, the Powerhouse plan adds the ability to have multiple time zones, which is great if your business is spread across international markets.