What Acuity Scheduling is for
Acuity Scheduling is online appointment scheduling software for businesses from independent practitioners to multi-location operations, with beauty and wellness among the fields it names. A practice on it keeps the calendar, the client list, the intake forms and the packages there, and all of it stays put. The page for Acuity Scheduling sets out what stays in it, what the system builds around it and how the two connect.
A practice on a general scheduling tool often keeps the chart in one place, the payments in another and the calendar in a third. The growth system reads the calendar first, because the appointment type on each booking is the service and the date is the visit. Revenue by service comes from wherever payments are taken, margin from the product and the provider's minutes costed beside each line, and the plan for ninety days from that column. The rest is built around the calendar. Calls and DMs are answered and booked into Acuity Scheduling, with the intake link in the confirmation. Comeback timing runs by appointment type and the numbers go on one page.
The appointment types are the interval list, so name them the way you treat
Everything the comeback needs from Acuity Scheduling is in the appointment type and the date. If the types are named by treatment, the system reads a completed booking and knows what was done and when. It applies the interval your practice plans around and builds the list of who is due this week. If the types are named by duration, the first job on Monday is to rename them. The intake forms attached to each type are the second thing it uses: the link goes out in the confirmation text, and the desk sees in the morning whether it came back. The chart stays wherever your medical director keeps it, in an EMR or the documentation system in use today, and the system reads nothing from it. Which treatments carry an interval, and what the intake asks, are your medical director's decisions.
Job by job: where it lives and who does it
| Job | Where it lives | Who does it |
|---|---|---|
| The appointment and the client record | In Acuity Scheduling, as today | Your front desk and your providers |
| The appointment types and the intake forms | In Acuity Scheduling; the type names the treatment and the form goes out with the confirmation | You name the types; the patient fills the form from the link |
| Answering the call, the DM and the text in seconds | The growth system, booking into the Acuity Scheduling calendar | The voice and text agents, with handoff rules to the desk |
| Timing the comeback | Last-visit dates in Acuity Scheduling; the interval, the message and the reply in the system | The system, in the provider's voice |
| Segmenting the list for a party or a launch | The system, from the Acuity Scheduling client list | The system, with the offer written by you |
| The dashboard: calls, bookings, no-shows, revenue | The system, reading Acuity Scheduling | Read weekly by you and the front desk |
When staying on Acuity Scheduling is right
Stay on Acuity Scheduling when the booking page does what you need, the types are already named by treatment and the desk trusts the calendar. The growth system reads it, books into it and adds the follow-up the tool was never asked to do. Renaming a few appointment types is the whole setup on your side. The chart and the payments stay in their own homes.
What a switch would cost you in time
A switch from a scheduling tool takes longer than the size of the tool suggests. Every appointment type is rebuilt with its duration, its buffer and its form. The intake forms are re-created field by field, and the signed copies are archived as they were signed, with retention confirmed with counsel. The client list moves by export, packages are re-created and every holder re-enrolled, and the scheduling link is replaced on your site, your Google profile and every social bio. Through the overlap the desk books in two calendars. Any remaining term on the agreement is for counsel to read. None of that time answers the call that rang during a treatment.
How to do this on Monday
- Open the appointment types in Acuity Scheduling and rename any that say a duration instead of a treatment.
- Export last year's bookings by appointment type and sort by client; a client whose last booking of a type is older than that type's interval goes on the comeback list.
- Match last month's bookings by type to what was paid wherever you take payments, so each type has a revenue line, then cost the product and the minutes against it.
- Keep the comeback list to patients with written consent to marketing texts on record; what counts as consent is a question for counsel.
- Send ten comeback texts in Dana's voice with the scheduling link and count who books.
What to do next
NorthCore's Run the whole practice solution builds the growth system on top of Acuity Scheduling: the answering, the comeback timing, the segmentation and the dashboard, and Acuity Scheduling stays where it is. Scoped in writing and covered by the promise on this site: results in 90 days, or we keep working until you have them.
