Acuity Scheduling App Guide: What the Admin App Does and Where It Stops

What the Admin app is, and who leans on it

The Acuity Scheduling Admin app is the iOS and Android app for business owners and staff. It lets you see and book appointments, contact clients, take payments and get alerts on the go, and it is included on every Acuity plan ^[1], at no extra cost. Think of it as a remote control for the business. The web dashboard stays the control room, where services, forms, wording and billing are set up, while the app runs the day.

The people who lean on it most are mobile practitioners, front desks and owners who are rarely at a computer. A massage therapist who works in clients' homes books clients from the app and takes payment through Square. A surf school owner works from the beach and says the app has been a huge help to stay mobile. Desk-bound teams use it mostly for alerts. Businesses where one person manages bookings at a desk all day may never need it, and clinics with strict device policies may prefer the web. For everyone else, install it on day one.

The client app is gone

There used to be a second app for clients. As of February 20, 2026, the Acuity Scheduling Client mobile app is no longer available for download, and clients now book in a mobile browser or add your scheduler to their home screen, where it opens like an app. Older blog posts still describe the client app. Ignore them. A client who used to tap an icon to rebook now opens a link, so businesses with many repeat clients should send them the direct link once and suggest adding it to the home screen. Paired with client accounts, that replaces most of what the client app did.

This matters more than it sounds, because most clients book on phones. Acuity cites a figure that "82% of clients use mobile devices to book", and your scheduling page works in any mobile browser. Test the booking flow on a phone after every change to services, forms or templates, because a form that is easy on a laptop can be tedious on a small screen. The client experience is mobile even if yours is not.

Getting set up in ten minutes

Download the Acuity Scheduling Admin app from the App Store or Google Play and log in with your Squarespace or Acuity account. New accounts log in with a Squarespace account, and older accounts converted to Squarespace logins gain two-factor authentication. Each staff member should use their own contributor login with the right access level, so that permissions and push alerts match their calendars. Do not share the owner login. The app is available in English, while the scheduler can show in 12 languages and the account in six, so non-English teams should test it first. Then run through a short setup:

• Pick your calendars and turn on push alerts for bookings and cancellations.
• Connect Stripe or Square if you have not already.
• Enable tipping with a sensible default.
• Turn on billing alerts.
• Book one test appointment and check it out.

The app works from the first day of the trial, so you can try all of this before paying, including Tap to Pay with a $2 charge. Book test appointments and test push alerts too, so nothing surprises you on the first real day. Remember that emails and texts stay off during the trial, and do not subscribe in the app when the trial ends.

Running the calendar from your phone

Booking, moving and canceling

The app shows your calendar by day and lets you switch between calendars you can access; staff see only what their access level allows, and video links appear in each appointment's location. To book, tap to add an appointment, choose the service, client and time, and save. Custom times let you book outside the usual start intervals, so a walk-in at a busy salon can be booked in under a minute between regular slots and still get the same confirmation and reminders as an online booking. Staff can book outside availability with a warning. The Recurring button repeats an appointment, up to 52 recurring appointments for a client, so a trainer can book a whole season at once.

Moving an appointment is a drag on the calendar, and clients receive a change notice by email, and by text on plans with texts. Drag carefully on a small screen. When you cancel, you can mark the appointment as a no-show, and if the client saved card details at booking, you can then collect payment. Marking no-shows consistently keeps your records honest.

Blocking time and changing hours

Block time for breaks, travel or errands, and tap Repeat to make a block weekly. Blocked time does not affect classes and does not appear on synced outside calendars. Blocking a daily 30-minute lunch once with a weekly repeat removes about two and a half hours a week from online availability, so clients stop booking into the gap. You set it once.

You can also change hours for a day, add time off or open extra slots from the app. Larger changes, such as new limits or availability groups, are easier in a browser. The app follows your plan's calendar limit: one on Starter, two to six on Standard, seven to 36 on Premium, unlimited on Enterprise. Adding a calendar beyond the limit means upgrading, and the app does not change those caps.

Clients, services and quick edits

You can create new appointment types, group classes, add-ons and appointment coupon codes in the app, and edit prices and durations from the phone. Coupons for packages, gift certificates and subscriptions are a different story: those need a desktop or mobile browser, as do class waitlists. Labels work halfway too. You can only add existing labels to appointments from the app, so create them in a browser first. Each appointment carries one label, clients never see it, and it suits flags like deposits paid, first visits or VIPs. Create the basics in the app and fine-tune in a browser.

Opening a client shows contact details, history, notes and form answers, and private notes stay visible to staff but not to clients, so a trainer can track session notes between visits. Deleting a client deletes all their appointments. Avoid it on the phone. The app can import phone contacts to grow your client list, but import selectively. For a full migration from another system, use CSV import in a browser, up to 500 rows per file. You can also ban a client from scheduling through the app. A ban blocks online booking by that email address, but it does not stop a client who uses a new one, so combine bans with deposits for repeat offenders.

Alerts and summaries

The app can push alerts when clients book, cancel, reschedule or join the waitlist, and each staff member gets alerts for the calendars they can access. Turn on only the alerts you act on. Too many get ignored. A front desk receiving every booking, change, cancellation and waitlist join on six calendars may see dozens a day, so give each person alerts for their own calendar and leave account-wide alerts to the owner. Booking alerts for the whole account go only to the owner's login email anyway. Waitlist push alerts work for services, not classes, and the waitlist itself needs Standard or Premium.

One alert protects the business more than the rest. Enable billing push notifications, because a declined renewal is retried three more times, and an expired subscription stops bookings. Beyond the phone, staff can receive email or text notifications set on each calendar, and reminder copies can go to staff emails. Owners also get daily or weekly summary emails of upcoming appointments, with weekly summaries on by default and daily ones sent between 4 PM and 11 PM. Read the weekly one on Sunday evening.

Taking payments at the counter

Which processor works where

From the app you can manage settings for your connected payment processor, send invoices and send payment links. You can connect Stripe, Square or PayPal, one account per processor, but in-person payments in the app need Stripe or Square ^[2]. PayPal can be connected but not used for in-app payments, so a business that connected only PayPal can send links from the phone but cannot take Tap to Pay or reader payments at the counter. Stripe and Square cannot run together, and if you change processors, active client subscriptions fail until cards are re-entered. Choose once, on a computer if possible.

Tap to Pay and card readers

With Stripe, you can take contactless payments on your phone if you are US-based, take dollars and use version 18.0 or later of the app, on an iPhone XS with iOS 16 or later or an Android 10 phone with NFC ^[3]. It accepts Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay. With an older phone, plan to buy a Stripe M2 reader instead, which requires a business in the 50 US states or Puerto Rico taking US dollars. A reader is faster than typing card numbers.

With Square, you can take cards, cash, Tap to Pay, a Square Reader or a Square Stand; Tap to Pay with Square needs app version 81.0.0 and Android 9 or a recent iPhone, and it does not work on an iPad. Square card readers work with Acuity only in the United States. Outside the US, card readers and Tap to Pay are not available, and new card numbers cannot be keyed into the app, though cards on file can be charged. International businesses should collect payment online at booking.

The checkout tab and saved cards

The point of sale behind all this launched on November 5, 2025, for US businesses, letting them accept payments and tips and close out appointments in the app. Its checkout tab shows balances owed and appointments happening now, in the past eight hours or up to 10 hours ahead. An evening clinic can still close out the morning's visits, but anything older must be charged from the appointment itself. If a client saved a card at booking, you can charge it afterward, up to 150% of the price to cover tips or fees, with Stripe or Square as the only processor. On an $80 service that allows a total of $120. It keeps checkout fast.

Links, deposits, tips, invoices and cash

Payment links go out by text or email whenever you like, which recovers a forgotten payment the same day. The amount cannot be changed when sending from the app, and links need settings that allow paying in full. If you only accept deposits, the link charges the deposit rather than the remaining balance, so collect the rest by charging a saved card or recording cash.

Tipping needs Administrator access to enable on the phone, and mobile tipping works separately from scheduler tipping, with a default of 0%. On deposits, tips are calculated on the full price. On a $90 facial the scheduler's 18% default suggests $16.20, while the app suggests nothing, so align the two defaults before your first in-person checkout. The gap is easy to miss.

Invoices allow one email address and one tax line, send no overdue reminders, and do not change an appointment's payment status; use them for corporate clients and links for individuals. Record cash in the appointment every time. A recorded cash payment tracks revenue, while simply marking an appointment paid does not, and a barber who skips one in five cuts will see a report about 20% short.

What still needs a browser

The app is not a setup tool. To set up or edit more advanced settings, Acuity sends you to a computer or a mobile web browser. Subscription management, scheduler wording, QR codes, package coupons and class waitlists all live there, and printing is not possible from the app. A practical routine is a laptop session once a week for setup work such as wording, forms, QR codes, package coupons and billing, with every other day run from the phone. For QR codes, download the PNG once on a computer and keep it on your phone to show at the counter.

The subscription deserves its own warning. You can subscribe from the app, but at a higher price than on the web ^[4], and plans bought in the app are managed through Apple. Later upgrades, refunds and cycle changes then follow Apple's process instead of Squarespace billing. Subscribe on the web. Upgrades, downgrades, cycle changes and cancellations all happen on a computer or in a mobile browser, and the app shows billing alerts but does not change plans. Bookmark the billing page on your phone browser.

How front desks, mobile practitioners and studios use it

A front desk keeps a tablet or phone open on the checkout tab with a card reader paired, push alerts on only for new bookings and cancellations, and every appointment closed at checkout with cash recorded. Clean records make month-end easy. Morning is the day view and client notes, midday a walk-in with a custom time, afternoon a tap to pay and tip, plus a payment link for a client who left early. Evening is the summary email.

A mobile practitioner sets padding for travel time so the app never offers impossible slots, uses Tap to Pay and payment links instead of a reader, charges saved cards for no-shows and keeps client notes on the phone. One mobile massage therapist uses buffer time to drive between clients. Run that way, the whole working week can happen without opening a laptop. Evenings need a decision, though: Acuity's fitness data shows weekday bookings peak around 6 PM, so push alerts arrive after hours.

A studio uses the app to check class rosters and mark attendance, and the web to create class series and waitlists. Push alerts show new sign-ups, full classes can be duplicated to open new sessions, and the checkout tab handles drop-in payments. Studios run on the roster. For the wider product, see our Acuity Scheduling review and our guide to Acuity integrations.

The bottom line

The Acuity Admin app is a solid daily tool on every plan: bookings, alerts, payments, Tap to Pay and checkout. It is not a setup tool, and it cannot manage your subscription. We would still like package coupons, QR codes, wording edits and class waitlists in the app, and Tap to Pay outside the US. Until then, the routine is simple. Subscribe on the web, set up on a computer, and run the day from the app, remembering that clients now book in the browser and that HIPAA-enabled accounts log out after four hours of inactivity, so lock your phone.