Can Shopify and Acuity be used together for online booking?

[danielle14]

Has anyone used Shopify and Acuity in conjunction? Shopify for their POS and Acuity for scheduling? 

I would like to use Shopify to sell bookings for our cat cafe and the Acuity app to book the spot. I want this to be able to be done through our website and payment required at the time of booking. 

Is there a way to do this? 

[Tira]

Hi, danielle14.

Thanks for posting and Welcome to the Shopify Community. 

I was excited to see your question as I just found out about Acuity a few weeks ago for my own business. 

If you’re looking to add Acuity to your store, here are a few options:

1. I did some digging and it looks like Acuity has their own tutorial to embed a booking button into a page on Shopify. You check out their tutorial here: Shopify - Acuity Scheduling. To learn how to add to your Pages in the Shopify Admin, check out our help doc here: Pages. 
2. You can use an app like BookedUp, which allows you to have Acuity added as a button anywhere on your store. This app is a third-party app developed by a third-party developer. If you have any questions or comments, you can reach out directly to the third-party provider by using the information under the "Support" section of the app's page. 

The only downside to these options is that you won’t be able to take payment directly on Shopify, as Acuity does not link directly to Shopify’s payment and uses their own payment provider. You’ll still be able to take payment on Acuity’s end, just not with Shopify.

I know that it's important for you to have everything you need on one site, so I'd love to pass your question as feedback to our developers so that they are aware of how we can support you and all of our merchants to succeed. If we move forward with this, we will post an update in our changelog or announcements page. I'm open to hearing any other suggestions you have and can pass them along to our developer team for you.

I'm curious... what are you thinking of using Shopify POS for? Do you also want to sell products from your cafe?

[RosieTee]

Hey Tira,

I'm in the exact same position and would love to see Acuity integrate with Shopify POS. 

We tested so many of the Shopify scheduling apps but they just don't have the same functionality that Acuity does. We even rebuilt the system in BookThatApp and had to revert back, which was a shame. 

Would love to know if this is ever released/in progress.

Thanks!

[Ehsan_Khakbaz]

Hey @RosieTee 

I'm curious to ask what in Aquity you couldn't get with Seeami?

https://apps.shopify.com/sesami

[RosieTee]

Hi Ehsan_Khakbaz,

We needed smooth class rescheduling for individual students, side by side calendars for each location (there are three) with an easy way to view capacity, the ability to change capacity for one of many recurring classes, a list of all bookings for one customer, the ability to search for both customers and students and a super-simple interface that the whole team could use.

Do you think this is achievable with Sesami?

Thanks

[CST]

Hi @RosieTee 

I'll just jump in here to clarify BookThatApp functionality for other people reading this post. 

---

BookThatApp supports:

- Cancelling and rescheduling a booking

- A calendar view for a given location or all locations

- A list view of events and capacity that can also be filtered by location or show all locations

- A list of bookings for a specific customer

- The ability to search by product name, resource or customer name and show all bookings, or booking restricted to a certain date range

- Staff specific views of the admin, limited to their products and bookings

We don't specifically support unique capacity by date for a class, but there is an available workaround for that as well.

I can see BookThatApp is still installed on your merchant's site so feel free to reach out to us again via our support desk if there is something you want us to add to our feature request list.

Cheers

Chris

[RosieTee]

Hi @CST,

Thanks for your reply. I'm not trying to say that BookThatApp isn't a good app, it is very clever with great and numerous features. For my client, there was just such a range of classes/courses and high volume that the workarounds were slowing down the business flow.  

Just wanted to provide some honest advice for other people facing similar issues.

Thanks

[CST]

 Hi @RosieTee 

No problem at all and thanks for your feedback.   I wasn't sure if your client was fully utilising the capability of the app, so I wanted to call out the features that are available to them.  I've sent you and your merchant a direct email as well highlighting the specific features you may wish to use that solve for all of the requirements you listed, save for the capacity by date item.   If there are features missing that your client feels would improve the app, please drop us a line and let us know and we'll be happy to add them to our roadmap.  

Cheers

Chris

[RebeG]

Do either Sesami or BookThatApp have the functionality to deliver, then collect and store client in-take forms like Acuity has? @CST @Ehsan_Khakbaz I would LOVE to stay in the Shopify ecosystem, but I can't get an answer from the Sesami team.

[Ehsan_Khakbaz]

Hi @RebeG,

For storing booking specific info such as an intake form, we recommend using Shopify product custom option, more info on our help desk:
https://help.sesami.co/hc/en-us/articles/360046615594-How-can-I-add-customized-info-for-products-

Using a compatible app like https://apps.shopify.com/custom-options is the same. The custom data will be saved as line item props and even other apps can read them.

We'd LOVE to have you use the booking capabilities of Shopify apps and make you stay!

Best,

Ehsan

[CST]

Hi @RebeG  

Thanks for reaching out!

BookThatApp  supports the creation of an intake form using the native booking fields in the app.  This allows you to ask questions or gather additional information from a client along with the booking date and time.  The app also supports capturing this information for each participant which is useful if you are running classes or taking group bookings.  This information is stored in the booking and is also accessible via Custom Reporting if you are a Premium app subscriber.    

Feel free to drop us a line at support@zetya.com or get us on chat at https://support.zetya.com  if you want us to help you get started.  You can add the app to a back up version of your store and test it without impacting your live store.

Cheers

Chris

[Mylashdealerr]

Hi @CST 

Does BTA, take deposits for services?

[Jayme_Welch]

This is key for service providers like day spas, hair salons, etc. People don't typically pay for these services upfront. Some might, but it is not the norm.  They also sell products along with their services. There needs to be a way to select all of these things, book the appointment and then let the customer pay upon checkout. Is there anyone who has implemented this successfully on Shopify? 

[CST]

Hi @Jayme_Welch & @Mylashdealerr 

BookThatApp supports taking both a partial deposit for a service or a refundable security bond for a rental item for merchants on our Premium Plan or higher.    For either the deposit or the security bond, you can set the value as a percentage of the service price or as a set amount.   For deposits, the app then automatically generates an order for the balance of payment when the service is performed .  For security bonds, the bond amount can be partially or fully refunded when the item is returned, based on the time it was returned and the condition of the rental item.

BookThatApp also provides a BookNow button which is quite popular with our appointment customers as many merchants booking services don't want customers to have to check out when making a no charge appointment.     

The advantage of an embedded booking app such as BookThatApp is that it keeps the customer within your Shopify store at all time.  This means that the customer isn't sent to a third party platform to complete the booking, the order information is retained in your Shopify store and there is no separate accounting for booking transactions.  It also allows you to take an order for a physical product and an appointment in the same transaction. 

Feel free to drop us a line at support@zetya.com if you would like us to enable deposits or security bonds for your store or if you have any further questions.

Cheers,

Chris

[LF4]

But is there any way to just do a credit card capture so that salons are protected from no shows? For instance, a client wants to book a free consultation. We require that they enter their cc info into Acuity in case they skip the appointment.  If I'd have to charge a deposit, rather than just requiring the cc info, then every time a client does show up, we would have to manually refund each customer.

[CST]

Hi @LF4 

Unfortunately Shopify doesn't offer merchants the option to store credit cards.  You could set your payment settings to "Authorize" rather than "Authorize and Charge" and this would reserve the payment against the card.  Please see https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/payments/payment-authorization for more information.   This would then create an authorization that would expire after a set period of time, such as 7 days.  Hope that helps!

Chris

[Jayme_Welch]

It's been a while, but I wanted to provide feedback that on the admin side, places like spas need to manage rooms and technicians. They may have 15 techs and 5 rooms, for example. Just because a tech is available doesn't mean a room is. It is the combination that creates the booking. MyTime does this, but doesn't have direct integration with Shopify. You have to complete the booking outside of Shopify. 

[sarahpeacock]

@RebeG, did you end up staying on Shopify and finding a solid booking system? 
Feel free to message me instead, if you prefer.

One year after this post and I still see industry standard features that are missing from both BookThatApp and Sesami.  (cc @CSTE, @Ehsan_Khakbaz)

[Ehsan_Khakbaz]

Hi @RosieTee,

Current Sesami features based on your requirements:

1. Smooth class rescheduling for individual students:
   Available on Sesami
2. Side by side calendars for each location (there are three) with an easy way to view capacity:
   Achievable by loading Sesami calendars on 3 browsers and selecting the location staff on each one.
3. The ability to change capacity for one of many recurring classes
4. Achievable assuming changing on series of recurring classes. The max number of group participants is editable for each recurring service, however not for one single session of a series. It means it's one size for the sessions of the same class.
5. A list of all bookings for one customer
   Available on the appointment list page by simply filtering appointments of particular a customer.
6. The ability to search for both customers and students
   I didn't quite get the difference between students and customers. Could you elaborate more?
7. A super-simple interface that the whole team could use.
   Done. Sesami interface is the simplest to use.

[Gavinator]

@danielle14 Just so you know you can do this in Shopify with our App: https://apps.shopify.com/bookthatapp We even have a few folks using us for cat cafe appointments - e.g. https://www.purrth.com/collections/ticket-types

Payments are taken via Shopify, and the billing for the App is also handled in Shopify.

Thanks, Gavin.

(@Tira BookThatApp supports a Shopify staff plan 😉)

[TWJ808]

Our Shopify store uses Acuity for managing services we provide outside of merchandise sales and also to schedule customers visiting our brick and mortar store. Our solution was to create a blank page on our Shopify site and copy & paste the HTML code to embed the scheduler on our website. Though as has been pointed out, payments you take through Acuity will be separate from the Shopify ecosystem and you'll have to do your own manual accounting for that.

[Ehsan_Khakbaz]

Hi @danielle14,

Great question! but don't you think managing customer and booking data in two different systems will be super complicated? And you won't be able to use that data for good, to create a personalized experience.

We built Sesami for the same reason!
Book on both the online store and the POS and keep the same customer record. Data at one place and all bookings will be reflected under the same customer profile.

Book a call and we'll tell you more about it.

[BerlinMeta27]

Hey guys!

New to this convo, but in 2023 I'm still having trouble finding an all-around solution to replace Acuity.  I'd much rather have everything handled inside the Shopify ecosystem instead of customers having to book and be managed through a 3rd party embed.  The absolute necessities are as follows:

- Ability to take deposits/partial payments and charge the customer upon arrival

- Options for customer to "Add-On" services to their booking

- A fully functioning calendar with controlled access via admin portal

- Fully customizable css to match the branding of the website

- Intake forms 

- Alternative payment methods (Afterpay, Sezzle, etc)

Has either Sesami or BTA been updated to offer all of these features in one?

Thanks!

[LF4]

Has this been updated? The credit card capture is still a huge problem!!!