Cages are not interchangeable, so Picktime books the one somebody actually wants: the machine speed, the tunnel length, the one with the mound. Half-hour slots run back to back without colliding, and a lesson holds the cage and the coach together. A weekly block that ends on the date you gave it is on the paid plans.
Blu CagesBook online
Cage 330m · 70mph$22.00
Hitting lesson1h · with coach$70.00
Cage 130m · soft tossBook
Next free5:00 PM6:00 PM7:30 PM
Cage and coach
Both free
Or the hour is not offered
Deposit
$17.50
25% on the hour lesson
Weekly block
Ends 24 Mar
Then five o’clock comes back
A facility with four cages does not have four of anything. It has a slow machine, a fast one, a tunnel long enough for a mound and one everybody wants at five.
List every tunnel with what is in it: machine speed, length, whether it takes a mound. People book the one they need instead of arriving to find the only fast machine is taken.
Hitting instruction needs a coach and a cage at the same moment, so Picktime only offers a time when both are free. That is what stops a lesson landing in a tunnel a birthday party already has.
On the paid plans a hitter who takes five o’clock every Tuesday books it as a block with a last date, not a standing claim on your best hour. When the block finishes the slot is back in the evening on its own.
Take the slot fee or a deposit when somebody books, through a payment provider you connect. Five o’clock on a Tuesday in February is worth holding properly rather than holding on trust.
A busy cage runs ten bookings an evening on the same tunnel, and every one of them has to end exactly where the next begins.
Picktime only offers slots that fit the lengths you sell, so a thirty-minute booking cannot be made to overlap a sixty.
Each cage keeps its own hours, so the tunnel you give to a team on Wednesday nights is not on the public page on Wednesday nights, and a team that hires the whole facility takes every tunnel out of the diary in one booking rather than four.
Most of the bookings on a cage diary are made by a parent for a player, and paid for by the parent, and turned up to by the player.
Every booking keeps the player’s name and the contact who made it, so the confirmation goes to the person who can act on it (as does the reminder, on the paid plans), while the record is against the person who is hitting.
Their record carries every session they have had, so a coach picking up somebody else’s Tuesday knows what has been worked on rather than starting from a blank sheet.
Twenty past five on a Tuesday in February, which is the busiest half hour of your year. A hitting lesson is booked into cage two and a birthday party of eight has just been let into cage two, because the party was written on a whiteboard in the office and the lesson was in the coach’s phone.
Cage one is free and it has the soft-toss machine, which is no use to either of them. Cage three has the fast machine and a hitter in it until six.
Picktime books each tunnel as the tunnel it is, holds the coach with the cage, and will not offer an hour when either of them is taken.
8In the birthday party let into cage two
3Public bookings to move or refund
List every tunnel separately with its machine, its speed and its length, and the hours it can be booked. A cage that a team has on Wednesdays keeps those hours off the public page.
Say what you sell (thirty minutes, an hour, a lesson) and add the coaches who give instruction, so a lesson is only ever offered when a coach and a cage are both free.
The booking page is a link, so it goes on your site behind a Book Now button, in the team group chat and on a QR code by the door. A parent booking at ten at night books at ten at night.
The hour your phone rings hardest is the hour every tunnel is running and every member of staff is on the floor.
The free plan is a plan, not a trial. There is no date at which it stops, no card to add, and nothing that quietly turns off in a fortnight.
A cage booking lands in the calendar your coaches already have open, and the paid plans sync it both ways, so when it moves there it moves here. Put a Book Now button or a booking widget on your own site so a parent checking Tuesday never has to ring the desk.
Picktime runs in a browser on a phone or a tablet as well as a laptop, and there are iOS and Android apps, so whoever is on the floor at five can see the next hour without going to the office.
It is worth deciding first whether you need a booking diary or a league system. Generating fixtures for twenty teams across five fields is a different product. If the job is selling half hours in four tunnels and keeping lessons off the wrong cage, that is a booking diary, and Picktime is free for a single facility.
Yes. Picktime’s free plan gives you a booking page for your cages, every tunnel bookable as itself and an email confirmation on every booking, with no card and no end date. Weekly slots booked as a block and reminders are on the paid plans. There are iOS and Android apps as well as the browser version.
Yes, and for most facilities they should. Each tunnel is listed with its machine, its speed and its length, so somebody who needs the seventy-mile-an-hour cage books the seventy-mile-an-hour cage rather than turning up hoping.
Yes. Instruction needs both at the same moment, so Picktime only offers an hour when the coach is free and a cage is free with them. That is the collision most whiteboards cannot prevent.
Yes, on the paid plans. A weekly hitter books as a block with a last date on it rather than an open-ended claim on your best hour, and the slot returns to the evening on its own when the block ends.
Yes, through PayPal on the free plan or Stripe or Square on a paid one. Take the full slot fee or a deposit, set differently for cage time and for lessons, so peak evenings are held with money rather than on trust.
Yes. A booking can take every tunnel out of the diary at once rather than being entered four times, and the hours a team holds regularly can be kept off the public page altogether.
Nobody publishes install numbers we would trust, so we are not going to name one. The tools with the widest reach are general meeting schedulers, and a cage facility is close to the worst fit for one, because they book a person’s time and you are selling a tunnel. Judge the field on whether the cage is a bookable thing in its own right, which is the question that actually separates them.
Two categories share that name and they solve opposite problems. League apps generate fixtures, standings and umpire assignments across a season, and if you run a competition that is what you want. Facility apps sell time in a building, which is this: four tunnels, an hour each, with the coach held alongside the cage when the hour is a lesson. Work out which of the two you are shopping for before you compare anything, because almost nothing does both well.
Hitting simulators are their own product and have nothing to do with booking software. If you run bays with them, the booking side is no different from a tunnel: the bay is the thing being booked, it holds one party at a time, and the machine or the screen is only what happens to be in it. List simulator bays as separate services from the live-arm cages, or somebody who wanted the screen ends up booked in front of a machine.
Bays by the hour Bays booked by the hour, back to back, all winter.
See golf simulator scheduling Squads and sessions Squad sessions and one-to-ones, with a register that shows who is turning up.
See baseball coaching scheduling
Halls and courts Halls and courts booked by clubs who all want the same two hours.
See sports facility schedulingFree forever for one facility. No card, no trial clock, and every cage can be bookable this evening.
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