The premium account allows you to do all of the above, plus specify the play format – doubles, singles or drills; specify genders – so you can create a men’s doubles or women’s doubles sessions, or have Playtime Scheduler make sure you have an equal number of male and female players for a mixed doubles session; prevent participants from adding guests (so only registered Playtime Scheduler users are able to participate in your session); and prevent players of the wrong skill level from joining your session by making the session appear as a private session or by blocking sign up altogether.

The power account allows you to do all of the above plus gives you access to some additional features that are very useful.

• You can enable the wait list feature and specify the size of wait list desired (how many players deep). This makes session management so much easier because when a player drops out of your session, the next person on the wait list automatically moves up. This means you don’t have to text people whether they are in or out of the session because Playtime Scheduler automatically sends these notifications.

• Create events. You can highlight specific play sessions by giving them a name (e.g. if it’s someone’s birthday or if you have a special out of town visitor or pro joining the session).

• Set a maximum number of guests for each participant. Premium users can allow or disallow guests but power user can set a limit. Rather than allowing an unlimited number of guests, you can limit each participant to one/two guests (or whatever number you choose). This will prevent one person and all of their friends from taking up all of the spots in your play session. Additionally, premium and power users can add the names of their specific guests to the list, which is another useful feature that I often use.

• Create repeating sessions (up to 8 weeks). If you play every week on the same day, at the same time, with the same player criteria and session settings, you can create multiple sessions all at once rather than creating these one at a time. This is a real time saver! There is a limit of 8 weeks to ensure that there aren’t any outdated sessions that are no longer valid that people have just forgotten about.

• Create sessions you don’t plan to attend. With a free account, you’re always listed as the first player in your session so you would (a) have to increase your maximum player count by one if you’re not actually playing because you’re taking up a spot or (b) remember to take your name off the list once others have signed up. As a power user, you can choose whether or not to list yourself as a participant. This is great if you want others to be aware of a session but aren’t actually playing.

• View a log of session activity. You can see not just who is signed up for a session but when they added or removed themselves. If you are suddenly short a player, you can easily see who dropped out at the last minute by checking the activity log.

• Block specific players from your sessions. This goes along with the above feature in that if you notice that someone always drops out at the last minute or if you have someone who is constantly a no-show, leaving you in a bind, you can block that player from future sessions you create. I’ve personally never had to use this feature but it’s nice to know that there is an option to block players. It doesn’t have to be for no-shows or last-minute cancellations. Maybe you just don’t like someone. If you’re a power user, you can block them.

• Delete players or notes on your own sessions. It’s nice to have this control over your session. I’ve never just arbitrarily removed someone from my session because I wanted someone on the wait list I like better to move up. However, there have been times that someone will text me that they can’t make it and they don’t remove themselves from the list so then the wait listed player can’t move up. In this case, I like that I have the ability to delete them. Sometimes the notes section can get cluttered so it’s also nice to have the ability to delete notes that may no longer be relevant.

• You can create a less cluttered calendar view by turning off individual locations so they’re not displayed, hiding private sessions you aren’t invited to, hiding sessions that aren’t for your gender/level, and hiding sessions for skill levels that aren’t relevant to you (e.g. too high or too low). Additionally, you can assign custom colors to locations so you can easily scan for sessions that might be of interest based location/proximity.

• You can also declutter your email inbox by customizing your email notifications to only trigger for specific locations.