What a nanny agency is actually booking
Most childcare businesses book a slot. A nanny agency books a conversation, and the conversation only works if the detail arrives first. A family enquiry needs children and ages, hours and days, live-in or live-out, location, start date, budget band and anything unusual about the household. A candidate registration needs a CV, availability, qualifications, first aid, references offered and areas covered.
So the question is not which calendar looks nicest. It is which route gets that detail into the place your consultants work, without personal information about children sitting in a shared inbox forever.
Three routes are worth considering, and most agencies end up using two of them together.
Custom forms into your CRM
For: almost every agency, as the primary route.
How it works: the family form and the candidate form live on your own pages, styled like the rest of the site, and post directly into your recruitment CRM or applicant tracking system. Agencies commonly run something like Bullhorn, JobAdder, Zoho Recruit or a general CRM such as HubSpot. Any of them can receive a web form; confirm the exact integration method with your vendor before the build, because the options differ between products and plans.
Strengths: you control every question, so the form asks what a consultant would ask. Conditional fields keep it short: a family choosing live-in sees the live-in questions and nobody else does. The candidate form takes a CV upload straight into the candidate record rather than into email. Records are searchable and assignable from day one.
Watch: it is a build rather than a signup, and it needs thought about consent, retention and who can see uploads. That thought is the point, given what these forms collect.
Calendly
For: booking the consultation once an enquiry is qualified, and for candidate interview slots.
Website side: an embed or a link, and routing forms on the paid tiers that can send different answers to different booking types. Check which tier carries routing and any file handling before you plan around it.
Strengths: fast to set up, reliable, familiar to candidates, good calendar and video-call connections so a first interview with an au pair overseas books itself.
Watch: it is a scheduling tool, not an intake tool. Asking a family twenty questions inside a Calendly booking is possible but unpleasant. Use it after the enquiry form, not instead of it.
Acuity
For: agencies that want scheduling with a bit more intake attached.
Website side: an embed, a scheduling page, and intake questions per appointment type.
Strengths: more flexible intake than a plain scheduler, multiple staff calendars for a team of consultants, paid consultations if you charge for a search or a registration appointment.
Watch: confirm with the vendor what it will and will not accept as an upload, and where those files are stored, before you route CVs or documents through it. Do not send identity documents or background check paperwork through any scheduling tool.
Do not route documents through the website
This is the one hard rule. Passports, visas, background check certificates, reference letters and first aid certificates should never be uploaded through a public form or emailed as attachments, and certificate images or reference numbers should never be published on a page.
Take a CV online, because a CV is a document a candidate is happy to circulate. Collect everything else at registration, in person or through whatever secure system your CRM provides, and say on the site that you do it that way. Families read that as competence.
What your site needs from whichever you use
- Two entry points on the first screen, one for families and one for candidates, each leading to its own form.
- A family form that asks the consultant's questions, with conditional sections so it never looks like a tax return.
- A candidate form with CV upload and availability, landing in the CRM as a record.
- A stated reply window, and one you meet. "We reply to family enquiries within one working day" is worth more than a chat widget.
- Confirmation on screen and by email, telling each side what happens next and roughly when.
- Consent wording that is plain, covering what you keep, why, and for how long.
- Tested on a phone, including the Instagram in-app browser, because candidates in particular arrive from social links.
- Tracking that separates the two routes, so you can see which pages produce families and which produce candidates.
Choosing
- Most agencies: custom forms into the CRM for enquiry and registration, plus Calendly or Acuity for consultations and interviews.
- Small agency, no CRM yet: Acuity for consultations and a well built enquiry form emailing a shared mailbox, with a retention habit agreed on day one.
- Team of consultants with individual diaries: Acuity or Calendly on a team plan, with routing.
- Overseas au pair interviews: whichever scheduler your video calling already lives inside.
Already running something that works? Keep it. The site's job is to get the right person into the right form with the right questions, in one tap.
Where this sits
Two routes, a detailed family enquiry and candidate registration with CV upload into your CRM are the core of a nanny and au pair agency website, and the same enquiry thinking runs through our other childcare and family websites. What each package includes is on pricing. The system holds the record. The site fills it in before the family rings the agency down the road.