Connected Academics
Connected Academics matches Australian families with tutors for K-12 maths, English and science. Both sides of that were being run out of spreadsheets, email threads and a fortnightly scramble to work out who had taught what. We designed the brand and the site, then built the platform underneath it: an admin portal for matching and scheduling, and timesheets that come straight off the lesson calendar.
The results
Enquiry to matched tutor
4× fasterParents shopping around three tutoring companies now hear back from this one first.
Admin on timesheets each fortnight
90% lessHours come off the schedule instead of out of a text message.
Lesson hours re-typed by hand
noneThe spreadsheet that pay and invoices depended on is gone.
Pay corrections per fortnight
near zeroTutors get paid the right amount the first time, so nobody has to chase it.
Tutor applications handled each month
5×Onboarding runs itself, so growing the tutor roster no longer means hiring an admin.
SEO score
out of 100Subject and year-level pages are built to be found by parents searching locally.
Matching, timesheet and admin figures are client-reported since launch. Scores measured with Lighthouse.
The challenge
Two sides of a marketplace, both handled by hand. A parent enquiry arrived as an email and sat there until someone had time to scroll a tutor spreadsheet looking for a maths teacher free on Tuesday afternoons, which usually took a few days. Tutors sent their hours in at the end of each fortnight by text, email, or whenever they remembered, and someone re-typed all of it into a spreadsheet to work out tutor pay and what to invoice each family. Hours went missing, hours got counted twice, and every correction meant an awkward message to a tutor. Nobody could answer "how many lessons ran last month" without giving up an afternoon to it.
What we built
The public site came first: a brand, clear pages for subjects, year levels and pricing, and separate intake flows for families looking for a tutor and for academics applying to teach. Behind it sits an admin portal the team now runs the business from. Enquiries arrive as structured records with year level, subject and availability already captured, so matching a tutor is a filter rather than a search. Lessons are scheduled in the portal, and timesheets build themselves from that schedule: the tutor confirms the lesson ran, the hours are already sitting there. Approvals happen on one screen, and tutor pay and family invoice totals fall out the other end. Confirmations, lesson reminders and end-of-fortnight timesheet nudges all send themselves.
How we did it
One intake for each side
Families and tutors get their own onboarding flow, each capturing exactly what a good match needs: subject, year level, availability and qualifications. Nothing arrives as a paragraph someone has to interpret.
An admin portal, not a spreadsheet
Every student, tutor, match and lesson lives in one place, with a live view of what is running this week. Matching became a filter, and the team stopped keeping the business in their heads.
Timesheets that fill themselves in
Hours come off the lesson schedule. The tutor confirms the lesson ran, an admin approves a fortnight on one screen, and tutor pay and family invoice totals are already calculated.
The messages nobody has to send
Booking confirmations, lesson reminders and end-of-fortnight timesheet nudges all fire on their own, which is most of what used to fill the inbox.
The outcomeA tutoring business that was run out of spreadsheets now runs out of a portal built for it. Families get matched inside a day, tutors log hours by confirming a lesson happened, and a fortnight of payroll takes under half an hour.
The timesheets alone changed how we work. We used to lose most of a day every fortnight chasing hours and fixing the spreadsheet. Now it is one screen, we approve it, and we get on with actually teaching.