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When I had a PT nanny i felt better giving her reliable hours, and I sometimes sent her home early. It also gives the option to use that time for little errands and things. I guess it depends how often that would happen though.

My MIL is our nanny, essentially. We pay her a flat rate and have set hours / days. About once a month we need more hours, and once a month we have less, and it all evens out. This is mainly through Saturday babysitting, 3 day weekends, or coming home from work early on an early release (we are teachers and sometimes take 1/2 personal days.)

When we had a full time nanny, we paid a flat rate, but then also paid overtime if we went over our agreed upon hours. So she was guaranteed a certain amount of money each week, whether we had a snow day, or one of us stayed home with a sick kid or whatever. BUT if I had a rare late night (Like Meet the Teacher night at my school), then I paid her the hourly rate for those additional hours. So there was no benefit to me to come home early or whatever--I got in the habit of just using that time to run errands by myself, since I knew I'd be paying her anyway.

HOWEVER, now we have a part time PM sitter--similar to your situation. She just keeps my oldest from 2:30-4:30 each day, so it's really part time. She is much younger, a full time college student (or was, now she's transitioning into being a police officer) and I asked her in the interview what she expected, and she kind of lowballed herself (her only previous experience was a part time job at Old Navy) in terms of pay and benefits. So she asked for only $13/hr (that's extremely low for our area) and didn't expect to be paid for days she didn't work. We offered her $15/hour for 1 kid and $18 for the times she has both kids (other kid is in daycare), and we pay her if we don't need her on a day, but we *don't* pay her if she asks to take a day off. She was thrilled, and we got a good deal for our area, so it was a win win. Because of police academy, she's had a fair amount of days she couldn't work and my husband had to rearrange his schedule and work from home, and she didn't get paid for those days. Also, with our part time sitter, we sometimes do an "hours switch", where if she takes off one day, then we ask her to do a date night that weekend to make up the hours. When we had a full time nanny, that was explicitly stated in the contract that it's NOT done, and date nights were paid at the regular hourly rate.

So long story short, each nanny/sitter we've had negotiated different things. But it's also based on precious nanny experience.

We have a FT nanny and pay hourly... We guarantee 45 hrs a week at a minimum in her contract, so we pay time & a half over 40 hours.... Not that that applies to you, but it seemed most fair because sometimes we go way over, and sometimes under, so hourly works for us as well as her. We have a "timesheet" book that she fills out daily with notes from their day, and we use that to track expenses as well.

how did you find a PM only nanny! We're trying to find someone new since ours is moving and we're having a tough time finding someone just for the afternoons.