SK 
EN for moving companies
A system for a moving company that works out the price and the crew from the walkthrough
Moving is the hardest service of all to price, because the cost depends on volume, the floor, whether there is a lift and where you can park, and all of that reaches you very roughly over the phone.
A custom system for a moving company starts at 1 400 € and the first version is usually ready within a week. From an itemized list of furniture it works out the volume, the number of trips needed, the crew size and the price including surcharges for a floor with no lift, so the quote goes out during the walkthrough, not in the evening.
Why moving jobs lose money so easily
Volume is estimated over the phone
A three-room flat tells you nothing. Sometimes it is one van, sometimes three, and you pay the difference.
A floor with no lift gets left out of the price
You find out in the morning on site. By then the price is hard to change, and usually it does not change at all.
The crew is planned in your head
Who goes where and with which vehicle, the owner knows. When he is sick, nobody knows.
Damage gets handled without proof
The customer says the wardrobe was intact. You say the opposite. Without a photo from loading, you usually eat the cost.
What a system like this includes
A walkthrough inventory done on a tablet: pieces of furniture, boxes, a piano, a safe. Out of that comes the volume in cubic metres and the number of trips based on the vehicles you actually have, not on an average.
A price that accounts for what really drives the cost: the floor and the lift on both ends, the distance from parking to the entrance, the mileage and the crew time. The quote goes out during the walkthrough, while the customer still remembers you were pleasant.
A crew and vehicle plan on a calendar, so one van is not promised twice on the same day. Plus photo documentation during loading and unloading, which is the only argument that works in a dispute.
- Walkthrough and inventory Pieces and boxes on a tablet, not a guess from the number of rooms.
- Volume, trips and price Including floor, lift and parking. The quote goes out right away.
- Assigning the crew and vehicle The calendar will not let the same van be promised twice.
- Loading and handover Photos before and after. In a dispute it is the only argument that holds.
What stands behind it
I have not built a moving company system yet. The closest I have is scaffolding rental, where material, weight, trips and price are worked out from dimensions, which is exactly the same type of calculation. What is not there is crew planning on a calendar, and that would be the biggest part of the work; I would tell you that at the start, not halfway through.
The closest finished system is the one for scaffolding rental. There too the material, weight, number of trips and price are worked out from dimensions, and there too it tracks what went out and what came back.
While building it, the client's Excel was taken apart first and ten errors were found in it, errors he had been sending quotes by for years. That, by the way, is the best reason why work like this starts with questions and not with code.
Frequent questions
Can we set our own rates and surcharges?
Yes, the hourly rate, the rate per kilometre and the surcharges for a floor with no lift are all data you manage yourself. That is exactly why the system still works when you raise your prices.
We also do clear-outs and storage. Does that fit in?
Yes. Storage is really a warehouse with rent per period, a kind of record kept routinely. Clear-outs are priced similarly to moving, just with a trip to the waste yard.
We use Google for the calendar. Do we have to stop?
No, it can be connected, so the crew sees the jobs where they are used to. That is exactly what runs in the bike shop I built the booking for.
How long does it take and how much does it cost?
The first working version within a week, price from 1 400 €. Fine-tuning to how the company actually works usually takes a few more days after you first try it for real.
Still pricing moves by eye?
Tell me how you work it out now and where you most often get it wrong. The price comes out during the survey, and on moving day nobody debates it. The first call is free.
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