Guides
Reading a Moving Job's Stage Sheet
How to price moving company services starts with reading the stage sheet: trace misses in volume, hours, access, travel, packing, protection, and rate.
What to take away
- A moving job that lost money lost it in one stage, and the stage sheet shows which. Without the sheet, the loss is only a bad feeling about the customer.
- Read the sheet in ordervolume, labor hours, access, travel, materials, protection, and only then margin. Set each estimate beside what the finished job took.
- Whatever the customer packed badly, the stairs nobody mentioned, and the elevator that was not reserved are the three places a phone quote loses money.
- A wrong crew rate makes every quote wrong by the same proportion, so check it when every job misses.
- Keep a sheet for every job. A job that made money tells you nothing unless the sheet exists.
What the stage sheet holds
The stage sheet is one page per job that records the result of each pricing stage, in order. It lets you trace a loss to a stage instead of to a customer. Without it, a job that lost money tells you only that it lost.
Work the seven stages in order and write each result down. The variables are named so that the sheet reads the same on every job: V for cubic feet, H for base crew-hours, A for access hours and T for travel hours. Materials, packing and protection follow, and margin comes last.
Seven-Stage Price Build-Up
- Volumetotal cubic feet from survey, V
- Base laborcrew-hours to load and unload, H
- Access adjustmentsstairs, long carry, elevator, A
- Traveldrive time plus yard legs, T
- Materials and packingboxes, paper, tape, crates
- Protectionvaluation option priced by tariff
- Write each result down on the stage sheet
The total is Price = (H + A + T) x crew rate + materials + packing + protection, marked up by the margin. Every symbol comes from a record the office can produce, so every symbol can be checked against what the finished job actually took.
| Stage | What the sheet records | What a miss looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Volume (V) | Cubic feet from the survey | Half a truck of goods the survey never saw |
| Base labor (H) | Crew-hours to load and unload V under ordinary access, from your own productivity figure | A crew slower than the figure assumed |
| Access (A) | Hours added for each flight of stairs, long carry and shared or reserved elevator | A job that runs over although the volume was right |
| Travel (T) | Drive time between origin and destination, plus yard legs if you charge for them | Hours driven but never priced |
| Materials and packing | Boxes, paper, tape, bags and crates, with packing labor on its own line | Packing folded into the base rate |
| Protection | The valuation option the customer selected | A claim judged against an option nobody stated |
| Margin | The markup applied last | A margin that hides an error in the stages above it |
A five-step reading of a losing job
Read a losing job from the top of the sheet down. A volume error spoils every stage below it, while a margin error spoils none of them, so the order matters. The five steps below take a few minutes once the finished job's hours are to hand.
- Compare volume.Set V from the survey beside the load the crew actually moved. A gap here explains everything below it.
- Compare hours.Set H plus A plus T beside the crew-hours the job took. Note whether the extra hours sit in access, travel or plain slow loading.
- Check the access line.A zero or a blank means the job was priced from a phone call.
- Check materials, packing and protection.Was packing a separate line, and was the valuation option on the quote?
- Check the rate.If steps one to four are clean and the job still lost money, the crew rate or the margin is the suspect.
Write the stage where the miss started at the foot of the sheet, in one line. That line is the lesson, and it is the only part of the sheet a new estimator needs to read twice.
Start with the survey volume
Check volume first, because every later stage is arithmetic on it. If the cubic feet were wrong, the other six stages can all be right and the job still loses money. Two three-bedroom houses can differ by half a truck.
One holds a garage of shelving and a piano; the other is half-emptied by a family living out of boxes. Room count cannot see that difference.
A price built on it is wrong in both directions: too high on the light house, which loses the job; too low on the heavy one, which wins a job that pays the crew less than it costs.
Room Count vs Survey
Room count
- Input
- Rooms
- Special items
- Missed
- Light house
- Overpriced
- Heavy house
- Underpriced
- Result
- Lost or losing job
Survey
- Input
- Cubic feet
- Special items
- Noted
- Light house
- Priced right
- Heavy house
- Priced right
- Result
- Crew covered
On the sheet, look at who recorded V and how. The survey can be a walkthrough, a video call with the customer holding the phone, or a photographed inventory. What matters is that a trained person recorded the volume of each room in cubic feet and noted every item needing special handling.
Find the missing access hours
A job that ran over with the right volume points to stage three. Access is the single largest reason a quoted job runs over, and a phone quote skips it. The customer says ground floor and means the front door, not the fourth-floor walk-up at the destination.
The crew arrives, the job takes twice the hours, and the argument at the end costs the review as well as the money. On the sheet, A reads zero while the finished job shows hours spent on stairs, carries and elevators.
Where the Phone Quote Leaks
- Customer says ground floor
- Means front door, not fourth-floor walk-up
- Crew arrives, job takes twice the hours
- Argument at the end costs review and money
- Customer-packed box fails on the ramp
- Contract terms decide who bears the claim
The other leak is the customer-packed box: filled to the top with books and taped once, it fails on the ramp. Whether the claim is yours or theirs depends on the contract terms for customer-packed goods, and the price should reflect who bears it.
Check the packing line as well. Packing is a separate line, never folded into the base rate, so a sheet with no packing figure and a crew that spent the morning wrapping shows where the money went.
Check the rate behind the hours
If every job misses by a similar share, suspect the crew rate rather than the surveys. A wrong rate makes every quote wrong by the same proportion, and the business will not see it until the quarter closes.
The crew rate is loaded labor: wage, payroll burden, and the share of truck and equipment cost per crew-hour.
A new owner with no past jobs can start from the Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data for movers in the metropolitan area. Add payroll burden (FICA, workers' compensation, unemployment insurance), then divide annual truck, fuel and equipment cost by the planned crew-hours.
Crew Rate Is Loaded Labor
Loaded labor = wage + payroll burden + truck and equipment share per crew-hour
Check wage component against BLS occupation and metropolitan-area tables
If the rate is wrong, every quote is wrong by the same proportion
Run one pilot job at that rate and fill in the sheet before publishing a schedule. One job will not settle the rate, but it shows whether the stage figures and the finished hours fall in the same range.
Protection and margin come last
Protection is the stage where a claim is decided before it happens. State the valuation option the customer selected on the quote, so that a claim later is judged against what was chosen and not against what each side remembers.
Take the customer who selects full value protection. Under full value protection liability, the carrier answers for the replacement value of lost or damaged goods, up to the declared value of the shipment.
Margin is the last stage and a decision about the company, not about this customer. If stages one to six were wrong, a healthy margin on the sheet is not real. The break-even formulas show what the company needs to clear.
From the stage that missed to a change on the sheet
Once the stage is named, the fix is usually one line on the price sheet or the survey form. Match what the sheet shows to the stage, and change only that stage.
| What the sheet shows | Stage that missed | What to change |
|---|---|---|
| Volume far from the load the crew moved | Volume | Have a trained person record cubic feet by room and note every special-handling item |
| Job ran over although the volume was right, and A reads zero | Access | Ask about stairs, long carries and elevators at the survey, and add the hours to A |
| Hours driven but never priced | Travel | Add the yard legs to T if you charge for them |
| Crew spent the morning wrapping, no packing figure | Materials and packing | Give packing its own line, never folded into the base rate |
| Claim judged against an option nobody stated | Protection | State the valuation option the customer selected on the quote |
| Every job misses by a similar share | Crew rate | Rebuild the loaded rate: wage, payroll burden and equipment share per crew-hour |
| Stages one to four clean, job still lost money | Rate or margin | Check the crew rate first, then the margin, which can hide an error above it |
Take a job quoted by phone, where the customer said ground floor and meant the front door. Volume matches, so step one is clean. The extra hours sit in access, and the access line is blank. The lesson line for the foot of the sheet reads: access priced from a phone call.
Reading a month of sheets
Review the sheets monthly by service line. The most profitable moving company services are only knowable from those sheets, because a service that looks profitable on price may be losing on access hours nobody charged for.
File each sheet with the invoice. It records why a price was what it was, which covers the revenue side and explains the cost side at once. The IRS says you may choose any recordkeeping system suited to your business that clearly shows your income and expenses.
A binding or non-binding estimate decides who carries the cost of a survey that was wrong, which the pricing and profit guide compares in full. The sheet tells you how large that cost was on each job.
Common questions
Which stage should I check first on a losing job?
Volume. Every later stage is arithmetic on it, so a wrong V explains everything below it. If V holds, move to access, then to the crew rate.
Can I price from photos instead of a walkthrough?
Yes, if the photos cover every room, every closet, the garage, and the route from door to curb. The failure mode is the photo set that omits the basement. Ask for the route photos explicitly.
How do I handle a job that runs over a flat price?
The contract decides. If the overrun came from something the survey could not have seen, a change order signed before the extra work starts is the clean route. If the survey missed it, the loss is the estimator's lesson, not the customer's bill.
What if the customer refuses a survey and wants a number now?
Give an hourly basis with a minimum and say in writing that no flat figure is offered without a survey. A customer who will not show the goods is asking you to carry the risk of what they are hiding.
