Guides
Moving company software requirements from the job file
A job-file framework for moving company software: map move documents, required fields, system roles, data ownership, and security before choosing a system.
What to take away
- Specify the software from the job file backwards. Write down every document a move produces, then ask which system holds each one. Buying by feature list produces a stack that cannot answer a disputed invoice.
- Four systems cover this tradethe one that holds the survey and estimate, the one that dispatches, the one that captures the crew's day, and the books. Whether that is four products or one matters less than whether the survey reaches the crew sheet without retyping.
- The fields that make a mover's software useful are unglamorous: cubic feet, access notes, customer-packed flags, actual hours by phase, and change orders. Software without them is a calendar with an invoice attached.
- Ask about data ownership and export before you ask about price. The record of every move you have ever done is the asset; the subscription is not.
The job file is the specification
A move produces a fixed set of documents. List them, and you have the requirement.
The move document chain
- First callIntake sheet
- WalkthroughSurvey
- After surveyEstimate
- AcceptanceContract and order
- Two days outDispatch entry
- Move morningCrew sheet
- Close-outJob sheet
- After moveInvoice
| Document | Created at | Must carry | Read later by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intake sheet | First call | Addresses, dates, access questions asked | The estimator |
| Survey | The walkthrough | Cubic feet, inventory, access at both ends, special items | Everyone |
| Estimate | After the survey | Estimate type, access lines, materials, valuation selection | Customer, office, claims |
| Contract and order for service | Acceptance | Terms, dates, what was agreed | Both sides, in a dispute |
| Dispatch entry | Two days out | Truck, crew, building contacts, reservations | The dispatcher |
| Crew sheet | Move morning | Access, inventory, flags, no prices | The crew lead |
| Job sheet | Close-out | Actual hours by phase, deviations, change orders | The office and the estimator |
| Invoice | After the move | Estimate plus signed change orders | The customer |
| Claim file | If needed | Inventory, condition notes, photographs | The insurer |
Any candidate system should be evaluated against that table and nothing else. If a field in the middle column has nowhere to live, the crew will keep it on paper, and the paper is where the disputes come from.
The four systems
Survey and estimating. Holds the survey and produces the estimate. The test is whether the volume, the inventory, the access notes, and the estimate type all live in structured fields rather than a free-text note. Access in a note is access nobody prices.
Four systems, four tests
Survey and estimating
- Core job
- Survey to estimate
- Must carry
- Volume, inventory, access
- Failure mode
- Access in a note
Dispatch and scheduling
- Core job
- Crews and trucks
- Must carry
- Access notes forward
- Failure mode
- Only shows today
Crew capture
- Core job
- Door-side capture
- Must carry
- Inventory, signatures, photos
- Failure mode
- System often missing
Books and payroll
- Core job
- Revenue, cost, hours
- Must carry
- Job number on cost
- Failure mode
- Cost without job number
Dispatch and scheduling. Places crews and trucks against jobs, and carries the access notes forward so the wrong truck is not assigned to a narrow street. The operations and workflow guide treats dispatch as a two-day process, and software that only shows today cannot support it.
Crew capture. Whatever the lead uses at the door: inventory, condition codes, signatures, photographs, and actual hours by phase. This is the system most often missing, and its absence is why so many yards cannot explain an invoice.
Books and payroll. Where revenue, cost, and hours meet. It has to accept a job number, because a cost without a job number cannot be analyzed later.
The fields that matter in this trade
Generic field service software usually lacks four things. Check for each by name.
Four fields to check by name
- Volume in cubic feet, with inventory
- Access structuredstairs, carry, elevator, dock
- Customer-packed flag set at survey
- Actual hours by phaseload, travel, unload
- Volume in cubic feet, with the inventory that produced it.Not a room count, not a text box.
- Access, structured.Flights of stairs, carry distance, elevator or dock, reservation status, and whether a truck of your size can stand at the door. Each needs its own field so it can be priced and reported on.
- The customer-packed flag,set at survey and visible on the crew sheet, because it is what the later claim about a sealed carton turns on.
- Actual hours by phase,meaning load, travel, and unload separately. One total hides where the day went and makes survey variance meaningless.
Without those, no report the system produces will be worth reading, which is the connection between the software half of this page and the measurement half.
What to measure once the fields exist
A yard needs few numbers, and each has to trace to a document.
Six measures and their documents
Measure
- Survey-to-actual variance
- Survey vs job sheet
- Paid crew-days sold
- Dispatch calendar
- Contribution per crew-hour
- Job sheet, estimate
- Access hours charged vs worked
- Estimate vs job sheet
- Claims per hundred moves
- Claim file
- Callback and complaint rate
- Office log
Built from
- Survey-to-actual variance
- Honest estimating
- Paid crew-days sold
- Fixed costs covered
- Contribution per crew-hour
- Which services deserve peak
- Access hours charged vs worked
- Most common leak
- Claims per hundred moves
- Where method fails
- Callback and complaint rate
- Customer experience
What it tells you
- Survey-to-actual variance
- Paid crew-days sold
- Contribution per crew-hour
- Access hours charged vs worked
- Claims per hundred moves
- Callback and complaint rate
Report each by estimator and by crew lead, not as a yard-wide average. An average tells you the yard has a problem; the breakdown tells you whose problem it is.
The pricing side of these numbers is worked through in the pricing and profit guide. The sales side, meaning quote-to-booking and what a lost quote tells you, sits in the sales and proposal guide.
Data ownership and exit
Ask these before price, and get the answers in writing.
Data ownership questions
- Who owns the data?
- Can you export everything, in what format?
- What happens if you stop paying?
- How long is data retained after cancellation?
- Can you export during the contract?
Test the export in the trial. An export that produces a spreadsheet of job numbers without the survey behind them is not an export.
Security, because you hold customer addresses
A mover's system holds where people live, when their home will be empty, what is in it, and often payment details. That is a serious set of data for a small business.
Security questions for vendors
- Who has access?
- How is access removed when crew leaves?
- Is multi-factor authentication available?
- How is data encrypted?
- What is the backup and restore position?
The National Institute of Standards and Technology publishes small business quick-start guides for cybersecurity and privacy risk management. A small organization gets a practical starting point there.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's resources for small and medium businesses cover the same ground from the operational side. Use both to write the questions; the vendor's answers are what you are buying.
Two habits matter more than any product choice. Remove access the day someone leaves, and keep a backup you have actually restored from once.
What the software has to let you comply with
Some documents are not a preference. For interstate moves, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Protect Your Move materials describe the information and documents a customer must receive.
A system that cannot produce and record delivery of them will make you non-compliant efficiently. Ask the vendor what it supports, then confirm the requirement with the authority, not the vendor, as the licensing and compliance guide sets out.
The books side has its own requirement. Internal Revenue Service guidance on what kind of records should I keep leaves the system to the business if it clearly shows income and expenses.
A job-numbered ledger clears that low bar; a pile of invoices does not.
Buying sequence
- Write the job file table for your own yard.
- Mark which documents are currently on paper and which are lost.
- Ask three vendors to show you those documents in their system, using one of your real jobs.
- Run a trial with one crew and one estimator for a full month, including a stacked week.
- Then decide, and plan the training, because a system nobody enters data into produces worse records than paper.
Training is the step yards skip. Crews enter what they are trained to enter, and the hiring and training guide treats data capture as part of the method rather than as an afterthought at the end of a hard day.
What software does not fix
Software does not fix a survey built on a room count. It does not fix a truck too large for the street, a fleet decision covered in the equipment and setup guide.
It does not fix an untrained crew. Software makes a good process faster and a bad process consistent. A yard that adopts it hoping to gain a process pays a subscription to keep failing on schedule.
Common questions
Should a two-truck yard buy moving-specific software?
Not necessarily on day one. It should keep the job file completely, in whatever form it will actually maintain, and move to a system when retyping becomes the daily annoyance.
One system or several?
Whichever avoids retyping the survey. Several systems that pass the survey forward beat one that holds it in a text box.
How long should a trial run?
At least a full month, including one stacked week. A quiet week hides everything you need to see.
What is the most useful single number?
Survey-to-actual hour variance, by estimator. Almost every other problem in a moving company shows up in it first.
