Year-End Financial Checklist for Moving Company Owners

Year-End Financial Checklist for Moving Company Owners

December is the slowest month in the moving business for most markets. Residential moves drop off a cliff after Thanksgiving, commercial work slows down, and your crews are either on reduced schedules or burning through their remaining PTO. It feels like downtime.

It's not. December is when you set yourself up to either have a great next year or repeat the same mistakes. The financial work you do in the last three weeks of December — or don't do — has more impact on your business than almost anything you do in June.

I'm not going to pretend this is exciting material. But every moving company owner I've talked to who's built a sustainable, profitable business will tell you the same thing: the companies that grow are the ones that do the boring stuff in December while everyone else is coasting.

Have You Reconciled Your Books for the Full Year?

Start here. If your books aren't clean, nothing else on this list matters because you'll be working with bad data.

Go through every month. Make sure every bank transaction is categorized. Chase down the mystery charges that got dumped into "uncategorized expenses" when your bookkeeper couldn't figure out what they were. Reconcile your bank accounts and credit cards against your accounting software through November 30th. December you'll close out in January, but everything through November should be airtight.

Pay special attention to accounts receivable. How much is outstanding? If you've got invoices from August that still haven't been paid, December is the time to make a final collection push before writing them off. Some customers will pay if you call them directly — they lost the invoice, it fell through the cracks, whatever. Others won't, and you need to decide whether to send them to collections or take the write-off.

Using invoicing software that tracks aging receivables automatically makes this a 15-minute task instead of a full afternoon of digging through records.

What Can You Depreciate This Year?

This is where moving company owners leave real money on the table. Your trucks, trailers, dollies, ramps, packing equipment, warehouse shelving, forklifts, office computers — all of it depreciates. And under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed in late 2017, Section 179 deductions and bonus depreciation are more generous than they've been in years.

For 2018, you can deduct up to $1,000,000 in qualifying equipment purchases under Section 179. And 100% bonus depreciation applies to both new and used equipment for the first time. That means if you bought a used truck this year for $45,000, you may be able to deduct the entire amount in 2018 rather than spreading it over five or seven years.

Talk to your CPA about this. Seriously. If you bought any significant equipment this year and your accountant hasn't mentioned Section 179, bring it up yourself. The tax savings can be substantial — we're talking thousands of dollars on a single truck purchase.

Also review your existing depreciation schedules. Are there assets you've fully depreciated that are still on the books? Trucks you sold or scrapped? Clean up the asset list so it reflects what you actually own and operate.

How Did Revenue Break Down by Service Type?

Total revenue is a vanity metric. What matters is how revenue breaks down by service type, job size, and time of year.

Pull your data for the year and segment it:

• Local moves — What percentage of revenue? What was the average job value? Average profit margin?
• Long-distance moves — Same questions. How did they compare to local in terms of margin?
• Commercial/office moves — Growing, shrinking, or flat compared to last year?
• Storage revenue — Monthly trend. Is it building over time or static?
• Packing services — Are customers buying packing as an add-on? At what rate?

This breakdown tells you where your business actually is versus where you think it is. I've talked to owners who were convinced long-distance was their bread and butter, only to discover that local moves were generating better margins once they factored in fuel, crew time, and claim rates.

Reporting tools that segment revenue by job type and date range make this analysis straightforward. Without them, you're exporting spreadsheets and spending a Saturday afternoon with pivot tables.

What Did You Spend on Customer Acquisition?

Add up every dollar you spent on marketing and lead generation this year. Google Ads, Yelp, HomeAdvisor, Angie's List, SEO services, your website, print ads, vehicle wraps, trade show booths, referral bonuses — all of it.

Now divide that total by the number of new customers you acquired. That's your cost per acquisition (CPA).

For most moving companies, a healthy CPA is somewhere between $100 and $250 for residential moves, depending on the market and job size. If yours is significantly higher, you need to figure out which channels are underperforming and either optimize them or cut them.

More importantly, track CPA by channel. You might find that your $800/month Yelp spend generates a $180 CPA while your $2,000/month Google Ads spend generates a $95 CPA. That's actionable intelligence for next year's budget.

Are Your Insurance Premiums Right-Sized?

December is the time to review your insurance policies before renewal:

• Auto liability and physical damage — Has your fleet changed? Did you add or sell trucks? Are your coverage limits still appropriate?
• General liability — Does your policy reflect your actual revenue? Most GL policies are based on projected revenue, and if you grew 20% this year, your premium should adjust accordingly. Underpaying premiums now can lead to an audit and back-charges later.
• Workers' compensation — Review your experience modification rate (EMR). If you had a good safety year with few claims, your EMR should be going down, which means lower premiums. If it went up, find out why and fix the underlying issue.
• Cargo/valuation coverage — Is your coverage adequate for the types of moves you're doing? If you started handling more high-value shipments this year, your cargo limits might need adjusting.

Get quotes from at least two brokers. Loyalty to your insurance provider is admirable, but it's not a financial strategy. I've seen companies save $8,000 to $15,000 annually just by shopping their insurance package.

What Does Next Year's Budget Look Like?

Budgeting isn't forecasting — you're not trying to predict the future. You're setting targets and allocating resources.

Start with revenue targets by month and by service type. Base them on this year's actuals plus whatever growth you're planning for. Be realistic. If you did $1.4 million this year, projecting $2.2 million next year without adding trucks and crews is fantasy.

Then build your expense budget:

• Fixed costs — Rent, insurance, loan payments, software, phone/internet. These are relatively predictable.
• Variable costs — Labor, fuel, packing materials, subcontractors. These scale with volume. Use this year's per-job averages as your baseline.
• Capital expenditures — Are you buying trucks next year? Expanding the warehouse? Upgrading equipment? Plan the timing and cash flow impact.
• Marketing budget — Based on your CPA analysis, allocate spend to the channels that performed best. Leave some budget for experimentation with new channels.

The point isn't to create a document that gathers dust in a drawer. It's to have a benchmark you can measure against monthly. If revenue is 15% below budget by March, you know early enough to adjust rather than discovering the problem in August.

Don't Forget the Mundane Stuff

A few items that are easy to overlook:

• 1099s for subcontractors — These are due to recipients by January 31st and to the IRS by the end of February (or March 31st if filing electronically). Gather W-9s from any contractor you paid $600 or more this year. Do this now, not January 28th.
• Payroll records review — Make sure all employee classifications are correct. Misclassifying employees as contractors is one of the biggest audit triggers for small businesses.
• State registration renewals — If you operate in multiple states, check renewal dates for each state's operating authority.
• FMCSA biennial update — Check your filing date. If it falls in early 2019, get it on the calendar now.

Set Up 2019 for Success

The companies that use December intentionally — cleaning up books, analyzing data, planning ahead — consistently outperform the ones that treat it as a vacation from thinking about the business. It's not glamorous work. But it compounds.

If your data is scattered across spreadsheets, filing cabinets, and your dispatcher's memory, pulling this analysis together is going to be painful. That alone is a reason to look at integrated software that keeps your financial, operational, and customer data in one place.

Need a better way to track revenue, costs, and profitability across your moving operation? Book a demo and see how Elromco gives you the numbers you need to make smarter decisions.