The volume estimated online, the date held by a deposit.

Volume estimated without a visit

The price depends on the volume, the floor, whether there's a lift and how far things have to be carried. Visiting every time costs half a day for a quote that often goes to a competitor.

The customer fills in a guided inventory, room by room, with the access constraints and photos. The volume is estimated, you quote the same day, and you only visit the bigger jobs.

• Guided inventory, room by room
• Floor, lift and carrying distance recorded
• Quote sent without a visit

June Saturdays properly booked

Your whole season sits in a handful of Saturdays. A date promised with no deposit can be cancelled three weeks out, and it can't be resold: the other customers have already signed elsewhere.

The quote is signed online with a 30% deposit. The date comes out of the calendar, the crew and the van are assigned, and the balance is called in automatically at the end of the job.

Vans, crews and running order

A removal takes a van and two to four people for half a day or more. Two jobs sequenced badly and the crew finishes at 9pm — with the overtime that goes with it.

The schedule assigns a van and a crew to every job, with the travel and the run back to the depot. You can see straight away whether there's room on a Saturday, and nobody gets overloaded.

• Van and crew assigned to every job
• Travel and the run back to the depot counted
• Real availability visible by date

Photo condition report, no rows

The classic dispute is a scratched table or a missing box. With no condition report, the discussion ends in a goodwill gesture, often after a bad review.

The before and after photos are kept in the file, with the signed inventory. The customer gets the summary, and the review request goes out the next day — when a removal has gone well, that's your best advertising.