Moving Company P&L Template

Download the .xlsx file and open it in Excel or Google Sheets — no macros or plugins required. Start with the Monthly P&L sheet and review the pre-loaded revenue and expense categories. Most moving operators keep the structure as-is and adjust only a handful of line items to match their specific service mix — for example, an operator without storage would remove the SIT fee line, while one with a fleet of specialty vehicles might add a dedicated line for that equipment. Setup takes about 15 minutes.

Enter your current month's revenue by job type — local move billings, long-distance revenue, packing fees, storage income, and valuation coverage sold. Then enter expenses using your payroll records, fuel receipts, insurance invoices, and materials purchases. The Job Mix Analysis sheet is worth filling out at the same time: enter your job counts by type and the sheet calculates your average job value and crew labor ratio per category. Those two numbers tell you more about profitability than total revenue alone.

Come back each month and enter the new figures. Within a few months you'll have a clear picture of how your average job value changes through peak and off-peak seasons, whether fuel costs are eating into long-distance margins, and whether storage revenue is growing as a stabilizing income stream through winter. The Annual Summary and Dashboard update automatically, and your 12-month view is always current. Moving company owners who track a structured P&L consistently say the biggest benefit is catching a labor cost creep or fuel spike in the same month it happens — not after it's dragged on through an entire season.

Moving company finances are harder to manage than most service businesses because costs vary sharply by job type. A local hourly move and a long-distance flat-rate job can look similar in revenue but have completely different cost structures — the long-distance job carries higher fuel, per diem costs, and wear on trucks, while local moves carry more crew labor relative to revenue. Without splitting these out in a P&L, you can't tell whether your long-distance jobs are actually profitable or whether you're cross-subsidizing them with local volume. Industry net margins typically run 7–10%, meaning small cost overruns in one category can eliminate profit on an entire month.

The cost categories that move fastest in a moving company P&L are crew labor, fuel, and insurance. Crew labor typically runs 35–50% of revenue for local movers and 25–40% for companies doing significant long-distance volume. Fuel and truck operating costs usually represent 10–20% of revenue and are directly tied to miles driven — long-distance revenue per mile needs to be compared against fuel and driver costs per mile to evaluate route profitability. Insurance — cargo, liability, and workers comp — is a fixed overhead that typically runs 8–15% of revenue and should be tracked monthly against revenue to catch coverage gaps or premium increases before they compress margins further.

The most effective moving company P&L is built around seasonality. June is typically the single busiest month of the year, and the summer peak from May through August accounts for roughly 60% of annual moves for most operators. That means November through February revenue needs to be modeled conservatively, and the summer surplus needs to be managed carefully to cover winter operating costs. Use the Annual Summary sheet to set monthly revenue targets for each season, track actuals against them, and use the Job Mix Analysis to evaluate whether you're pushing the right services — packing and storage revenue in shoulder months can meaningfully reduce the winter cash crunch.