A mobile app that runs your moving business from survey to delivery

The phone rings and the customer asks what it costs to move a three-bedroom flat. You quote from memory; then there is no lift, there is more furniture than you expected, and the truck has to come back for a second run. A moving company app ties that uncertainty to survey, volume and route data, and makes the gap between the quote and the real cost visible.

How many separate apps does this need?

  • 01

    Customer mobile app (iOS + Android)

    Room-by-room inventory and video survey upload, address with floor and lift details, date selection, quote approval, live truck location on moving day and damage reporting.

  • 02

    Crew and driver app (iOS + Android)

    The day's jobs, photographing items before loading, packing and disassembly checklists, signature on delivery, logging extra services and waiting time, offline operation.

  • 03

    Operations and quoting panel (web)

    Pricing survey requests, vehicle and crew scheduling, consolidating part-load shipments, insurance and invoicing flows, per-job profitability and cost reports.

What the app includes

  • Special-load approval for pianos, safes and aquariums
  • Furniture-lift (crane) request with hourly line item
  • Packing-material usage: boxes, bubble wrap, stretch film
  • Crew and driver timesheets with overtime and waiting hours
  • Interim storage duration and monthly warehouse fee tracking
  • Barcode labels on items matched to warehouse rack slots
  • Automatic rules for deposit refunds and date changes
  • Price-multiplier calendar for season, weekends and month-end
  • Separate man-hour tracking for dismantling and reassembly
  • Trip costs: fuel, bridge and toll receipts photographed
  • Leads from listing portals turned into jobs in the panel
  • Alerts for vehicle inspection, insurance and licence expiry

State of the sector

Most moving enquiries arrive through search engines and listing platforms, and the customer collects prices from three or four firms on the same day. A firm that gives an estimated figure over the phone either loses the job or quotes low and moves at a loss. In household moving the decision is not made on price alone but on trust: having the goods documented, being able to track the truck and receiving a proper invoice all influence the choice. Without those, the firm is just one number on the comparison screen of a commission-taking platform and never builds a customer list of its own.

Metrics that matter here

  • Gap between quoted and actual cost (per job) — As volume, floor and duration data accumulate, it becomes clear which job types are systematically underpriced.
  • Vehicle utilisation rate (m³ carried / vehicle capacity) — Part-load consolidation and return-freight suggestions cut the number of empty return trips and raise utilisation.
  • Quote-to-approval conversion rate — Being able to send an itemised quote hours after the survey means the customer decides before committing to another firm.
  • Number of damage claims and compensation paid — Photographic loading and delivery records filter out unfounded claims and show which crew real damage originates with.

Common mistakes in this sector

  • Pricing on distance alone A simple distance-based tariff cannot see the burden of a lift-less upper floor or disassembly work; two jobs the same distance apart can differ several times over in person-hours. The pricing engine must carry m³, floor, access and extra services as separate multipliers.
  • Sparing the crew from mandatory photos Loading photos are left optional so the crew “does not lose time”, and then a single damage dispute costs more than the profit on the job. Photos should be built in as the condition for closing that step of the job.
  • Leaving the offline scenario for later There is no coverage in basements or on construction sites, and an app that assumes an internet connection will lose delivery signatures. A local queue and synchronisation belong in the first release; adding them later forces the data model to be rewritten from scratch.
  • Treating the customer app as the whole product The customer side looks good, but the crew app and the operations panel are what run the business. Without the field side, jobs still get handled by phone and messages, no data accumulates, and the reports become meaningless.

Regulation and compliance

A moving app processes the customer's address, floor details, photos of the inside of their home and their location on moving day; all of this is personal data under KVKK (Turkey's data protection law, aligned with GDPR). Processing should rest on the performance of a contract rather than explicit consent, be disclosed in a privacy notice, and have a limited retention period. Because driver location data amounts to employee monitoring, it should only be collected for the duration of the job. In commercial goods transport, the UETDS reporting obligation, the operating licence regime and transport waybill rules apply to the relevant moves; after payment is collected, e-Arşiv/e-Fatura obligations must be observed.

The real challenges in this sector

  • Replacing guesswork pricing with a volume estimate

    Moving prices are driven by cubic metres far more than by weight. In the app, a room-based item catalogue (double bed, four-door wardrobe, white goods) assigns an average volume and disassembly time to every entry; the list the customer ticks becomes total m³, the required vehicle type and crew person-hours. The video survey recording is attached to the job and becomes evidence whenever the final figure differs from the quote.

  • Getting floor, lift and street access into the price

    The same m³ of goods takes multiples of the person-hours when it has to come down from a fourth floor with no lift. The address form makes floor, lift type (goods lift, passenger lift, none), the carrying distance from door to truck, and whether a narrow street requires an external furniture lift into mandatory fields. These parameters act as multipliers in the pricing engine and appear as separate lines on the quote, so the customer is not caught out.

  • Recording the condition of goods with photos

    Damage disputes are the most expensive argument in moving. The driver app requires a photo of every fragile item and piece of furniture before loading; each photo carries a date, time and location stamp, and the same item is photographed again on delivery. The comparative before-and-after file is shared through the same link with the customer and with the goods-in-transit insurance claim.

  • Consolidating part loads and finding return freight

    If an 18 m³ truck running Istanbul to Izmir leaves 12 m³ empty, that cost is spent on dead space. The panel suggests jobs whose date range and route match onto the same vehicle, checking remaining volume, delivery sequence and each customer's time window. A return-load listing then lets the truck pick up a second job instead of driving back empty.

  • Offline operation and losing data in the field

    Loading happens in a basement, delivery on a construction site; coverage drops constantly. The crew app queues job data, checklists and photos on the device, stores the signed delivery confirmation locally, and uploads everything in order once the network returns. If photos are not compressed on the device, the hundreds of frames from a single move drain both the data plan and the battery.

Required integrations

  • e-Arşiv/e-Fatura (Turkey's mandatory e-invoicing system, run by GİB, the Turkish Revenue Administration) to issue the transport invoice when the job closes
  • Deposit collection through iyzico or PayTR (Turkish payment providers), with the balance paid on delivery
  • Insurance agency integration for goods-in-transit policies and damage claims
  • Transferring trip and cargo data for moves that require a UETDS notification (Turkey's transport tracking system)
  • Matching the driver app with a vehicle tracking/telematics service (location, speed, fuel)
  • Mapping and routing service: heavy-vehicle restrictions, bridge and motorway toll calculation

Who this page is for

  • Newly founded local household mover with a single truck

    The need is quoting consistently and not losing the job to a faster competitor. Phase 1 is enough: request form, room-based volume, floor and lift multipliers, deposit and photo records in the crew app. Groupage, storage and profitability reports would only be dead weight here.

  • Regional carrier running long-distance groupage

    Here the problem is not the quote but truck utilisation and trip planning. Scope should centre on trip-level consolidation, delivery date windows, barcoded item tracking, deadhead kilometres and trip cost capture. The customer app can stay minimal; the weight belongs in the operations panel.

  • Mover handling office relocations plus storage

    The counterpart is a procurement department, not a household: quote approval flows, contract price lists, weekend and night-shift planning, barcoded inventory and monthly storage invoicing come first. For this profile the e-Fatura (Turkish e-invoicing) flow and an itemised, reportable breakdown belong in the first release.

A phased plan that splits the budget

  1. 1

    Phase 1 — Moving core running in one city 6-8 hafta

    Request form, room-based volume list, quoting with floor and lift parameters, deposit, photo-backed loading and delivery in the crew app, and a daily schedule in the panel. On its own this already runs a local household move end to end, replacing paper and phone traffic.

  2. 2

    Phase 2 — Long distance, groupage and storage 5-7 hafta

    Adds trip planning, groupage consolidation, delivery date windows, barcoded interim storage with fees, and the e-Arsiv/e-Fatura invoicing flow (Turkey's electronic invoicing system). It comes second because consolidation suggestions need the volume and duration data that Phase 1 accumulates.

  3. 3

    Phase 3 — Profitability, backhaul and corporate jobs 5-8 hafta

    Job-level profitability reports, backhaul postings and matching, crew bonus calculation, approval flows for office moves, and contract price lists for corporate clients. It comes last because every part of it reads the cost, duration and utilisation records the earlier phases produce.

Typical scope and timeline

Customer app, crew/driver app and operations panel; room-based volume catalogue, pricing engine with floor and lift parameters, quotes with deposit collection, photographic loading and delivery records, live location, e-Arşiv invoicing and per-job profitability reporting. Part-load consolidation and the return-freight module can be added in a second phase.

Estimated timeline: 12-18 weeks

Off-the-shelf or custom build?

Topic Off-the-shelf Custom build
Pricing engine fitting the trade Off-the-shelf tools usually price by distance and vehicle type; floor, lift type and dismantling multipliers are missing or squeezed into one surcharge field. You define the multipliers to match your own tariff; season, narrow street, crane and packing become separate lines, making quote-versus-actual gaps measurable.
Monthly subscription versus one-off investment A ready-made tool opens on day one with little setup cost, which genuinely makes sense for a seasonal operator at first. As vehicles and users grow, though, the subscription becomes a permanent cost line. Custom development puts the investment up front, leaving maintenance and hosting afterwards; there is no per-seat fee, so adding crew and drivers does not scale the cost the same way.
Connecting to accounting and vehicle tracking Popular ready-made solutions ship connectors for well-known accounting software; in a standard setup that part really is fast and someone else maintains it. If your telematics box, insurance agency or legacy bookkeeping tool is not on the vendor's list, the ready-made route stops there; custom work connects to whatever you actually use and shapes the data flow around your process.
Owning the customer list and move history With platform or marketplace-based tools, enquiries reach you through their screen; customer contacts and past move records often stay on their side, with limited export. In your own app the inventory, photo archive, pricing history and customer records sit in your database; when the same household moves again three years later, the previous volume and crew notes are still at hand.

Sector glossary

Furniture lift move (external hoist)
Moving goods through a window or balcony with an external hoist instead of the staircase. Used for narrow stairwells and upper floors without a lift; it is billed by the hour and belongs on the quote as its own line.
Portering charge (carrying labour)
The manpower part of a move, apart from vehicle and fuel: carrying items down, loading them and placing them. Priced by headcount and hours; with more floors, distance or dismantling, the same volume can easily cost twice the labour.
Deadhead kilometres
The distance a truck runs empty: from the yard to the pickup address and the empty run back after delivery. If it is not priced in, long-distance jobs quietly lose their margin here, so total fuel and time cost must include it.
Interim storage
Keeping a household's goods in the company warehouse when move-out and move-in dates do not line up. Usually billed monthly per container or rack; without labelling which item sits in which slot, missing-item disputes appear at delivery.
Deductible in transit insurance
The threshold in transit insurance below which the mover pays the damage itself. Small scratches and breakages usually fall under it and come out of the company's pocket, so damage records matter as much for internal cost control as for the insurer.

Frequently asked questions

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