Relocating your business isn’t an easy feat, and regardless of the reason for the relocation, you still need to be methodical in your approach to ensure that you don’t overlook anything and you have all your ducks in a row to make the transition a seamless experience with as minimal downtime as possible.
While everyone is aware of the steps and the processes of relocating a business, some hidden costs and aspects of relocating can often be overlooked but need to be factored into your move, timeline and budget. Read on to learn more.
Moving Costs
Your moving costs aren’t just the fees for hiring a removal company or equipment to move your machinery. It is the packaging required for your move, the loss of income from being unable to operate during certain times, and insurance for the moving process to cover damages if your removal company doesn’t offer this option.
Alteration Costs
Alteration costs need to be factored into your move for various reasons. While you might have budgeted and completed alterations to your new premises, if you were renting your previous premises, then you need to factor in costs for removing these adjustments if your tenancy agreement requires this; this can be hiring a company that can efficiently remove any changes you have made to the layout, structure and so on. Booking a skip hire for waste materials and paying for remedial work to leave the building as you fund it or as required by the landlord are often overlooked when it comes to common moving jobs and expenses.
Cleaning
While your new location might be shiny and new and ready for you to move in, you need to ensure you aren’t overlooking giving your previous location a good deep clean post usage. Sure, you might be carrying out regular cleaning during operations. Still, once all of your equipment and furniture is removed, it will likely need a good cleaning to remove any lingering dirt, odours, or marks left behind from operations and the removal of everything for the building. Whether you do this yourself or book a company to do it for you, don’t overlook a deep clean to leave the place as you found it or better.
Updating Signage, Email Headers and Business Addresses
You need to ensure you have identified all aspects of your physical and digital business signage to ensure that you have made the updates to your address. Commonly overlooked areas include your email signatures, social media bios, company house listings, business directories and similar.
If your address is on a physical sign above your entrance, it needs updating too, which will cost replacing the existing signage. Look for physical advertisements, leaflets or business cards you might have sent out to local businesses or libraries, for example, as these will be outdated, and you will need to replace them with ones with new details.
Be methodical about all of the places your business address exists, be it Google My Business, TrustPilot, Yelp, etc and update them. If you are worried you might be missing an important post, then setting up a redirect for letters with Royal Mail can ensure nothing is issued, but again, this could come with a cost depending on the duration this redirect is set up for.
There are many parts of relocating a business, so it’s only natural that some things will be overlooked. These aspects can impact the cost and efficiency of your move and, while not always obvious, can be integral to getting it right and not dropping the ball.