One move, one small profit statement
A booked move produces a deposit, a crew of two to five on the clock, a truck burning fuel through GTA traffic, a pile of boxes and shrink wrap, and occasionally a damage claim three weeks later. The quote was a guess about all of it, priced in crew hours. The first job of the books is to close that loop: what the move actually cost against what the estimate assumed.
We build the file so the loop closes itself. SmartMoving or Supermove already hold the job record, the crew clock-ins and the payment; we map that data into QuickBooks Online so each job carries its own labour, truck and material cost, and the month's profit is a list of moves you can name rather than one blended number.
| Job cost line | Source record | What it settles |
|---|---|---|
| Crew wages | Clock-ins in the CRM, payroll register | Whether the estimator's hours survive contact with the staircase |
| Truck cost | Fuel cards, 407 tolls, repairs coded by unit | What a truck-hour really costs, vehicle by vehicle |
| Materials | Boxes, wrap and mattress bags, billed or absorbed | Whether packing supplies are a margin line or a leak |
| Damage costs | Claim log, deductibles and settlements paid | Which jobs, and which crews, quietly hand margin back |
Fuel and repairs coded by truck do double duty: they price the truck-hour in every estimate, and they put a number on the day an aging unit should be replaced instead of repaired again.
Storage is a different business in the same building
Moving revenue is lumpy; storage revenue arrives every month whether the phones ring or not. We keep the two on separate income lines with separate costs, so the warehouse answers its own question: what the vaults earn against the rent, insurance and the handling labour that carries goods in and out. Billing runs on schedule through recurring invoices and pre-authorized payments, because storage margin dies quietly when invoices go out late or not at all. Most owners know storage is their steadiest money; the books should show exactly how steady, and whether the space is earning enough to justify more of it. That reporting rhythm is the monthly close inside End-to-End Accounting: bookkeeping, payroll, financial reporting and tax filing under one roof.
Two liabilities the bank feed hides
The bank feed shows deposits as income the day they land. They are not. A booking deposit is the customer's money until the crew shows up, so it sits as a liability until move day, when it becomes part of the invoice. Booked deposits held for June tell you something the bank balance never will: how much of the cash in the account is already spoken for.
Damage claims run the other way. A cracked hutch or a gouged floor becomes a claim log entry the day it is reported, then a settlement paid, an insurance recovery, or a deductible absorbed. We give claims their own expense line instead of burying them in miscellaneous, tracked per job and per crew, because a claims pattern is a training problem you can fix once the books make it visible.
Day labour is still payroll
Movers hired by the day, paid by the hour, working from your truck with your dollies and blankets, on jobs you booked and scheduled, are employees under the CRA's tests: you control the work, you own the tools, and they carry no risk of loss. Cash-per-day arrangements read as simple until a payroll examination or an injured worker unwinds them, and WSIB follows the same facts. So the crews run through real payroll inside the engagement: CPP, EI and WSIB premiums remitted on cycle, statutory holiday pay for summer hires, and records complete for winter ROEs before anyone asks. What a reclassification assessment actually costs, both shares of CPP and EI plus penalties, is covered on our moving company tax services page.
Sized to the operation
A two-person outfit with one cube van does not need a monthly close; it needs a CPA on call when a CRA letter or an odd contract lands, which is what CPA Quick Support at $99 a month is for. For companies running multiple crews and a warehouse across Mississauga and the GTA, the full monthly engagement is quoted in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call, so the fee is agreed before the first reconciliation.
