Update from SMA South West Movers Association
This is from the SMA South West Movers Association: Change TxDOT to TxDMV on your moving papers, vehicles, advertising.
Add your USDOT No. to your vehicles. On your website, change the contact number for TxDMV (or TxDOT) to 888-368-4689, and if you don’t have that reference on your website now, add it.
Print advertising requires: Company name, physical address, and your TxDMV No. Although the rules say you do not have to have your TxDMV number on your business cards, why would you leave it off?
Your TxDMV number is your best evidence of legitimacy as a registered Texas mover. Add it! Markings on your vehicles: On both sides of the power unit or trailer (one or the other, both is better. It’s advertising!): Company Name, TxDMV registration number, USDOT number; letters at least 2 inches high in contrasting color. What’s wrong with this? It’s advertising and it’s required! You have a neat logo? Add it.
Help people remember whose moving truck they saw. A telephone number isn’t required, but why not add it? It’s advertising! A really good place to have your telephone number is above the rear view window so those people who are waiting in traffic with you can see it. It’s advertising!
Source www.southwestmovers.org
Making 2012 a great year for your moving business 5 internet quick tips
Now that we are in 2012 and we look toward the New Year many questions come to our mind especially when we are in the slower season in the moving & storage industry.
One question that I hear often from our moving company software clients are “ How can I prepare and grow my business for the upcoming moving season, what are some basic ideas and techniques I can use?”
Here are a few recommendations we can make.
1. Marketing, Marketing & Marketing
Make sure you are aggressively marketing to new customers (but don’t be too aggressive that people get turned off by you).
Reach out to former customers? They can be a great source of reoccurring income and can provide great referrals
2. Build relationships.
People are a great way for others to find you. As you know referral go a long way. Join local groups and associations. And meet up with people in your community. Talk to apartment managers.
If you don’t always like to talk shop and meet people, find that extroverted but smart person in your company to attend these meeting and to help get your name out there.
3. Are you advertising your business both online and off?
Take advantage of Google places, Groupon or your local yellow pages.
4. Get advice from others.
Find out what other in the moving industry do. A great website for moving company owners or mangers is www.movingbusiness.net
5. Buy Online Moving leads
Using lead providers can help bolster your sales here are some of our recommendations.
MovePoint Mover Software November 2011 Update
MovePoint Mover Software Update November 2011
(Updated: November 10, 2011)
Changes / New Features
- Accounting
- Delete Bulk Invoice Items – can now delete invoice items on the review tab in bill accounts.
- Bill Accounts Invoice – changed “Account #” to “Customer:” and added the “Storage Account #” to the invoice.
- Receivables – Customer’s moves section now shows moves completed and quoted for the customer not using the account as payment in posting. Now has “On Account”, “COD”, and “Quoted Only”
- Manage Invoice Items – Under the receivables section the list of storage jobs would not load.
- Admin
- Price Zones – Submit button read “Send” now reads “Save”
- Auto Recovery – New tool to view any auto recovery data that has not yet been recovered, you may delete it or jump to the page to recover the data.
- Hourly Travel Fee – New Mile * Mile Rate calculation available.
- Claims
- Delete Item prompts first – Deleting a claim item first asks if you are sure before deleting.
- Claim: Settle Date & Claim Date calendar Widget – added a calendar widget to the Settle Date & Claim Date
- Claim Item: Deduction Date Calendar Widget – Added a calendar widget to an item’s deduction date.
- Claim Delivery Request Form – A delivery request form that can be printed out for someone to handle transporting items.
- Claim Delivery Request List Interface — searchable data grid that shows all Claims Delivery requests without having to go into individual claims.
- Modular Invoice
- New Payment Section added “Default Alternate Hourly Write-in”
- Quoting
- New Inventory Recovery Feature – If your iPad loses signal and causes a refresh, browser crashes, or accidentally leave the inventory screen, an auto recovery option appears allowing you to load the changes made by you or other staff members that weren’t saved. Un-recovered data only stays around for 30 days.
- Overview Access log and Inventory Links – the Access Log link was added to the left nav, as well the link in the center content is more noticeable. The inventory link in the middle is also more noticeable.
- New Quote Access Log – New link under customer that allows you to view and search the access log for all quotes, rather then just viewing a single quote’s logs
- Storage
- Bulk Add Containers – New option to skip existing numbers rather then throwing an error. This allows someone to easily fill gaps in their numbers.
Bug Fixes
- Accounting
- Account Payment Editor — Fixed error preventing saving of changed information.
- Bill Accounts Review – Date Selector next and previous buttons didn’t work.
- Bill Accounts – Load Speed improved for large data sets
- Close Job Chrome and Safari fixed.
- Close Job relocate without warehouse zone selected – now auto corrects to not relocate containers.
- Edit Billing Invoice – When you switch an invoice item from fee to balance this now updates the account balance.
- Modular Invoice
- Always show Packing materials, fixed was forcing services instead of materials to always show up.
- Web Quote
- Inventory not showing up when \” submitted in custom items. This is only caused when magic quotes php option is enabled on the server.
- Portal
- View Email Online Link — Fixed an issue with XML bombing due to & in the subject of the email.
- Office calendar
- Incorrect Employee Number – for some staff member the database id was displayed instead of their manually set id number.
- Print Survey – Some web quotes that were resubmitted multiple times can show up multiple times on the in-home survey schedule sheet.
- Estimate Templates
- Broke out Accessorials on hourly – Accessorials costs are now broken out on all hourly jobs
- Min Cost/Max Coverage – Fixed min and max error on estimates.