What is in this guide 9 sections

How long a small office move takes

Eight to twelve weeks is realistic for a 5 to 30 desk office. You can do it in four if you have to, but you will pay for the compression somewhere, usually in a rushed make-good or an internet connection that is not live on the Monday.

Here is the shape of it. Adjust to your own lease dates rather than treating this as gospel.

First: your lease and the make-good clause

Before you look at a single box, read the exit terms on your current lease. Australian commercial leases almost always carry a make-good clause, and it is the part that surprises people.

Make-good means restoring the premises to an agreed condition when you leave. The NSW Small Business Commission describes it as returning the property in a similar condition to the start of the lease, and notes it can extend to stripping the premises back to bare shell and repainting. Depending on how yours is written, that is anything from a professional clean to removing your fit-out, replacing carpet, and taking out data cabling you installed years ago.

• Find the clause and read the actual wording. “Original condition” and “as at commencement, fair wear and tear excepted” are very different obligations.
• Check whether there is a condition report from when you moved in. If there is, that is the benchmark. If there is not, the negotiation is more open than you think.
• Get the quote early. Make-good works are frequently more expensive than the removal itself.
• Ask about a cash settlement. Some landlords prefer a payment in lieu, especially if the next tenant is refitting anyway.
• Confirm when rent actually stops. It is often when make-good is accepted, not when you hand back the keys.

Order the internet before anything else

This is the step that ruins otherwise well-planned office moves, and it has nothing to do with removalists.

A business internet service at a new address is not a same-week job. Depending on what is already installed in the building, it can involve a new connection, in-building cabling, or a site visit, and lead times run into weeks. Order it as soon as the new lease is signed, well before you think about boxes.

• Ask what is already in the building before you assume a new connection is needed. Existing infrastructure can save you weeks.
• Get the activation date in writing and build your move date around it, not the other way round.
• Have a fallback. A mobile broadband service for the first week is cheap insurance against a delayed activation.
• Sort phone numbers at the same time. Porting a business number takes its own lead time.
• Do not disconnect the old service until the new one is tested and working.

Build the asset register

An asset register is a list of every desk, chair, screen, cabinet and appliance, and a decision against each one: moves, goes, or gets replaced.

It sounds like busywork. It is the single most useful hour of the whole project, for three reasons.

1. It makes your removal quote accurate. No mover can price a job properly from “about fifteen desks and some cabinets”.
2. It stops you paying to move rubbish. Every item you decide against is one you do not pay to lift twice.
3. It becomes the moving day checklist. You already have the list of what should have arrived.

Walk the office with a phone and photograph as you go. Note anything that is fragile, unusually heavy, or that a manufacturer has to dismantle. Those are the items that determine the crew size and the equipment.

The things people wish they had left behind

• Archive boxes nobody has opened in five years. Digitise or send them to a document storage facility instead of paying to relocate them.
• Broken or mismatched chairs. Replacing them costs less than you think and they never improve after a move.
• Old monitors and towers that are already out of warranty.
• The second fridge in the kitchen that nobody claims.

Book the lifts, docks and after-hours access

In Sydney commercial and strata buildings this is not a formality, and it catches out anyone who has only moved house before.

• Service lift booking. Most buildings require it, in writing, days ahead. Some will not release it at all on weekends, which is exactly when you want to move.
• Loading dock window. Docks often run in fixed slots with a height limit. Check the clearance against the truck.
• After-hours access. If you are moving on a Saturday, confirm someone can actually let the crew in and that the alarm and security system will allow it.
• Certificate of currency. Many building managers will not let a removalist on site without seeing their insurance certificate first. Ask your mover for it early and send it through.
• Do both ends. People book the new building and forget the one they are leaving.

When we quote a small office move we ask about all of this up front, because a booked dock is the difference between a four-hour job and a crew waiting on the street.

Tell everyone who needs to know

Start this four weeks out and keep it as a running list rather than trying to remember it all at once.

• Staff first, and with enough notice that people can sort out their own commute and parking.
• Clients and suppliers, with the change date stated plainly.
• Couriers and regular deliveries. These are the ones that keep arriving at the old address for months.
• Google Business Profile, website, email signatures, invoices, letterhead. The profile matters more than people expect, because it is where most customers actually find your address.
• ASIC, your accountant, your insurer, your bank. Registered office and public officer addresses may need updating.
• Australia Post redirection as a safety net for whatever you missed.

Put the new address in your email signature a few weeks before the move with the date it takes effect. It is the cheapest, highest-coverage announcement you have.

IT, and labelling that actually works

Two jobs that decide whether Monday morning is calm or not.

The IT plan

• Photograph the back of everything before you unplug it. Server rack, comms cabinet, every desk with a docking station. It is a two-minute job that saves an hour each.
• Bag and label cables per desk rather than throwing them in a communal box. A box of tangled cables costs more time than it saves.
• Back up before the move, and verify the backup actually restores.
• Confirm data points and power at the new desks. Discovering there is no network port where a desk is going is a moving-day problem you can solve four weeks early.
• Set up and test the network first when you arrive, before the furniture is straight.

Labelling by destination

The most common labelling mistake is describing the contents. Nobody unpacking needs to know a box holds stationery. They need to know where it goes.

1. Number every room and desk position on the new floor plan. Print it and put a copy on the wall at both ends.
2. Every box gets the destination number, large, on the top and on at least two sides.
3. Colour-code by area if you have more than a couple of rooms. Coloured tape is faster to read than writing.
4. Mark the first-morning boxes separately. Kettle, chargers, the router, and whatever reception needs to open.
5. Staff pack their own desks into their own numbered boxes. They know what matters and it saves you paying for the hours.

If your team genuinely does not have the time, packing and materials can be added to the job. It usually works out cheaper than the trading hours you lose having staff do it badly at the last minute.

The moving weekend run sheet

Move Friday evening or Saturday morning wherever you can. You are trading a weekend for a trading day, and for most small businesses that is an easy call.

• One person is the contact. Not three. The crew needs a single decision maker on site at each end.
• That person has the floor plan and directs boxes as they land, rather than sorting them later.
• Walk the old site before the truck leaves. Every cupboard, every drawer, under every desk, and the kitchen.
• Check the asset register off as things arrive. This is why you built it.
• Set up IT and test it before anyone goes home. Finding a dead connection on Saturday is fixable. Finding it on Monday is not.
• Do a Monday-morning walk-through before staff arrive, so the first thing they see is a working desk.

What it costs and when to hire someone

Office removal pricing depends on the volume, the access at both ends, and whether the job runs after hours. Stairs, long carries from a dock, and a lift you have to share all cost time, which is what you are actually paying for. We quote on the specifics rather than publishing a flat rate, and you can see how we price on our moving prices page.

Reasonable to handle yourselves

• Under about five desks, ground floor to ground floor.
• Nothing heavier than a two-person lift.
• No lift booking, no loading dock, no after-hours access.
• You have a van and a weekend you are willing to lose.

Worth having done properly

• Any move involving a service lift, a loading dock or a building manager.
• Anything you cannot afford to be without on Monday, which for most offices is everything.
• Long boardroom tables, tall cabinets and anything that needs dismantling and rebuilding.
• Fragile or valuable items. A large part of our work comes through real estate agents and antique dealers, so careful handling of things that cannot be replaced is the part of the job we are actually known for.
• You need it done between Friday night and Monday morning with no margin for error.

If archive boxes or excess furniture need to go somewhere other than the new office, arrange that with a storage facility directly and factor the drop-off into the same day. We can move things there as part of the job, but the storage itself is a separate arrangement you will hold with the facility.

Common questions