Moving Invoice Template: Hours and Crew, or Weight and Miles

Short answer: A moving invoice template has two shapes. A local move bills hours times crew size, with travel time, stairs, long carry, and materials on their own lines. A long-distance move bills weight or cubic feet against mileage, backed by origin and destination scale tickets. Both carry the bill of lading number, the estimate it came from, and the valuation the customer chose — released value at 60 cents per pound, or full value.

Moving is the only trade on this list where the profit is decided by a clock the customer is watching. Every accessorial you did not write down at the curb becomes free labor by 4 p.m., and every hour you failed to predict comes out of the same crew day you already paid for. The pre-job document is in moving estimate template, and the general field list is in what to include on an invoice.

What has to be on a moving invoice?

Nine blocks. Two of them exist because a regulator wrote them down, not because a customer asked.

Block	What it has to say
Identity	Your legal name, DOT and MC numbers if you run interstate, state household-goods license number
Bill of lading	The BOL number, which is the contract; the invoice references it, it does not replace it
Move description	Origin and destination addresses, date, and whether this was local or long distance
Basis of charges	Hourly with crew size, or weight and mileage, stated plainly at the top
Time or weight record	Clock times at each stage, or origin and destination scale tickets with tare, gross, and net
Accessorials	Stairs, long carry, shuttle, elevator, bulky items, disassembly — each its own line
Materials	Cartons by size, tape, paper, wardrobes, mattress bags, with returns credited
Valuation	Which liability level the customer selected, in the customer’s own words on the BOL
Estimate reference	The estimate number, its type, and its amount

How does a local hourly invoice get built from the timesheet?

From stamps, not from memory. The invoice should be readable as a sequence anyone can check.

Stamp	What it marks
Depart yard	Where travel time starts, if your tariff bills portal to portal
Arrive origin	Walkthrough, protection laid, paperwork signed
Start load / finish load	The block the customer can actually watch
Depart origin / arrive destination	Transit, with mileage noted
Start unload / finish unload	Placement, assembly, debris
Depart destination	Where billable time ends

Print the rounding increment — most tariffs round to the quarter hour — and the minimum hours you sell, because a two-hour minimum that appears for the first time on the invoice reads as a penalty. State the crew size and the truck. Three movers at 7.75 hours is not the same product as two movers at 11 hours even when the dollars land close, and the customer comparing quotes needs the crew count on the page.

Travel time gets its own line. Some states require household-goods carriers to bill travel as double the actual drive time between origin and destination under their published tariff, so check the rule that governs your intrastate work before you write that line by hand.

How does a long-distance invoice get built from the weight ticket?

From a scale, and the tickets go on the page. Print the tare weight, the gross weight, and the net, with the scale name and the ticket numbers. Then the line-haul charge: net hundredweight against the mileage in the tariff you filed or published.

Customers have a right to observe the weighing and to request a reweigh before the shipment is unloaded, and the charges get recomputed on the reweigh figure. An invoice that shows the tickets makes that a non-event. An invoice that shows only a dollar figure invites a complaint.

If you price interstate work by cubic feet instead of weight, understand what you are carrying. Volume is estimated by eye, cannot be independently verified at a scale, and it is the pricing basis most associated with disputes. Weight is measurable, and measurable is defensible.

Long-distance invoices also carry lines a local move never sees: fuel surcharge as a stated percentage of line haul, shuttle service when a tractor-trailer cannot reach the door, storage-in-transit with a daily rate and a warehouse handling charge, and a second delivery attempt when nobody was there.

What does the invoice have to say about the estimate it came from?

Its number, its type, and its amount, right next to the total.

For interstate moves, the estimate type is not paperwork trivia. Under FMCSA rules, a mover working from a non-binding estimate may not collect more than 110 percent of that estimate at delivery; if the final charges run past that, the shipment must be released on payment of the 110 percent figure and the remaining balance billed at least 30 days later. A binding estimate is the price, full stop, unless the customer added services in writing.

So the arithmetic belongs on the invoice. If the non-binding estimate was $2,640, the ceiling collectible at delivery is $2,904, and a total of $2,885.75 sits under it. Printing those three numbers takes one line and removes the entire category of argument that starts with “you said.”

Intrastate moves are governed by your state rather than by FMCSA, and the rules differ. The habit of showing the estimate, the cap, and the total is worth keeping either way.

Which accessorials get their own line?

All of them. Every one of these is work that happened because of a site condition the base rate does not cover, and every one of them is invisible in a total.

Accessorial	Unit	What triggers it
Stair carry	Per flight above the first	Walk-ups, split-levels, basements
Elevator	Per job	Shared elevator, no hold, or a booking window that slipped
Long carry	Per stated distance band	Truck cannot park within the included footage of the door
Shuttle	Per job	Street too narrow, low branches, HOA restriction on a 26-footer
Bulky items	Each	Piano, safe, pool table, treadmill, appliances needing a board and straps
Disassembly and reassembly	Each	Bed frames, sectionals, wall units, trampolines
Hoisting or window removal	Per job	An item that will not turn a stairwell
Packing materials	Per carton and roll	With wardrobes and blankets credited back if returned
Premium timing	Per job	Saturday, last three days of the month, holiday

The elevator line deserves special mention because it is where local movers lose whole hours. A reserved service elevator that is not actually held burns crew time at full cost while three people stand in a lobby. Bill it, note the reserved window and the actual availability on the line, and the same building stops costing you every June.

What does a filled-in local moving invoice look like?

Placeholder rates from one company so the arithmetic is visible. Use your own tariff.

Invoice 2026-0631 · BOL 44118 · Local, two-bedroom third-floor walk-up to townhouse, 14 miles · Crew of 3, 26 ft truck · Non-binding estimate 2026-0588 at $2,640.00

Times: depart yard 7:30 · arrive origin 8:00 · load 8:15-12:40 · depart origin 12:55 · arrive destination 13:25 · unload 13:35-16:00 · depart destination 16:15

#	Line	Qty	Unit	Rate	Amount
1	Crew and truck — 3 movers, 26 ft truck, billed portal to portal, quarter-hour rounding	7.75	hr	185.00	1,433.75
2	Travel time per tariff — yard to origin, destination to yard	1.00	hr	185.00	185.00
3	Stair carry at origin — third-floor walk-up, two flights above ground level	2	flight	75.00	150.00
4	Long carry at origin — 190 ft truck to building door, loading zone occupied (photo 1)	1	job	95.00	95.00
5	Bulky item — upright piano, 480 lb, boarded and strapped, four-person lift on stairs	1	ea	350.00	350.00
6	Disassembly and reassembly — king bed frame, sectional, treadmill	3	ea	45.00	135.00
7	Packing materials — 12 medium cartons, 6 dish packs, 3 rolls tape, 1 bundle paper	1	lot	148.00	148.00
8	Mattress bags — queen and twin	2	ea	12.00	24.00
9	Full value protection — $40,000 declared, $500 deductible, elected on BOL	1	job	245.00	245.00
10	Month-end Saturday premium per published tariff	1	job	120.00	120.00

Invoice total 2,885.75 · Estimate $2,640.00 · 110% ceiling $2,904.00 · Deposit 250.00 · Balance due 2,635.75

Lines 3 through 6 are $730 of the ticket. All four were site conditions and none of them were guesses: the walk-up and the piano were on the estimate as priced lines waiting for a quantity, and the long carry was photographed at 8:05 a.m.

How does valuation appear on the bill?

As a line, with the level the customer chose written where they chose it.

Released value is the free minimum and it is not insurance. The mover’s liability is capped at 60 cents per pound per article, so a ten-pound electronic component worth $1,000 settles at $6.00. Full value protection costs money, is priced against a declared value, usually carries a deductible, and obliges the mover to repair, replace, or pay the current market value.

Two rules for the invoice. First, the election has to be the customer’s, made in writing on the bill of lading, not a box you checked. Second, print the number that the election produces — the declared value and deductible on full value, or the cents-per-pound cap on released value. The moment a claim happens, that line is the entire conversation, and a customer discovering the 60-cent cap for the first time after a broken television is a complaint you did not have to earn.

How do I set a crew-hour rate that survives a slow day?

Build it from what an hour of crew truly costs, then check the market.

Loaded labor. Not the wage. Wage plus payroll taxes plus workers’ compensation — which is expensive in this trade — plus paid time that is not billable: shop time, fueling, truck checks, the drive back after a job that ran short.

Truck. Payment or depreciation, commercial insurance, registration and permits, fuel, tires, maintenance. Divide by the hours the truck actually earns in a month, not by the hours in a month.

Overhead per billable hour. Dispatch, advertising, licensing, storage, phones, and the office. Divide by billable hours, because a truck that runs 90 billable hours in February carries the same fixed cost as one that runs 160 in July.

Say those add up to $153 an hour for a three-person crew and a 26-footer. A 20 percent markup gives $183.60, and the $30.60 you added is 16.7 percent of that price rather than 20. To earn a 20 percent margin you divide by 0.80 and charge $191.25. Markup is a share of cost; margin is a share of price. In a trade where a single blown estimate can eat a whole day’s margin, running the wrong one of those two is how a busy season disappears.

Then the estimate risk. Profit in moving is lost in the gap between the hours you quoted and the hours the job took. A quote given over the phone from a room count, with no video or in-person survey, is a bet. Survey the job, count cartons, and write the access conditions down — that is what the invoice later bills from.

Published hourly rates and per-hundredweight tariffs vary enormously by market, season, and week of the month. Use them as a sanity check on your own arithmetic and nothing more.

When does the customer pay, and what can I not do if they refuse?

Payment is due at delivery, before or at unloading, and the accepted methods must have been disclosed in advance — a customer told at the curb that you take cash only when the paperwork said credit card has grounds for a complaint.

What you cannot do is hold the goods. On an interstate move with a non-binding estimate, once the customer pays 110 percent of the estimate the shipment must be released and the rest billed at least 30 days out. That rule exists because holding a family’s belongings for payment is exactly the behavior the federal regulations were written to stop, and doing it puts your operating authority at risk over a few hundred dollars.

Take a deposit at booking to cover the crew day you cannot resell. Bill commercial and corporate relocation accounts on stated terms with a due date and a follow-up sequence you actually run, using the mechanics in how to get clients to pay.

What do I keep after the moving invoice goes out?

The signed bill of lading, the inventory with its condition codes, scale tickets on anything weighed, the accessorial photos taken at the curb, the signed change orders, the valuation election, and the truck mileage. Claim windows on moving jobs run for months, and the inventory sheet with a pre-existing scratch recorded on it is the difference between a settled claim and a paid one.

Truck and van miles are also a deduction if the record holds up, and the standard the log has to meet is in IRS mileage log requirements.

Keel is an iOS app that runs entirely on the device — no account, no bank connection, no cloud, no login, and an App Store privacy label that reads Data Not Collected. The invoice gets raised at the destination with the clock stamps, accessorial lines, and the BOL number typed straight into the document, your own numbering sequence, your logo and brand color, and a payment link the customer scans off the screen before the ramp goes up. The receipt for a carton order or a fuel stop is photographed on the spot and read on device by Apple Intelligence. Every leg of the day is logged as a trip. The ledger is append-only and hash-chained, so the times recorded at the curb stay as recorded when a claim arrives in October. At year end it exports as one file, or as the Accountant Pack: a CSV plus a one-page summary PDF. Free is $0 with unlimited invoices, receipts, and mileage; Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase, not a subscription.

Frequently asked questions

What should a moving invoice include?

Your legal name with DOT, MC, or state license numbers, the bill of lading number, origin and destination with the move date, the basis of charges with crew size or net weight and mileage, the full time record or the scale tickets, every accessorial on its own line, packing materials with returns credited, the valuation the customer elected, and the estimate number with its type and amount.

How do movers bill a local move versus a long-distance move?

Local moves bill hours times crew size, plus travel time, accessorials, and materials. Long-distance moves bill net weight in hundredweight against tariff mileage, or cubic feet, plus a fuel surcharge and any shuttle or storage. The two are different products, and putting a long-haul job on an hourly ticket exposes you to every delay between the two states.

Can I charge more than the estimate on a moving job?

On an interstate move with a non-binding estimate, you may not collect more than 110 percent of the estimated amount at delivery; anything above that has to be billed at least 30 days later, and the shipment must still be released. A binding estimate holds at its stated price unless the customer requested additional services in writing. Intrastate rules are set by the state.

What is released value protection on a moving invoice?

The free minimum liability level, capped at 60 cents per pound per article. A ten-pound item worth $1,000 settles at $6.00 under it. Full value protection costs extra, is priced against a declared value with a deductible, and obliges the mover to repair, replace, or pay market value. The customer must elect one in writing on the bill of lading.

How do I bill stairs, long carry, and elevators?

Each as its own line with the condition named. Stairs by the flight above ground level, long carry by distance band once the truck cannot park within your included footage, elevators per job with the reserved window and the actual availability noted. Quote the rates on the estimate so they are agreed before move day, then fill in the quantities on the invoice.

When does a moving customer pay?

At delivery, before or during unloading, using a payment method you disclosed before move day. Take a booking deposit to protect the crew day. Do not hold the shipment for a disputed balance on an interstate move — once 110 percent of a non-binding estimate is paid, the goods must be released and the remainder billed at least thirty days out.

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This article is general information, not professional or tax advice.