AI video survey

Yembo is the category leader and the platform most of the industry benchmarks against. The customer films a guided walkthrough, the AI identifies items and calculates packing requirements, and a visual inventory appears instantly for your team to confirm with the customer on the spot. It offers four survey modes — self-service, guided, onsite or fully managed — so you can flex between them by job type and season.

It also carries the quote through: estimates generate automatically from the survey inventory and your own tariffs, with a tariff builder, duplicate-and-adjust quoting and built-in e-signature. Yembo claims operators run three times more surveys without adding headcount — a vendor figure, so treat it as a hypothesis to test in a pilot.

Pay-per-survey alternative

The main challenger, and its pitch is the billing model: around $20 per survey with no annual subscription, which suits smaller firms and anyone whose volume is seasonal rather than steady. It also offers a move-day audit that compares crew video at load time against the original survey inventory and flags items that weren’t surveyed, surfacing them for billing review.

That audit feature addresses the exact variance problem described above, which is a sensible answer to a real operational issue. Bear in mind the comparison claims come from HomeSurvey’s own materials — worth verifying in a trial rather than taking on trust.

Quotes, comms & crew paperwork

ChatGPT handles the writing around every job: the covering email that goes out with a quote, chasing an estimate that’s gone quiet, explaining what’s included in packing versus part-packing, apologising properly when a job overruns, and drafting the terms about access, parking suspensions and waiting time.

It’s equally useful internally — crew briefing sheets, method statements for a difficult access job, induction notes for seasonal staff, and the driver’s paperwork checklist. Written once with AI, reused all season.

The enquiry line

Removals enquiries arrive during working hours, which is exactly when your office is thin and everyone else is on a job. AI receptionists like Rosie or Goodcall answer 24/7, explain your service area and process, capture move date, postcodes, property size and access notes, and book the survey.

The economics are strong because of job value. A single domestic move is worth several hundred to a few thousand pounds, so capturing one otherwise-lost enquiry a month covers the subscription many times over. Route anything complex — commercial, international, storage — to a human.

UK removals management

If you want software built for British removals rather than adapted from American van lines, MoveMan is the established choice. Supplied to the industry since 1995, it supports nearly 300 UK and overseas companies from single users to multi-branch operations, with drag-and-drop diaries, web integration and long-standing British Association of Removers affiliation.

It covers the operational core — enquiries, quotes, diary and van allocation, storage, invoicing. Newer UK entrants such as Move Agent are building modern alternatives, and the international platforms (Moveware, Move4U) suit larger operations, so it’s worth seeing two before committing.

Accounts, fuel & tax

Removals carries messy costs — fuel, vehicle maintenance, insurance, casual labour, packing materials, storage overheads — and QuickBooks with Intuit Assist photographs receipts and files them, tracks mileage automatically, handles payroll and sorts VAT.

With Making Tax Digital extending to more sole traders and small businesses, digital record-keeping is becoming a requirement rather than good practice. Check how it connects to your job-management system before committing; some links route through a paid third-party connector.

Contracts, insurance & claims

Claude is the better tool for the long documents this trade generates: goods-in-transit and public liability policies, BAR standard terms, storage agreements, commercial contracts and — the painful one — damage claims.

Paste in an insurance schedule and ask exactly what’s covered and what the excess is, or have it draft a measured, factual response to a claim about a scratched sideboard. Removals disputes are usually won on documentation, and this makes good documentation quick enough to actually produce.

Website enquiries

Moving house is a considered, anxious purchase, and people compare three or four firms online before phoning any of them. Tidio answers the qualifying questions instantly — do you cover this route, do you do packing, are you BAR members, do you have storage, how far ahead should I book — and captures details from visitors who’d otherwise leave.

Because enquiries cluster around evenings and weekends when people are house-hunting, out-of-hours coverage matters more here than in most trades. Have it collect the move date and postcodes so you can quote properly in the morning.

Branding & customer materials

Canva produces the things that make a firm look established and reassuring: vehicle livery mock-ups, crew uniform and ID designs, a “moving day checklist” leaflet customers genuinely appreciate, packing guides, storage price lists and estate-agent referral cards.

The referral angle is worth real attention. Estate agents, conveyancers and letting agents send a lot of removals work, and a professional one-page introduction with your BAR membership and insurance details opens more doors than a phone call.

Reputation

Nobody hands their entire household to a firm with two reviews. Tools like NiceJob automate the ask after each move — a text and email, reminders for those who forget, review display on your site, and AI-drafted replies — building the Google rating that decides whether a stranger calls you.

Start free, though. A card in the paperwork with a QR code to your Google review page, handed over when the crew finishes, costs nothing and works well — moving day ends on a high, which is exactly the right moment to ask. Pay for automation only when the manual route has plateaued.