Office move checklist: 30 things to do before moving day

A business move is not about boxes, it is about downtime: every hour your team cannot work costs money. We have done over 2,900 moves in the Helsinki region, and in office moves the same problems come up again and again: connections ordered too late, no lift booked, nobody knows whose desk is whose. This list is built around them. Print it, assign owners and tick the items off as they get done.

The list suits offices of 5 to 200 workstations: in a smaller one you can skip a few items, in a larger one give each phase its own owner.

Eight weeks is a realistic minimum for a mid-sized office. Nothing gets packed yet; this is where you make the decisions everything else is built on.

1. Appoint a move lead and a deputy.One person decides, one covers. Every question goes through them.
2. Lock the move date and an overlap.Make sure the new lease starts at least a week before the old one ends. Without overlap there is no room for surprises.
3. Give notice on the old premises.Check the notice period and handover date in the lease and give notice in writing.
4. Measure the new space and draw a floor plan.Mark workstations, meeting rooms, the server cabinet, kitchen and storage. The floor plan is the manual for the whole move.
5. Count workstations and inventory the furniture.Decide what moves, what gets sold, what is recycled and what goes into storage.
6. Request a moving quote.Give the number of workstations, floors, lifts and your preferred dates. Mover Business delivers a moving plan within 24 hours and a fixed price after a site survey.
7. Tell your staff.Timeline, new address and what is expected of each person. A move is a project everyone takes part in.

A month before the move you handle everything that has a lead time: connections, permits and notifications. They will not get faster later, however much you hurry.

1. Order internet and telecom connections for the new address.Fibre lead times are counted in weeks. Order now, test during move week.
2. File the change of address with the authorities.Business register (YTJ), Posti, insurer, bank, accountant and the Tax Administration. Log every notification with its date.
3. Update the address where customers see it.Invoice templates, website, email signatures and your Google Business Profile. Schedule the change for moving day.
4. Book lifts, loading bays and parking permits.At both ends. Agree door codes and access for the movers with the building manager.
5. Check the handover terms of the old premises.Cleaning standard, patching of walls, number of keys and access cards. Final cleaning is the most common reason for a withheld deposit.
6. Order furniture recycling and storage.Old desks, broken chairs and filing cabinets leave as waste removal on the same trip; seasonal items and surplus furniture go into storage.
7. Confirm insurance cover.Ask your mover what their liability insurance covers and check your own property insurance for the transport. The Mover Business hourly rate includes insurance.

Now the move becomes visible. The labelling system decides how quickly the new office is ready to work in; every clear label saves minutes when unpacking.

1. Build a numbering system.Every workstation gets a number that appears on the floor plan, on box labels and on the desks in the new office. A colour per department speeds up unpacking.
2. Hand out boxes and labels.Everyone packs their own desk; shared spaces get a named owner. Set a clear packing deadline.
3. Go through the archive.Personal data into locked boxes, expired paperwork to secure shredding. A move is the best moment to slim down the archive.
4. Agree who disconnects and reconnects IT.Photograph the cabling of every workstation before unplugging. Mover packs and labels the equipment per workstation, and your IT reconnects it in the new space.
5. Take backups.Servers, workstations and NAS before move week. Check that a restore actually works.
6. Inform customers and partners.An email round, an out-of-office message for the move days and the new address on invoices and contracts.

The last working week at the old address. All orders are placed; now you make sure they happen and pack what has been in use until the very end.

1. Confirm the schedule with your mover.Times, crew size, number of trucks and contact numbers at both ends.
2. Pack the shared spaces.Meeting rooms, kitchen, reception and storage. Empty the fridge and disconnect the coffee machine the day before.
3. Mark what is not moving.Rented furniture, the building's own equipment and anything going into storage get their own, clearly different label.
4. List all keys and access cards.Who returns what and when. A missing key is the most common thing that derails the handover of old premises.
5. Inspect the new space before the furniture arrives.Power, lighting, network cabinet, cleaning and workstation number tags on desks or the floor.

Three days in which the office changes address. The movers do the heavy work, the move lead keeps the threads together and IT arrives at the agreed time.

1. Friday evening: disconnect and load.IT unplugs, boxes are sealed, movers load. The move lead walks the old premises room by room last.
2. Saturday: furniture and boxes into place.By the numbers on the floor plan: network cabinet first, then workstations, shared spaces last.
3. Sunday: reconnect, clean and hand over.IT connects and tests the workstations. Move-out cleaning at the old premises, waste removed, keys ready for handover.

A move does not end when the last box is inside; it ends when the team is working. The first morning decides how the whole project is remembered.

1. Be there before the team.Print the floor plan and the number list and put them by the door. Walk the workstations and collect a snag list: what is missing, what does not work, whose chair is in the wrong place.
2. Unpack, return and close the project.Empty boxes are collected as agreed, invoices and the handover report are checked, and a short feedback round tells you what to do differently next time.

Thirty items sounds like a lot, but half of them are phone calls and emails that fit into one afternoon. The heavy part, furniture, boxes, IT equipment, cleaning and waste, is the part you can outsource. Mover Business handles office moves in the Helsinki region with its own crew and trucks: the hourly rate from €90/h includes the truck, movers, fuel and insurance, there is no weekend surcharge, and we reply within an hour on working days.

If your timeline is already tighter than eight weeks, the list still works: merge the first two phases and start by ordering the connections, because that is the one step you cannot rush.

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