There comes a time for many businesses when it becomes necessary to move offices. Whether due to expansion and growing too large for current facilities, downsizing to cut costs or just to move into a more desirable location, this can be an important event for your company.

Hours will be spent researching, planning and budgeting for the new office, with many costs involved in the whole process. It’s important to be aware of them all and ensuring you have the funds to cover every cost. This avoids any nasty surprises cropping up later.

Refurbishment

If your company is leasing new office space and hopes to make some amendments, getting approval from the landlord before going ahead with any alterations is required. A licence for alterations should then be added to the lease when plans have been approved. The costs attached to actually making refurbishments will vary depending on how much or little you intend to do. This should be factored into the overall cost of acquiring the office as it may work out cheaper moving elsewhere if there are fewer changes required.

Transport

How far from the original location your office is moving could have a big impact on employees’ transport costs. For the moving process hiring removal vans will be a necessary extra expense which will differ depending on the amount of furniture, documents and other items the company possesses. Spending time packing, unpacking, organising the move and everything else to do with the new office also takes money out of the regular working costs and uses it for this purpose.

Storage

An office clear out can reveal an abundance of items no longer required or which workers don’t need regular access to. Moving these all into a new office just to fill a few cupboards can seem like a waste of effort, while discarding can be a risky option. Instead putting all this material into long or short term storage with a company like Safestore will keep everything secure and out of the way until it is needed.

Insurance

There can be many hard to remember costs associated with moving, such as stamp duty and any additional VAT required. The landlord is responsible for insuring the building but it will be the tenant’s job to transfer across contents insurance and any other relevant insurance policies. These could increase or decrease depending on the new location, size and any added equipment. Along with agent and solicitor fees it is vital to include all potential costs in your office moving budget.

By Eddy

Eddy is the editorial columnist in Business Fundas, and oversees partner relationships. He posts articles of partners on various topics related to strategy, marketing, supply chain, technology management, social media, e-business, finance, economics and operations management. The articles posted are copyrighted under a Creative Commons unported license 4.0. To contact him, please direct your emails to [email protected].