The best multi-location operators we work with all open the same dashboard at 9 AM. Each location sees one number: bookings today vs the same date last year.
Why “Same Date Last Year” Beats “Same Week” or “Month over Month”
Moving is heavily seasonal. June 12 is always busier than June 5 (closer to end-of-month). July 1 is different in Canada than July 2 (Moving Day). A Tuesday is different from a Saturday. Month-over-month comparisons in a seasonal business are noise — you’re comparing January to December and pretending the comparison means something.
Same date last year controls for seasonality automatically. June 12, 2026 vs June 12, 2025. Same day of week (approximately — adjusted for the Prophet model). Same position in the month. Same seasonal pressure. The comparison is apples to apples.
If you’re ahead, you know it by 9 AM. If you’re behind, you know it by 9 AM. Not at the end of the month when the report says “June was 14% below last year.” Not on the 15th when you realize the first two weeks were soft. On the morning of June 12th, when you can still do something about it.
What the Report Actually Shows
The daily pacing report in MoveRight shows:
- Bookings today vs same date last year — count and revenue
- Average ticket size — and how it compares to last year
- Top three sources of booked revenue — where the money came from today
- Biggest delta vs last year — which location is most ahead or most behind
For multi-location operators, this rolls up to a network-level view. Each location sees their own number. The network manager sees every location’s number side by side.
What Managers Do With It
A typical morning-standup pattern:
Manager: “Location A is 18% ahead of last year. What’s working?” Location A lead: “We had three big residential jobs come in yesterday from Google Ads. The ad spend is converting.”
Manager: “Location B is 12% behind last year. What happened?” Location B lead: “Two of our leads went to voicemail yesterday afternoon. Connection rate dropped. We’re adjusting lunch coverage today.”
This is how you manage a network. Not with quarterly reviews. Not with month-end spreadsheets. With a daily number that tells you whether you’re winning or losing, with enough time to do something about it.
The Math Under the Hood
This is where it gets interesting. A naive “same date last year” comparison has a problem: what if June 12, 2025 was a fluke? Maybe it was an unusually good day, or an unusually bad one. The year-over-year comparison makes it look like you’re failing when you’re actually having a normal day, or that you’re succeeding when you’re just reverting to the mean.
MoveRight’s pacing report is anchored by the Prophet forecasting model — the same model that powers demand tiers. Instead of comparing to the raw same-date-last-year number, it compares to the expected value for that date based on:
- The long-term trend of your business (are you growing or shrinking?)
- The yearly seasonal pattern (May–Sept peak)
- The weekly seasonal pattern (Saturdays >> weekdays)
- Holiday effects (adjusted for calendar drift)
If June 12, 2025 was a fluke — say, a single massive corporate relocation that inflated the day’s number — the model accounts for it. The expected value for June 12, 2026 is based on the full seasonal pattern, not one anomalous day.
This means the pacing number is more trustworthy than a naive year-over-year comparison. If the model says you should be at $X today based on your full history, and you’re at $X + 15%, that’s a real signal. If a naive comparison says you’re at $X + 40% because last year was abnormally low, that’s a misleading signal.
Why Most Multi-Location Software Can’t Ship This
Per-seat CRMs discourage giving every agent a login. So the pacing report is only visible to managers, not the people who need it most.
Single-tenant systems can’t roll up. Each location is a separate database with a separate login. The network manager has to manually combine five reports into one.
Per-location accounts force the operator to switch between five dashboards to compare five locations. By the time they’ve finished, the data is stale.
MoveRight handles it natively: role-based access across zones, network-wide reporting that rolls up automatically, and the Prophet model providing expected-value comparisons instead of naive year-over-year.
Multi-location operator? Ask for the network scoreboard tour.
References:
- Movers Development — Best Moving CRM 2026 — https://moversdev.com/best-crm-software-for-movers/
- IBISWorld — Moving Services in the US — https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/moving-services/1154/