Business Relocation—Move Office, Store, and Workshop in Stages

What do you need to consider when relocating a company? Plan the timeline backwards

A business relocation has a fixed end point: the first working day at the new site. Plan backwards from that day, not forwards from the start of the lease.

It starts with an inventory: what moves, what is sold, what is disposed of? Each department draws up a list of its furniture, equipment and files. This gives the volume, weight and vehicle class for each stage.

Then the room plan: every room at the new site gets a number, every floor a colour. Boxes, furniture and equipment are labelled with colour and room number, so nobody at the destination has to ask where anything goes. For the stages, one sequence has proven itself: first warehouse and archive, then workshop, and finally offices and IT – ideally at the weekend so that Monday starts as normal.

In parallel, the external deadlines run: parking restrictions at both addresses, booking the goods lift with the building management, internet connection at the new site, a removal company to dismantle and reassemble furniture. You will find a list to tick off in our moving checklist. Each stage is booked with us as a separate drive with its own time window and its own proof of delivery.

Applying for a temporary no-parking zone: the process in Cologne and other NRW cities

Without free space in front of the door, every move slows down: the vehicle stands far away and every box crosses the street. A temporary no-parking zone is applied for by the party moving – that is, your company or your removal company – with the city. Set up the zone in advance for the drives with Maxmove.

In Cologne, the office for transport trade permits and exemptions under the Road Traffic Regulations is responsible. The city recommends submitting the application in writing at least three weeks before the date where possible. Required details include the date and duration, the local traffic situation and the length of the zone. You obtain the signs from a specialist company; in Cologne they must be put up four days before the date, by you or a contractor you appoint.

The lead time has a legal background: according to a ruling of the Federal Administrative Court (3 C 25.16), owners whose vehicles were previously parked legally only have to pay towing costs if the sign was in place for at least three full days. Other cities in North Rhine-Westphalia have their own application routes and deadlines; ask your city’s road traffic office or public order office.

Plan zones at both addresses and size the length to the vehicle – a 3.5 t box van needs more space than a van.

Moving IT and servers without losing Monday

The first working day depends on IT. Three things decide whether it works.

Lead time for the connection: order the internet and phone line at the new site early, because installation and activation take weeks with many providers. Check in advance whether the server room has power, cooling and network cabling.

Back up data: before dismantling, take a full backup, check that it can be restored and store it separately from the removal goods – not in the same vehicle as the servers.

Transport equipment properly: servers and network equipment are shut down, cables labelled, hard drives secured according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Monitors and computers travel in their original packaging or in padded roll containers, server racks only with secured slide-ins or empty. Electronics transported in winter should reach room temperature before being switched on, otherwise condensation can form.

For the transport, a separate stage for IT helps: dismantled last at the old site and set up first at the new one. With live tracking, your IT team sees when the vehicle arrives and can plan the setup accordingly; the digital proof of delivery records when each device was handed over.

Moving files: data protection, retention periods and clearing out

Files are the removal goods with the most obligations attached. Personnel files and client records contain personal data; your company remains responsible for protecting them during transport as well (Articles 24 and 32 GDPR). Pack such files in lockable, numbered containers, keep a list of the containers and have the handover documented. Our page on file transport describes the details.

A relocation is also the best moment to clear out. Under Section 257 of the German Commercial Code and Section 147 of the German Fiscal Code, books of account, inventories and annual financial statements must be kept for ten years, accounting vouchers for eight years and commercial and business letters received and sent for six years – each counted from the end of the calendar year in which the document was created. For tax purposes, however, the period does not expire as long as the documents are relevant for taxes whose assessment period is still running. Anything whose period has expired does not need to move with you.

Destruction is handled by a document shredding service that works to DIN 66399 – it is not part of the transport. Everything that remains travels in its own stage, ideally together with the archive shelving, so that the order is preserved at the destination.

Company relocation: trade office, commercial register and works council

Besides the transport, a business relocation brings formal obligations. The most important:

Trade office: anyone relocating their business must notify the competent authority (Section 14 of the German Trade Regulation Act). If you move to a different registration district, you notify the business at the new municipality, which passes the data on to the old one for deregistration.

Commercial register: merchants and companies such as a GmbH must register a change of their domestic business address and a relocation of the establishment to another place (Section 31 of the German Commercial Code). The application must be filed with a publicly attested signature, in practice through a notary (Section 12 of the Commercial Code).

Works council: in companies with normally more than twenty employees entitled to vote, relocating the whole business or significant parts of it counts as an operational change. The employer must inform the works council in good time and comprehensively and consult it on the relocation (Section 111 of the Works Constitution Act). Plan these discussions before dates are fixed.

On top of that come the tax office, the employers’ liability insurance association, banks and insurers, and the new address on invoices, letterheads and in the website imprint. Also check whether your contents and business insurance covers the new site.

Lift, access, building management: preparing the relocation day on site

Many delays on relocation day happen at points nobody checked beforehand. Go through both sites with this list.

Access: where does the vehicle stop, and how far is it to the entrance? For underground car parks and courtyards, check the clearance height; high-roof vans and box bodies often do not fit.

Lift: book the goods lift with the building management, check car size and load capacity, and clarify whether walls and floors need protecting.

House rules: some office buildings only allow moves at certain times or at weekends and require registration with reception or security.

Keys and access: who opens the new premises on Saturday morning, who has the key to the archive?

Contact person: one person per site with a mobile number who can answer the driver’s questions straight away.

Enter these details in the notes field for each stage; the driver sees them in the app before setting off. If you also need a carrying helper, book one for that stage. For heavy single items such as safes, copiers or server racks, clarify weight and route in advance.