Industries: security companies
Security company software for manned guarding: patrols, reports and rotas
A night shift on the phone with checkpoints and incident reports, a rota that watches rest and licences, and a client who knows by morning what happened. For guarding with people on site.
Guarding firms work while everyone else sleeps
Security company software is about nights, weekends and sites where nobody else is around. At ten in the evening the locking-up patrol starts on an industrial estate in Tyseley, at half eleven the control room calls about an alarm at a unit in Hay Mills, at half one the mobile patrol is at the gates of a building site in Digbeth. At every one of those places an officer needs to know what is expected, and the client needs to read afterwards what happened.
This page is about manned guarding: static guarding, mobile patrols, keyholding and alarm response, reception and door supervision. Not cyber security. In many guarding firms that work still sits in a rota spreadsheet, a patrol wand downloaded after the shift and reports someone types up the next morning. A system of your own brings rota, patrols, reports and licences together.
Night shift and incident report on the officer's phone
- The client report is ready by morningTimes, findings and photos go to the client in one summary. Nobody retypes a daily occurrence book.
- Checkpoints on the patrolEach patrol shows which points were scanned and when, without a wand to download at the end of the shift.
- Lone workers are not left aloneIf the officer misses a welfare check, the control room is alerted.
The sites, addresses and times here are fictional. You decide what a report must record.
Patrol reports nobody types up again
The shift itself usually goes fine. What costs time and trust is everything around it: the report that reaches the client at ten, the patrol nobody can prove was walked, the officer on a site whose assignment instructions they have never seen.
| Moment | How it often goes | With a system of your own |
|---|---|---|
| Start of shift | A folder of assignment instructions in the gatehouse | Site instructions, contacts and keys on the phone |
| Patrol | A wand downloaded after the shift | Checkpoints that show at once what was scanned and what was missed |
| Alarm | Notes on paper, a report later | Times of call, arrival and findings, with photos |
| Report to the client | Typed up the next morning | A daily report ready before the client starts work |
| Lone working | A call if the control room remembers | A welfare check at set times, an alert when nobody answers |
| Hours per site | Pulled from the rota for the invoice | Hours worked per site and per officer, ready to invoice |
The report per incident works like a work order app, with times, photos and a sign-off. Hours per officer and per site belong in a time tracking app. And if clients should read their own reports, we build a client portal.
Rest clash after a night shift, fixed for Saturday
Not enough rest between shifts
Shaun finishes nights at 6am on Saturday and is down for the arena event at 2pm the same day.
The board suggests Leanne: free on Saturday, holds a door supervisor licence, and has hours left this month.
Rota fixed: Leanne takes the event
The officers, sites and event are invented. You set which rest rule, licence or training the board checks.
Rota software for guarding, with licences and rest built in
Scheduling in security is a puzzle with rules. A twelve-hour night, an event on Saturday, a reception post that needs cover every weekday, a response team that has to stay free for alarms. On top of that: whose SIA licence is valid and for which activity, who has a door supervisor licence, who knows the site, and how many hours has someone already worked this month?
In a spreadsheet the scheduler sees a clash when an officer rings to say they cannot start at two. A board built for you watches the rest rule you set between shifts, licence expiry dates and the hours per month. When there is a clash it suggests an officer who is free, knows the site and holds the right licence. The scheduler decides. How such a board works for teams and shifts is on staff scheduling software, and the trade-off with a spreadsheet in Excel scheduling or planning software.
Construction site guarding wanted in Birmingham
New enquiry
Site with 3 cabins and a crane, night and weekend patrols, 8 months
Site manager, Solihull, Tuesday 10:12
- A page per service: patrols, alarm response, sites, events
- Your licences and accreditations, clear on the site
- A form that asks for the site, the hours and the length of contract
These firms, ratings and the enquiry were made up for the example.
Licensed officers applying through your own site
Names and applicants are fictional. Which licences and checks the form asks for is your choice.
Guarding contracts start with a local search
A site manager who needs a build guarded, a warehouse manager after a break-in, an event organiser: they all search for a service and a town. If you do not show up for security company Birmingham or construction site security Solihull, you never hear that a contract was going.
A site with a page per service, such as mobile patrols, keyholding and alarm response, construction sites and events, with your SIA licensing and any ACS approval stated clearly, earns trust. A Google Business Profile with reviews from regular clients helps; get more Google reviews shows how to ask. What such a site looks like is on small business website, and being found per area is local SEO. Have the form ask for the type of site, the hours, the duration and whether there is an alarm or CCTV, so you can propose cover at once.
Recruiting is the other half. Licensed officers are scarce, and those with a licence choose. A vacancy that asks whether someone already holds a front line licence and which shifts suit them filters at once; anyone still to train goes on a separate list. What officers want to know: regular sites, a rota fixed a month ahead, paid refresher training. That story is employer branding, and screening candidates works as on AI for HR.
Tender spec turned into shifts and hours
An invented tender. The AI turns it into shifts and hours, the price and the call stay with you.
Bid groundwork from a tender, with the scheduler deciding
A public or private tender arrives with a twenty-page specification: which posts, which hours, how many patrols, what the report must contain. Turning that into shifts and hours per week is an evening's work. AI can do that groundwork: pull out the posts, add up the hours and suggest a first pattern of cover.
The scheduler checks whether the cover adds up, whether there are enough licensed officers and which rates apply. AI sends no quote. How that works in practice is on AI quote generator.
Guarding businesses from one officer to a hundred
A sole trader in security does not need an ERP. A firm with eighty officers across thirty sites needs more than a rota in a spreadsheet. Each size gets a different first build.
| Size | What you need | What you do not need (yet) |
|---|---|---|
| Sole trader | A site with your licensing and services, a Google profile, reports from the phone | A planning board, a control room module |
| Team of five | Rota with rest and licences, patrols with checkpoints, a daily report to the client | A payroll module of your own |
| 20 to 50 staff | Shifts per site and per post, lone worker checks, hours per site to invoicing, a dashboard with cover | A large package for every kind of security |
| Larger firm | Tenders and contracts, subcontractors, a client portal, links to control room and payroll | A second system beside the first |
At a larger scale it is about kit, vehicles and contracts; then you are looking at custom ERP development. Whether to build or buy is set out in build vs buy software. Existing systems, such as payroll or an alarm receiving centre, we connect with an API integration.
SIA licensing in your rota and your records
Private security is tightly regulated in the UK. These are the rules that most often need to sit in your system.
| Situation | What the rule asks | What the software does |
|---|---|---|
| The officer | A front line SIA licence for the activity, £204 since 1 April 2026, valid for 3 years | Per officer the licence, activity and expiry; the rota does not place anyone without a valid licence |
| Supplying staff | Supplying unlicensed officers is an offence under section 5 of the Private Security Industry Act 2001 | A check before every shift, also for subcontracted officers |
| The company | The Approved Contractor Scheme is voluntary, per activity | Records per site and per incident that an assessor can follow |
| Records | No statutory patrol register, but clients and ACS ask for proof | Every patrol, checkpoint and incident stored with time and officer |
| Larger venues | Martyn's Law expected from spring 2027: standard tier for 200 to 799 people, enhanced tier for 800 or more | Event shifts and procedures per venue, ready for clients who fall under it |
| Hours and rest | A 48-hour average week over 17 weeks unless an officer opts out; the rest rule you set, where for most workers the law sets 11 hours | Hours per officer over the reference period, opt-outs on file, rest checked |
| Pay | National Living Wage of £12.71 from 1 April 2026 and £13.21 from 1 April 2027 | Hours per shift checked against the rate |
| Insurance and tax | Employers' liability cover of at least £5m; Making Tax Digital for VAT; Peppol e-invoicing between businesses from 1 April 2029 | Certificates and renewal dates on file, digital invoices per site |
How e-invoicing will work is in e-invoicing in the UK. Starting a firm? Licensing and first steps are in start a security company in the UK.
Control room admin put into pounds
| Task per week | Spreadsheet, wand and paper | A system of your own |
|---|---|---|
| Typing up shift reports, 10 minutes each | 12 hours | 1.25 hours |
| Rota changes, 15 minutes each | 3 hours | 1 hour |
| Checking SIA licences and training | 2 hours | 0.25 hours |
| Pulling hours per site for the invoice | 3 hours | 0.5 hours |
| Total | 20 hours | 3 hours |
That is 17 hours a week, or 782 hours over 46 weeks. At £35: 782 x 35 = £27,370 a year in this example. What the table leaves out is the contract you keep because the client has a report every morning. Yours may be higher or lower; see custom software development cost for what a build involves.
Manned guarding software starts with a real night
- FirstA conversation about your shiftsWhich sites, which kinds of shift, how does an alarm come in, who schedules, how does the report reach the client? We go through a real week and a real night.
- NextA fixed price per projectWe pick the part that costs you the most hours or the most trust and give a fixed price for it. A site of your own costs from 1,500 euro; the software gets its price once we have talked it through.
- ThenOne site runs on it firstThe officers on one site and the scheduler use the first version. What does not fit gets changed before the other sites follow. The code and the data stay yours.
We have yet to work for a guarding firm; the closest thing we can show is the planning board that has spotted rota clashes and proposed fixes daily at DA Logistics since July 2026, part of our custom software work, and if your officers share sites with cleaners, see cleaning companies.
Guard company owners ask before switching
Do I have to throw away my patrol wands and checkpoints?
Not necessarily. Checkpoints can be NFC tags or QR codes the phone reads, and existing points on a site can stay if they can be read. We look at what you have first.
Does the app work without signal in a basement or plant room?
It does when we design it to. The scan is stored on the phone and sent as soon as there is signal again, with the time it was actually made.
Do I have to replace payroll or my control room system?
No. Hours per officer go to your payroll, alarms can come in from the system you already use. What we build connects through an API integration.
Can clients see their own reports?
Yes. A client can read the daily report, patrols and incidents per site and raise a question against the right site, without calling the office.
Does the system decide who goes to an alarm?
No. It shows who missed a checkpoint, who did not answer a welfare check and whose licence is about to run out. Who attends, who calls the police and who covers a shift stays with people in the control room and the office.
Custom software
How VBS helps you with this
We build the platform your business runs on every day: your spreadsheets, emails and paperwork in one system that does what you do.
- Your workflow mapped first, then a fixed price
- Screens for the office, the client and the road
- Hosting, backups and security managed by us on AWS
How we approach it is on our page about Custom software.
Rotas, patrols and reports in one place?
Tell us how a week and a night run in your firm. We will show you where we would start and what it gives you.
Rather get in touch right away?