Security companies record working time under conditions that rarely occur together in any other industry: round-the-clock shifts, changing sites within a single night, lone working with no colleagues as witnesses – and a client who wants proof that somebody really was on site. A timesheet filled in from memory at the end of the month does not hold up to that.

What makes guarding different

In most businesses the working day starts and ends in the same place. In security services that is the exception. The typical pattern is more like: shift start at site A at 6 p.m., two patrols at site B from 10 p.m., back to A, handover at 6 a.m. That creates four requirements a time tracking system has to meet at the same time:

  • Site accuracy – not just how long somebody worked, but for which client and at which site
  • Evidential value – in a dispute, a client will not accept a list typed up in the office
  • Premium separation – night, Sunday and public holiday hours have to be kept apart cleanly
  • Robustness – underground car parks, plant rooms, warehouses: where the patrols happen, there is often no signal

Proving patrols and site hours instead of asserting them

The most effective measure is an NFC tag at the site – a passive sticker without a battery, assigned once to a client or project. Whoever touches it with their work phone automatically clocks in on that site, without picking from a list. That is a different kind of record than an entry in a logbook: the tag is physically on the wall, so somebody had to be there.

Within a site you can additionally define posts and patrol routes as separate areas – gatehouse, underground car park, perimeter round. The report then shows not just “eight hours at client Miller” but which rounds were actually walked during that shift. If required, the camera opens after check-in, for example to record damage or a meter reading.

Where it needs to be stricter, a radius can be set per site, within which clocking in is possible at all. The default is 700 metres; anyone standing outside it cannot check in.

Separating night, Sunday and public holiday work

Premiums are not a side issue in the security industry but a substantial part of the invoice. What matters is that night hours are delimited under the correct national rules: in Austria the night window usually runs from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., in Germany from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. Applying one grid to both countries shifts every night shift by an hour.

Jobilino splits the hours worked accordingly and reports night, Sunday and public holiday shares separately – as the basis for payroll, using the premium rates stored in each employee’s contract. They are not stacked: if a night shift falls on a public holiday, the higher rate applies, not the sum of both.

The roster and the actual hours are two different things

A common mistake is to use the roster as proof of working time. Planned is not worked – and it is precisely the deviation that matters in a dispute. Shift planning records who was scheduled; time tracking records who actually clocked in. The two remain separate data sets but can be evaluated side by side. Once a week is published, employees see their roster in the app – and if it changes later, exactly what changed.

Anyone who does not clock in for a scheduled shift stands out: after a configurable delay the system can send the employee a reminder, instead of the missing hour surfacing only at payroll time.

Working on without a signal

Underground car parks, plant rooms and warehouses reliably have no reception – and that is exactly where the patrols are. A clock-in without a connection is therefore stored on the device and submitted once there is signal again. What gets booked is the actual moment of the tap, not the moment of transmission. The window for this is 72 hours, so it also covers a weekend without reception.

Breaks and rest periods in shift work

With twelve-hour duties and quick shift changes, break and rest-period rules are not a formality but exactly what gets checked during an inspection. The thresholds are stored per country – in Germany and Austria, for instance, 30 minutes of break from six hours of working time, and eleven hours of rest between two working days. Employees can be reminded before a threshold is reached, and starting a shift too early after too short a rest can be blocked.

What the client receives

At the end of the month there is not only the payroll total but also the record per client: hours worked per site, broken down by employee and day, as a PDF or a spreadsheet. For tenders and variations that is the difference between an invoice that is accepted and one that gets argued about. Every subsequent change to a recorded time stays logged – with person, timestamp and previous value.

Which businesses this suits

  • Guarding and security firms with several sites
  • Property protection and in-house security
  • Construction site security with changing locations
  • Event security with staff assigned at short notice
  • Reception and concierge services
  • District and patrol services with fixed checkpoints

Setting it up is manageable: create the sites, attach and assign one tag per site, invite the employees. That takes about a minute per site. Time tracking can be tested free of charge for 14 days – no credit card and no minimum term.