NFC-verified patrols

There's a question every client eventually asks, usually after something's gone missing: "was the patrol actually walked?" And most firms, if they're honest, can't answer it. They can tell you a guard was on site, and they can show you a sheet saying the round was done. They cannot tell you those two facts are related.

What most firms do today

A patrol sheet on a clipboard, signed at the end of the round. Sometimes a book at each checkpoint. Occasionally a photo of a door with a timestamp.

The problem isn't that guards are dishonest — the overwhelming majority aren't. The problem is that none of it is evidence. A signed sheet proves a guard had a pen. It's equally consistent with someone walking the full round in the rain at three in the morning and someone sitting in the gatehouse filling in six boxes at the end of the shift. You're paying the same for both, and so is your client.

When a break-in happens at a point that was supposedly checked forty minutes earlier, that ambiguity becomes your problem. You have nothing to put in front of the client except an assurance, and an assurance is exactly what they're currently doubting.

How TacDesk does it

You stick an NFC tag at each point that matters — the fire door, the loading bay, the far corner of the yard that nobody likes walking to at four in the morning.

The guard taps their phone against the tag as they pass. That records three things together: which tag, which guard, what time. Not a signature — a physical interaction with an object bolted to a wall in a specific place.

The point is what it makes impossible. You cannot tap a tag you are not stood next to. There is no way to produce the record from the gatehouse, or from the car, or from home. The round has to actually happen, in the order and at the times it says, because the only way to generate the data is to walk it.

What comes out is a timestamped route: the points hit, the order, the gaps between them. If a round was skipped, the gap is visible. If it was rushed, the timings say so. And if it was walked properly — which is usually the case — you have proof, which is the bit firms never had before.

It works with no signal. The tap queues on the phone with its real time and syncs when the phone comes back up, so a basement plant room doesn't become a hole in the record.

Why it matters

It answers the question that loses contracts. "Prove it" is unanswerable with a clipboard and trivial with a route. Most disputes end the moment you can show the round.

It's ACS evidence collected by accident. Assessors want to see that patrol activity is controlled and recorded rather than asserted. This produces that record as a by-product of the patrol happening — nothing to assemble in audit week.

Martyn's Law makes checked points a matter of record. Where you're doing regular checks on a venue, being able to evidence that they happened, at the stated frequency, is worth considerably more than a policy document saying they should.

It protects your good guards. The ones walking the full round in the rain currently get exactly the same credit as the ones who aren't. Verified patrols make the difference visible, and the good ones notice.

Where it sits

Included as standard on TacCommand. On TacStarter and TacPro it's the Enhanced Patrols (NFC) add-on at £99/month. It isn't available on TacFree.

Straight answer on whether it's worth it: if your contracts don't ask you to evidence patrols, it isn't — GPS clock-ins already prove attendance and that's often enough. It earns its keep the moment a client starts asking whether the round was walked, or you're bidding for work where patrol evidence is a scored part of the tender. That's usually the point at which people call us about it.