Guard Tour System for UK Security Patrols

A client emails on Monday morning. Something went missing from the yard over the weekend and they want to know whether the 2am patrol was done. You know your guard was on site. What you can't easily show them is where they went, and when.

What most UK security firms do today

A patrol sheet on a clipboard, signed at the end of the round. Sometimes a checkpoint book at each door, sometimes a photo on a phone. Some firms still run an old wand-and-button system that someone has to download at the end of the week.

The sheet proves a guard had a pen. It can't tell a round walked properly in the rain from six boxes filled in at the end of the shift, and your client knows that. When something goes wrong at a point that was supposedly checked, all you have to offer is your word.

How the TacDesk guard tour system works

There are two layers, and you can use either or both.

The GPS patrol route. When a guard starts a patrol in the TacDesk app, their position is recorded roughly every minute in the background while they walk. Their phone can go in a pocket. When they end the patrol, the patrol report opens already filled in with the route, the duration and any checkpoint scans, and they add what they saw: open doors, damage, vehicles, people moved on, with photos if they need them. The report then goes to their manager for review.

NFC checkpoints. You add a checkpoint in TacDesk, give it a name like "Fire exit, east corridor" and a site, and TacDesk creates a tag ID. That goes onto an NFC sticker you fix at the spot. As the guard passes, they hold their phone to the tag and the scan is logged with who, which tag and what time. You can't tap a tag you aren't standing next to, so the record can only be made by walking the round.

Every scan lands on the patrol report automatically. Each checkpoint keeps its own scan history, and the checkpoint list shows when every tag was last tapped, so you can sort by it and see which points nobody has visited lately without pulling a single report.

It keeps working without signal. Basements, plant rooms and car parks are where patrols matter and where phones drop out. Patrols can be started and ended offline, and the report is queued on the phone and sent automatically when the connection comes back, rather than lost.

Why it matters

It answers the question that loses contracts. "Was the patrol done?" gets a timestamped route and a list of checkpoint scans, not an assurance.

It's evidence you collect without trying. Clients who need checkpoint reporting in the contract, and ACS assessors who want patrol activity recorded rather than claimed, get a record that exists because the patrol happened.

It backs up your good guards. The ones who walk the full round every time finally have something to show for it.

Where it sits

GPS clock in and out, live tracking and patrol reports are on every plan, TacFree included, so you can start free and have GPS patrol routes on day one.

NFC checkpoints are part of Enhanced Patrols (NFC). It's included on TacCommand, and it's a paid add-on on TacStarter and TacPro. It isn't available on TacFree. The pricing page has the current price.

If your contracts don't ask you to evidence patrols, the GPS route is often enough. NFC earns its keep when a client starts asking whether the round was walked, or when patrol evidence is scored in a tender. There's more on how the tags work on the NFC-verified patrols page, and if you're sorting out who's on shift in the first place, see our security guard scheduling software.