Client reporting: what to send, how often, and what it costs you
Client reporting rarely appears as a line in the contract's cost model, but somebody spends hours on it every month. It is worth understanding what the client is actually using it for, because that determines what is worth automating.
What clients are actually checking
- Was the site covered as contracted, and if not, what happened
- What incidents occurred, and were they handled
- Are there patterns — the same problem, the same time, the same entrance
- Is anything outstanding from last month
Notice that all four are answerable from records your team already creates. The manual effort goes into assembling them, not producing them.
The re-keying tax
When reporting is assembled by hand, three things follow: it is expensive, it is late, and it occasionally disagrees with the operational record — because someone re-typed a number. The third is the serious one, since a discrepancy the client spots costs more trust than the report ever earned.
Reporting as a by-product
The goal is for the report to be a view of existing records rather than a document someone builds. If attendance is recorded against the rostered shift, and incidents are logged on shift, then cover and incident reporting already exist — they only need presenting.
Key takeaways
- Clients check four things: cover, incidents, patterns and outstanding items
- Manual assembly is expensive, late, and occasionally contradicts the operational record
- Re-keyed numbers are the worst outcome — a spotted discrepancy costs real trust
- Report from the records you already hold, rather than rebuilding them
The SecureOptix team
Written by people who work daily with security contractors on SIA licensing, screening and the records that hold up under an inspection.