What is proof of attendance in security?
Proof of attendance is the evidence that an officer was at a site, and at the patrol points within it, at the times claimed. It is what a guarding contract is ultimately billed and judged against.
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<a href="https://secureoptix.co.uk/glossary/proof-of-attendance">What is proof of attendance in security?</a> — diagram by
<a href="https://secureoptix.co.uk">SecureOptix</a>
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</figure>It exists because presence is the service. A client paying for overnight cover is paying for someone to be there, and the whole commercial relationship rests on being able to show they were.
The mechanism matters because the record has to be difficult to produce from a desk. Point-based scanning, geolocation or timed photographs are all ways of tying the record to a place rather than to a claim about one.
It also protects officers. A disputed incident where an officer's presence or absence is questioned is resolved by the same records that assure the client.
In practice
An invoice query, six weeks after the shifts in question.
The client says the site was unmanned on two nights. The contractor says it was not. Both are sincere, and neither can show anything: the occurrence book is in a cabin on a site that has since been handed over, and nobody photographed it.
The commercial argument is not really about those two nights. It is about whether anything the contractor says about attendance can be checked, and the answer this time is no.
Attendance evidence is worth nothing when it is produced and everything when it is challenged, which is why it has to exist before anybody asks.
What goes wrong in practice
- Patrol records completed at the end of a shift from memory.
- Scans recorded but never reviewed, so missed patrols are only found after a client complains.
- Records held in a system the client cannot see, which leaves assurance as an assertion.
- Patrol routes so predictable that the record proves attendance and nothing about security.