Setting up your company for the first time

Setup takes about half an hour. Do it in this order, because each step depends on the one before it.

1. Add your sites

A site is a place you have a contract to protect: an apartment complex, a business park, a construction site. Everything else attaches to a site, so these come first.

Go to Admin, then Sites. Give each one a name and a short code. The code appears at the front of every incident number from that site, so keep it short and recognisable. A site called North Business Park might use NBP.

2. Add your officers

Go to Admin, then Guards. Add each officer with their name and badge number.

Officers do not create their own accounts. You generate an invite code and give it to them, and they enter it when they first open the app. That way nobody can join your company without you handing them a code.

3. Put up checkpoints

Checkpoints are the QR codes officers scan on their rounds. They are what turns a patrol into a record you can show a client.

Go to Admin, then Checkpoints. Create one per location you want walked, print them, and fix them where an officer has to physically stand to scan.

Put checkpoints where you actually want someone to go, not where they are convenient to reach. A checkpoint by the front door proves nothing about the back of the building.

4. Add your clients, if you want them to have access

Go to Admin, then Clients. A client gets a login that shows coverage and reports for their own sites only. They never see officer locations, and they never see anything belonging to another client.

This step is optional. Plenty of companies run for months before turning the portal on.

5. Do a dry run

Before you put a real shift on it, clock yourself in on a phone, walk a site, scan two checkpoints, log an activity note, and clock out. Then look at the board and the report that comes out the other end.

Fifteen minutes doing this saves an awkward first night.