Security Guard Daily Activity Report: What to Include, With a Template and Examples

What is a security daily activity report?

A daily activity report (DAR) is a structured summary of one officer's shift at one post. It is written at the end of the shift and read by the supervisor, the site manager and often the client.

A good DAR answers five questions quickly. Was the post covered? Were the patrols done? Who came and went? What went wrong, and what was done about it? What is still open?

Many companies still use a paper form. Others capture the DAR on the officer's phone with security reporting software, which records the time, user and location automatically. The fields below apply either way.

How is a daily activity report different from the OB?

The occurrence book is the running record; the DAR is the summary. The OB has an entry for every event, in time order, as it happens. The DAR is written once, at the end of the shift, for people who were not there.

• The OB stays at the post. It is the evidence record, and its entries are never erased or rewritten.
• The DAR travels. It goes to the supervisor and the client, and it can be filed with other reports for the month.
• The DAR points to the OB. Each incident line gives the OB page or incident report number, so a reader can find the detail.

If the two ever disagree, the OB is the record that was made at the time. For how to write the entries themselves, see our guide to writing OB entries.

What should a daily activity report include?

Every DAR needs the same ten sections, in the same order, on every site. A fixed order lets a supervisor scan twenty reports and spot the one with a problem.

Add site-specific checks from the site instructions, such as a generator fuel level or a cold-room temperature. Keep them as tick boxes or short fields, not free text, so they are filled in the same way every night.

What does a completed daily activity report look like?

Below is a completed night-shift DAR for a fictional business park. The names, times and counts are made up to show the level of detail a client can use.

Notice what the report does not do. It does not retell the alarm in full, because OB page 37 holds that. It explains the late round instead of hiding it. It names who was told about each open item, and when.

A quiet shift still produces a full report. "6 of 6 rounds, 72 of 72 checkpoints, no incidents, no open items" is a useful report. An empty incidents box with no patrol count is not.

How should an officer write the daily activity report?

Build the report during the shift and finish it before booking off. These steps keep it accurate.

1. Start the report when you book on. Fill in the site, post, shift times and handover details first, while they are in front of you.
2. Keep the OB as you go. Events go into the occurrence book at the time they happen. The DAR draws on those entries later.
3. Count, do not estimate. Take patrol and checkpoint numbers from the patrol record, and visitor numbers from the register.
4. Write one line per incident. Give the time, what happened, the outcome and the OB or incident report number. The full story stays in the incident report.
5. List the open items. Say what is unresolved, who you told and when. This is the part the next shift and the client read first.
6. Check it against the OB before you sign. Times, counts and names must match. If they do not, correct the DAR, not the OB.
7. Sign and submit before you book off. A report written the next day is easier to challenge and often wrong.

The supervisor's review is part of the process, not an extra. Read each report the same day, follow up the open items and sign it off, so the client sees that someone checked.

What are the most common daily activity report mistakes?

Most weak DARs fail in the same few ways.

• "All in order" with no numbers. Without patrol and checkpoint counts, the report proves nothing.
• Copying the OB word for word. The reader wants the summary. Long narrative hides the one line that matters.
• No reference numbers. An incident line without an OB page or report number cannot be followed up.
• Missing open items. The faulty light gets reported once and then forgotten for a week.
• Opinions instead of facts. Write what the visitor did, not that they "looked suspicious".
• Written the next morning. Late reports are often wrong, and they are harder to rely on in a dispute.
• Different forms at different sites. If every post uses its own layout, nobody can compare sites or spot trends.

Do daily activity reports have to meet any legal rules?

No law prescribes a DAR format, but the report is part of how you supervise officers and it often holds personal information. Two sets of rules are worth knowing.

The PSIRA Code of Conduct requires a security business to run management, control and supervision systems suited to its size (regulation 13(2)). The Code does not mention daily activity reports by name. A reviewed DAR is one practical way to show that supervision happens.

DARs often name visitors, contractors and staff. Under POPIA, personal information must be adequate, relevant and not excessive for its purpose (section 10). It should not be kept longer than needed unless an exception applies, such as a legal or contractual requirement (section 14). The responsible party must also secure it with reasonable technical and organisational measures (section 19).

In practice, record a visitor's name and the unit visited in the DAR, not their ID number. The visitor register is the place for that. This is a summary, not legal advice.

How does Worxit handle daily activity reports?

In Worxit, a DAR can be built as a structured form in the Custom Reports module. Officers complete it on a phone or rugged device, and each report is time-stamped, recorded against the user and linked to the correct site.

• Photos, videos, signatures, the GPS location and barcode or QR scans can be added to the report.
• Reports can be completed without signal and sync to the cloud when the connection returns.
• Managers filter reports by site, track activity per site and export the records.
• Patrol rounds come from Guard Patrol Solutions, which counts patrols per shift and flags missed, failed or incomplete patrols.
• Incidents can be logged in Occurrence Logs, and the Shifts module can attach a handover form to each shift.

The dashboard licence is R600 per month, including one admin user. Each additional dashboard user is R75 per month, and each phone, tablet or radio running the app needs a R350 monthly device licence. All prices exclude VAT. For the wider case for moving reports off paper, read mobile field reporting software.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Code of Conduct for Security Service Providers, 2003. PSIRA. Regulation 13(2): systems of management, control and supervision.
• Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013. gov.za. Sections 10, 14 and 19.