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Questions, answered properly
Everything people ask us before they buy — including the awkward ones about cost, privacy and whether guards will actually use it.
The basics
SMS-Patrol is guard tour and guard tracking software for security companies. Your officers use an app on their own phone to clock on, scan checkpoints, file incident reports and raise an SOS. Your office uses a web dashboard to see it all live, build rotas, and turn the results into client reports and invoices.
Software that proves a security officer visited the places they were meant to visit. The guard scans a checkpoint — an NFC tag, a QR code or a GPS point — at each location, and the time and position are recorded automatically. It replaces the paper patrol sheet.
Small and mid-sized security companies, typically between 5 and 100 officers — manned guarding, mobile patrol, key holding, construction site security, retail, events and facilities management.
No. If you can use a smartphone and a spreadsheet, you can run SMS-Patrol. Setup is done with you on a screen share and training a guard takes about five minutes.
Mainly the pricing model. We charge one flat price for the whole company instead of per guard, we include every feature rather than selling modules, and our price is published on the website.
Pricing and contracts
£60 per month for up to 40 guards, £100 per month for up to 100 guards, and custom pricing above 100. Prices exclude VAT.
For the whole company. £60 covers all of your first 40 officers, every site, every checkpoint and every office user.
No. Configuration, data import and training are included.
No. It is rolling month to month and you can cancel any time.
You move to the next plan and we adjust your invoice. Nothing stops working and nobody is locked out.
No. Supervisors, controllers and managers are unlimited and free.
Yes, and there is a discount for it. Mention it on the demo call.
The guard app
Any reasonably recent Android phone or iPhone, including the officer's own handset. No company phones and no proprietary hardware.
Yes. Scans, photos and reports are stored on the device and upload automatically when signal returns, with their original timestamps preserved.
About five minutes. Scanning a checkpoint is one screen and one action. We provide a printable one-page guide for the gatehouse.
Location reporting uses a low-frequency mode designed for long shifts. A standard modern phone covers a 12-hour shift comfortably.
A basic Android handset is inexpensive and will run the app fine. Some companies keep a couple of spares for exactly this.
Yes — English, French, German, Italian, Greek and Portuguese.
Checkpoints and patrols
NFC tags, printed QR codes and GPS points. You can mix all three on the same site.
Anywhere. They are standard tags, not proprietary to us, and cost from a few pence to around 50p each depending on whether you need weatherproof outdoor versions.
Unlimited, on every plan, across unlimited sites.
Yes. Set a schedule, or a required number of tours per shift if you would rather patrols were not predictable. Missed or late tours raise an alert.
Every scan carries a GPS position, so a scan taken away from the site shows up immediately as an anomaly. NFC tags make it physically necessary to be at the point.
Tracking, privacy and the law
Yes, during working hours, provided you have a legitimate business reason, you tell staff clearly what is collected, and you keep it proportionate. SMS-Patrol only tracks while an officer is clocked on to a shift, which makes that considerably easier to justify. This is general information, not legal advice.
No. Location reporting starts at clock-on and stops at clock-off.
Yes. Data is encrypted in transit, hosted on UK/EU cloud infrastructure, retention is configurable, and you can export or delete data at any time.
That location is recorded during booked shifts, why, and how long it is kept — in the staff handbook and your privacy notice. Ask us on the demo and we will send sample wording.
Whoever you decide. Roles and permissions control which clients, sites and reports each user can access.
Reports, invoicing and clients
Patrol and checkpoint reports, incident reports, attendance and timesheet reports, and summaries by client, site, guard or date range. All exportable to PDF and Excel.
Yes. Schedule a report to email a client contact weekly or monthly, and set high-severity incidents to send immediately.
Yes. Approved hours are priced at the rates for that client and site, including night, weekend and bank holiday uplifts.
It produces the verified hours payroll needs, per officer, and exports them. Running payroll itself is a job for your payroll provider.
Yes — Excel and CSV export for your accounts package, bookkeeper or payroll bureau.
Getting started and support
Most companies are live on their first site the same day. The setup call is under an hour.
Yes, included. We do it with you on a screen share so you can add the next site yourself.
Yes. Export your sites, checkpoints and officers from the old system and we will import them. Standard NFC tags from another vendor can often be reused.
UK-based phone, email and WhatsApp support, Monday to Friday 9am to 6pm, included in the price. Urgent operational problems get picked up outside those hours too.
Yes. Book a free demo and we will set up a working account with your own sites so you can run a real patrol.
Export everything to PDF, Excel and CSV before you go. Your history is yours.
Still not sure?
Ring us and ask. We would genuinely rather tell you we are the wrong fit on a ten-minute call than sell you something that does not suit your operation.