What Is a Guard Tour System? How It Works, Types and History

What a guard tour system is

A guard tour system is a way to prove that a patrol happened. You put a checkpoint at each place an officer must reach: a door, a gate, a stairwell, a roof hatch. The officer records a visit at each one as they walk, and the system keeps the record of which checkpoint, when, and who. Wikipedia's article on guard tour patrol systems puts it simply: "a system for logging the rounds of personnel such as security guards on patrol."

Guard tour just means the patrol itself: the route an officer walks, checking set places along the way. You'll also see it called a guard tour patrol system or a patrol verification system. The old mechanical kind was called a watchclock.

How a guard tour system works

1. 01

   Checkpoints

   A marker at each place that must be checked. It used to be a key chained in place; now it's a touch button, an RFID or NFC tag, or a printed QR code. It goes where the only way to use it is to stand there.

2. 02

   A route

   The checkpoints a patrol covers, usually in walking order. One walk of the whole route is a round.

3. 03

   A schedule

   When rounds are due: every night from 10 PM to 6 AM, a round every hour, or whatever the contract or regulator says.

4. 04

   The record

   Each visit is stored with the checkpoint, the time and the officer. Phone-based systems can add a location stamp, a photo and a short checklist.

5. 05

   Alerts and reports

   The system compares the record with the schedule. A good one tells you when a round ends with a checkpoint missed, and gives you a daily report to hand to a client, a board or an insurer.

The schedule is the easiest part to skip, and the part that matters most. Without one, a system can show you what happened. It can't tell you what didn't.

A short history of the guard tour

Watchclocks, from the 1800s

Night watchmen were proving their rounds long before electronics. Watchclock collectors describe three types, stationary, electrical and portable, that "have existed side by side since the middle of the 19th Century."

In Boston, Jacob E. Buerk started selling a watchclock made by his brother in 1861. His U.S. patent of January 1, 1865 was for a portable watchclock that recorded on a paper chart shaped like a disk.

Here's how a portable watchclock worked, as the Wikipedia article on watchclocks describes it. The guard carried the clock on a strap. At each checkpoint, a numbered key was chained in place, so the only way to use it was to be there. Turning the key in the clock stamped its number onto a paper disk, which usually covered 24 hours, or onto a tape that covered up to 96 hours on some Detex models. Afterward, a supervisor unlocked the clock and read the record.

The clocks had tamper evidence, too. On Detex clocks, opening or closing the cover punched a hole at the current time, so a disk with extra holes showed that someone had opened the clock.

Detex, the best-known American maker, traces its roots to a company Abraham A. Newman founded in 1878. In its own words, "2011 marked the end of an era when Detex discontinued the manufacture of the mechanical watchclock."

Wands and touch buttons, from the 1980s

Electronic systems swapped the clock for a handheld reader, often called a wand or a pen. The officer touches it to a metal contact button or an RFID tag at each checkpoint, the reader stores the time, and the records are downloaded at a docking station later. According to Wikipedia, these systems were "first introduced in Europe in the early 1980s and in North America in 1986."

The touch button is often an iButton, which Videx describes as "a small metal container about the diameter of a dime" holding a chip with a unique ID. Wands are still sold, and they still have a place where phones aren't allowed.

Phones, QR codes and NFC tags

Most newer systems use the phone the officer already carries. Scanning a QR code or tapping an NFC tag records the visit, and the record usually reaches the system right away instead of at the end of the shift. That's what makes alerts during the night possible. Phones also add what a wand never could: location stamps, photos, checklists and incident reports.

Types of guard tour system today

Many sites mix them. A phone-based system can use QR codes in most places and NFC tags where a printed code might be faked or wouldn't survive. QR code vs NFC guard tours covers which to put where.

Who uses a guard tour system

Anyone who has to prove that rounds were walked, to a client, a board, an insurer or a regulator:

• Security companies, to show clients their officers covered the site. See how to verify security patrols.
• Property managers and HOAs, for courtesy patrols, garage sweeps and nightly lockups. See HOA security patrols.
• Warehouses and construction sites, for after-hours rounds of gates, docks, fence lines and equipment. See warehouse and construction site patrols.
• Churches, schools and campuses, where volunteers check doors after services and events. See church security teams.
• Fire watch, when a fire alarm or sprinkler system is out of service and the building has to be patrolled and logged. See the fire watch log.
• Facilities and residential programs, for facility rounds and overnight night checks.

Wikipedia's article also names technicians monitoring climate-controlled environments and correctional officers checking prisoner living areas.

What a guard tour system can't do

• It proves presence, not attention. A scan shows someone reached the checkpoint. A short checklist at the checkpoint, and a required photo where it matters, show what they actually checked.
• It doesn't see between checkpoints. If something matters, put a checkpoint there.
• An alert is only as good as the person who reads it. Decide in advance who gets missed-round emails and what they do about them.
• It isn't proof against every trick. It makes faking visible, not impossible. A pattern of flagged scans is worth a conversation.

What to look for when choosing one

• Missed-round alerts that know the schedule. The system should know when each round was due and tell you during the night when one ends with a checkpoint missed, or hasn't started. A record you read next week is a paper log with extra steps.
• Proof against faking. Look for location stamps checked against each checkpoint's spot, flags on scans that come too fast, photo checkpoints, and NFC as an option. How to verify security patrols covers the usual tricks.
• Scanning without signal. Stairwells, basements and garages are often dead zones. Scans should be saved on the phone and sent later with their real times, not lost.
• What officers need. An app and an account for each officer works for a stable team. For temps, relief officers and volunteers, a system they can use with just the phone's camera is far easier to roll out.
• Reports you can hand over. A daily report you can print, export or share by link saves you building one from a spreadsheet.
• The pricing model. Systems charge per guard, per site, per checkpoint or for hardware. Count everyone who'll patrol and every checkpoint before you compare. Guard tour system cost has published prices side by side.

To compare named products, see the best guard tour apps.