Free Security Patrol Log Template (Printable PDF & Excel)

When to use a patrol log

Use a patrol log on any shift where someone walks the property: overnight rounds at an apartment complex, after-hours checks of a warehouse, a construction site over the weekend, a church after the last service. One line per stop shows where the officer went, when, and what they found. It's the record a property manager, a client or an insurer asks for when something goes wrong.

Print a fresh sheet for each shift, or more than one if the shift has a lot of rounds, and number the pages. Keep it on a clipboard you carry, not at the desk, so each line gets written at the stop.

Patrol log, daily activity report or incident report

A patrol log is one of a few records a guard keeps, and each does a different job.

What to write in each column

At the top, fill in the site, the date, your name and badge or ID number, your shift times, the post or route you're walking, and who relieved you at the end. Then one line per stop:

A filled-in example

Here's the start of a night shift at a made-up apartment complex. The officer walks four stops each round.

Notice that round 2 uses the same names in the same order, and that the broken latch from round 1 gets checked again. A reader can follow the night without asking the officer what anything means.

How to fill it in well

• Write as you go. Fill in each line at the stop, not at the end of the round. A log written from memory at 5 AM reads like one.
• Use ink, and never erase. Correct a mistake with a single line through it and your initials, so the original can still be read.
• Leave no blank lines. If nothing was wrong, write OK. If you skipped a stop, write that you skipped it and why.
• Stick to facts. Write what you saw and did, not what you think. "Man in gray hoodie trying car door handles" is a fact. "Suspicious guy" is an opinion.
• Be specific about places. "Stairwell B, level 2 door" is still clear a month later. "Back door" may not be.
• Cross-reference. When a stop leads to an incident report, put the report number in the log, and the log time in the report.
• Hand it over. Sign the bottom at the end of the shift and give it to your supervisor or the next officer, as your post orders say.

Common mistakes

• Filling in a whole round at once, with every stop exactly seven minutes apart.
• Writing "all secure" across a whole round instead of a line per stop.
• Calling the same place three different names over one shift.
• Leaving the action column empty when a line says Problem.
• Losing sheets. Keep one binder or folder per site, in date order.
• Treating the log as proof on its own. A signed line shows someone wrote a time down, not that they were there. See how to verify security patrols.

How long to keep patrol logs

There's no single rule. A sensible default is to keep patrol logs for at least a year, and longer for any shift with an incident, an injury, a claim or a complaint, since an insurance claim or a lawsuit can come long after the night itself. Your contract, your insurer or local rules may set a minimum, so check them and keep the longest period any of them asks for.

Store paper logs somewhere dry, by site and date. If you scan them to PDF, name each file by site and date so you can find one night in seconds.

Doing it by scanning instead

A paper log depends on the officer writing down the truth, and nobody reads it until there's a problem. With PatrolBadges, you put a QR sticker or NFC tag at each stop, and officers scan it with their phone's camera when they get there. There's no app to install and no account: they type their name, or a PIN, once a shift. Each scan logs who, when and where, with a GPS stamp, and a short OK/Problem checklist at the stop takes the place of the OK or Problem column. A Problem needs a note and opens an incident.

Give the route a schedule and you're emailed when a round ends with a checkpoint missed, or when one hasn't started. Each day becomes a report of rounds, misses, incidents with photos and every visit, which prints, exports to CSV and can go to your client each morning. It's free for 5 checkpoints, and Pro is $9 a month for 10, with unlimited officers. Keep this paper log as a backup for the night a phone dies.