Was the Guard at His Post? Count Only the Hours Inside His Assigned Site

To see how many hours a guard actually spent at his own post, open Shiftelio's Report, go to the Movement tab and switch on Only assigned workplace. Every km and every minute then counts only inside the site that person is assigned to, and the time at other sites or outside every site drops out of the figures.

A 12 hour night shift at a housing society gate is not 12 hours at the gate. The guard walks to the neighbouring building for tea, covers the next society's gate for an hour when a colleague is late, goes to the agency office to collect his uniform. On paper the register says 8 pm to 8 am. When the society secretary asks "how long was your man actually at our gate last night?", the register cannot answer, and neither can a plain attendance app that only knows he was on duty.

This article walks through why that question keeps coming up for security and housekeeping agencies, where the usual answers fall short, and how the switch works.

Why "on duty" is not the answer the client wants

Security agencies, housekeeping contractors and home-care agencies sell the same thing: a person, at a named place, for a number of hours. The client is paying for the place, not for the shift.

The Private Security Agencies (Regulation) Act, 2005 is what licenses an agency to put guards at a client's premises in the first place, and the contract with each client usually names the post, the hours and the number of guards. The question "was he at our post?" comes straight out of that contract.

Where the usual methods fall short

A location trail already holds the answer, but as one blended number. Shiftelio's Movement tab used to show it as a split: time at the person's own site, time at another of your sites, and time outside every site. That split is still there. The new switch turns the split into the headline.

How the Only assigned workplace switch works

Every staff member in Shiftelio has a Work location on their profile: a single site, a few assigned sites, or all of them. That is their assigned workplace. The switch reads each person's own assignment, so one report covers a guard at Lakeview Apartments and a cleaner at Green Park Society side by side.

The report now carries the line Assigned workplace only under the date, so nobody reading it mistakes it for the whole shift. The switch is off by default, and turning it off puts every figure back exactly as before.

What changes on the screen

Say Rakesh is assigned to Lakeview Apartments and worked an 8 pm to 8 am shift. With the switch off, his Where the time went reads 9 h 30 min at his assigned site, 1 h 50 min at another site (Green Park Society, where he covered a late colleague) and 40 min outside every site. His total travelled reads about 6 km.

Turn the switch on and Rakesh's line reads 9 h 30 min and about 2 km: only what happened inside Lakeview Apartments. The 1 h 50 min at Green Park and the 40 min outside are hidden, not deleted.

A few honest edges, all of them shown on the screen rather than guessed:

• A shift still running shows its time so far and the words km after check-out, because the km at the site is worked out once the person checks out.
• A shift the report cannot divide shows Not split instead of a made-up number, and in a range total it is counted as "N not split" rather than quietly added.
• Stop counts are hidden while the switch is on, because a stop count covers the whole shift and would no longer match the figures beside it.

Sending it to the client

The Copy as text and Send on WhatsApp buttons follow the same choices as the screen. With the switch on, the message opens with Assigned workplace only under the date, and each person's figures are their time and km at their own site. That is the message a society secretary or a facility manager can actually check against the invoice.

For the two guards on the Lakeview Apartments contract, the lines read: Rakesh, 9 h 30 min and about 2 km; Imran, 11 h 10 min and about 1 km. Two names, two numbers the secretary can hold you to.

For a range such as Last 7 days, the Movement by person table adds each person's days together. A week's hours at the post for every guard on a contract becomes one paste.

If a client contests a month, pair this with the attendance edit log: the hours at the post come from the phone, and any change a supervisor made to the times is recorded with who made it. Our article on security guard attendance and client billing covers that side.

Who this is for, beyond security

The same question comes from anyone who sells a person at a place:

• Housekeeping contractors with cleaners assigned to one office or society each, who also send them to a second site on short days.
• Home-care agencies whose attendants are assigned to one patient's home.
• Municipal and facility contractors whose staff each have a ward or a block.

Our housekeeping supervisor article shows how to keep one crew on one client site; this switch is how you prove they stayed there.

Tell your staff what you record

Location during a shift is personal data, and India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 expects you to tell people what you collect and why. Shiftelio records location only while a person is clocked in, never after check-out. Say so in the appointment letter or on the noticeboard: "your location is recorded during your shift so we can show the client the hours you spent at their site." Guards who know the report protects them from a wrong complaint are rarely the ones who object.

Where this fits, and what it is not

The one thing it does that a patrol app or a GPS trail does not: it answers the client's actual question, hours at their site per person, in one line per guard, without anyone adding up a trail by hand. See how the rest of the location features fit on the employee tracking app page.

Frequently asked questions