Incident log: digital or paper?

• Event time and entry time, separately: “02:14 loading door open, entered 02:20”.
• Location: floor, door, corridor — not “in the building”.
• Author: the name of the guard who wrote the entry.
• Observation and action: what they saw, what they did, who they notified and when.
• Open item: what remains open and who owns it.
• Routine: shift start and handover, patrols, visitors, keys.

The log is the post’s continuous chronological record. When an incident is serious, a separate, full incident report is written too; the log entry shows when it happened and points to it.

• Back-filling: eight entries in the same handwriting and the same ink, written at 05:50, look exactly like eight entries written on time.
• Illegible: a number plate or a name nobody can read is information lost.
• Loss and damage: a torn page, a spilt coffee, a book that “can’t be found” — and the month is gone.
• No location: paper does not know where the guard was standing when they wrote.
• No photo: “broken lock” stays a description.
• Slow: the supervisor and the client learn of it when they read it, usually days later.
• No search: to find how many times the same door was found open, you leaf through pages.

• Timestamp: the system records the time of the entry and the guard the time of the event; the gap between them shows.
• Photos and evidence: attached to the entry where they were found, not added later from memory.
• Change trail: a correction becomes an addition with a time and a name; the original text does not disappear.
• Immediate visibility: the supervisor and the client see the entry as it is written, not when the book arrives.
• Search and trends: “every entry for gate 2 last month” is a filter, and it feeds the weekly client report.

OVIT keeps the log on the Guardly platform: every post, patrol, access event and incident enters one live record, with incident evidence capture, and the client’s team sees the same picture as the operations team.

• A book with numbered pages that are never torn out.
• Pen, not pencil; no erased or covered words — a correction is one line through and initials.
• No blank lines between entries, so nothing can be squeezed in later.
• The guard’s signature at every handover.
• Transfer to the digital log with the original time and a note that it was first written on paper.

Two parallel logs without a rule are worse than one: nobody knows which one counts. Set down in writing when paper is used and who transfers it.

Article 5 of the GDPR sets the principles for all processing. In a log they translate like this:

• Data minimisation (§1(c)): write what the incident needs, not everything you know about the person.
• Accuracy (§1(d)): facts, not guesses; inaccurate entries are corrected.
• Storage limitation (§1(e)): decide how long the log is kept and write it into the contract.
• Integrity and confidentiality (§1(f)): protection against unauthorised access and accidental loss or destruction.
• Accountability (§2): the controller must be able to demonstrate compliance.

A book on the reception desk can be read by anyone passing, and if it is lost there is no copy. A digital log with access roles shows each person only what they need. Who the controller is in your arrangement, and how long records are kept, should be set by the contract.

1. Fields: event time, location, category, description, actions, notifications, open item.
2. On-post training: the guard makes a test entry with a photo before working alone.
3. Escalation: which categories alert the supervisor and the client at once, and which wait for the shift report.
4. Access: who sees what, and how access is removed when someone leaves.
5. Contract: retention period, export of entries in a readable format, and what happens to them when the contract ends.

The questions to ask any provider about its software are in the guide to guard management software. To see a live log in practice, get in touch.