What is a daily activity report?

What it is for

Security is bought by the hour and delivered where the client is not. The DAR is the only account of how those hours were spent, and it serves three readers. The client, who reads it in the morning and sees what happened on the property. The supervisor, who reads it against the post orders and sees whether the officer did the job. And the future: the adjuster, the attorney or the regional manager who asks, months later, what the property did on a given night.

What a good entry looks like

Timed and factual. “2:40 a.m. White Ford F-150, no plate visible, circled north lot twice, left via Main St. exit” is an entry; “suspicious vehicle” is not. Rounds list the checkpoints covered. Visitors and contractors are logged with name, company and destination. Calls are logged with the caller, the issue and the outcome. Findings for maintenance name the building and the fixture. Incidents get one line and a separate incident report.

How it is read

A manager scans for the maintenance lines and the incidents first, then reads the rounds to see the shape of the night. A supervisor reads it against the post orders: were the rounds at the interval, were the closings on time, were the calls answered, is the report specific. Patterns across a week, the same door propped every night, the same lot busy at two, change the post orders and the conversation with the client’s maintenance team. The reading a DAR article walks a manager through it.

The template

The daily activity report template reproduces the structure our officers use, with the fields explained, and it is free to adopt for in-house staff.