What to Check Before You Sign a Security Guard Contract

Verify the license and the officers yourself, before you sign

A proposal can state a license number; it cannot make that number true. Before signing, look the company up on the Texas Department of Public Safety’s public license search using the number on the proposal, confirm the legal name on the license matches the legal name on the contract, and check that the class covers guard services and the status is active. Companies change names, sell divisions, and let coverage lapse, so the entity you are about to sign with is not always the entity that built the reputation you were told about. Ask separately for the registration or commission numbers of the officers who will actually work the property, since a company’s license does not automatically mean every individual assigned to your post is registered under it.

Do the same with insurance. Ask for the certificate before signing, not after, and read the named insured line against the name on the contract rather than assuming they match. A certificate for a related company, a parent entity or a franchise is not coverage for the company signing your agreement.

The scope has to be specific enough to hold someone to

A contract that says “security coverage” is not a scope; it is a placeholder. Before signing, the agreement should describe each post by its location, its hours and days, whether it is armed or unarmed, and in broad terms what the officer is there to do: a patrol, a staffed gate, an event post. Vague scope is where disputes start, because two people can read “evening coverage” and picture different hours, and the contract will not settle the argument.

The clearest test is whether a stranger could read the scope section and know what is being delivered without asking anyone. If a sentence needs the salesperson’s memory to interpret it, it needs to be rewritten before signing, not clarified verbally afterward.

Minimums and notice govern how the relationship actually works

Two clauses matter more than the rest of the document once the ink is dry. The first is the minimum: a minimum number of hours per shift or per call-out decides what a short event or a single cancelled night actually costs, and it is worth understanding before the first time it applies rather than the first time a bill looks larger than expected. The second is notice: how much warning either side has to give to add a post, drop hours, or end the agreement entirely. A property that might need to scale coverage up for a season or down after a problem is resolved should read this clause closely, because it is the clause that decides how fast the arrangement can actually move.

Document to collect	What it should show
DPS license lookup	Legal name matches the contract, class covers guard services, status active
Certificate of insurance	Named insured matches the contract; effective and expiration dates current
Sample daily and incident reports	The structure and level of detail the property will actually receive
Draft post orders or a commitment to write them before the first shift	Route, checkpoints, access rules and escalation contacts specific to the property
The signed scope section	Each post named by location, hours, days and armed or unarmed status

Post orders belong in the agreement, not in a promise

Post orders are the instructions that turn a general contract into a specific job: what the officer checks, who gets called for what, what the closing routine is. A contract that is silent on post orders is really promising an officer without instructions on day one. Before signing, confirm that post orders will be drafted with the property before the first shift, agreed in writing, and kept current as the property changes, and that every officer who works the post reads and signs them. This is the document you will point to later if a question comes up about what an officer was supposed to do, so it earns a line in the contract rather than a verbal assurance.

Reporting and contact terms, in writing

The contract should say when reports arrive, in what format, and who the after-hours contact is on both sides: the property’s contact for the officer, and the company’s dispatch or supervisor line for the property. This is a short section, but it is the one that determines whether the daily habit of the arrangement matches what was described in the sales conversation. If the proposal talks about a written report every day and the contract is silent on it, ask for it to be added; a habit that only exists in conversation tends not to survive the first busy month.

Reading it once more before you sign

None of this is about distrust; it is about making sure the document matches what was actually discussed on the walk-through. A company confident in what it delivers will not mind a manager reading the license record, asking for a sample report, or asking that post orders be named as a contract deliverable rather than a future promise. The contract structure article goes through the hours, minimum and notice terms in more depth, and the first 30 days article covers what to watch once the contract is signed and coverage begins.