Guides
How to Use Notion for a Security Company: Sites and Incident Reports
Learn how to set up Notion for a security company with sites, post orders, shifts, patrol checks, and incident reports, plus PDF incident reports and client site reports.
By Sanat Biswal · 2026-11-01 · 5 min read
{/ synced-from-notion — do not edit manually /}
A security company sells one thing: confidence that someone is watching, and that if something happens, it will be handled and recorded properly.
The first part happens on site. The second part happens on paper, and it’s where many companies struggle.
An incident report written three days later from memory, a rota in a group chat, a guard who didn’t know the site’s rules, and a client who asks “what did you do last month?” and gets a shrug.
Notion can bring the paperwork under control. This guide is for small and mid-sized guarding companies, mobile patrol firms, and event security teams.
It shows how to set up sites, post orders, guards, shifts, patrol checks, and incident reports, and how to turn records into PDFs such as incident reports and client site reports. It also starts with what must never go into Notion.
This is all general information about organizing a business, but not security, legal, or licensing advice, and the rules for private security differ widely by country.
Short answer on how to use Notion for a security company:
To use Notion for a security company, create linked databases for Sites, Guards, Shifts, Incident Reports, Site Reports, and Training and Licences.
Use formulas to work out shift hours and billing, flag unfilled shifts, flag late client notifications, and flag licences that are about to expire. Make the incident report template short and complete, so reports get written during or just after the shift.
Never store alarm codes, key codes, or passwords. When you need to give someone a document, such as an incident report or a monthly site report, create a PDF from the record.
Notion works well for security companies as a scheduling and records workspace. Each site, guard, shift, incident, and report is a record, and the records are linked, so a site page shows its post orders, its shifts, its incidents, and its monthly reports.
Notion isn’t a guard tour system, a dispatch tool, a panic alarm, or a camera system, and it isn’t a tamper-proof evidence store. It works best beside the tools that handle live operations.
For documents that clients, insurers, and authorities receive, you can export a page as a PDF or generate one from a template.
Table of Contents
What Notion Can and Can’t Do for a Security Company
Notion is good for:
- Keeping sites, post orders, and contacts in one place.
- Planning shifts and checking that every post is covered.
- Working out hours worked and what to invoice.
- Tracking licence and training expiry dates.
- Recording patrol checks and daily logs.
- Writing consistent incident reports.
- Creating client site reports and invoices.
- Live guard tracking, panic alarms, or lone worker devices.
- Verified patrol checkpoints with tags or GPS.
- Dispatching guards to alarms.
- Camera feeds or access control.
- Acting as a tamper-proof legal record.
- Alarm codes, door codes, safe combinations, and key locations
- Passwords, PINs, and access card numbers
- Camera system logins and remote access details
- Detailed maps showing where valuables, cash, or weak points are
- Keyholder phone numbers, if your client’s contract says they must be kept in a more restricted place
- Sites stores each place you guard. Add these properties: Site Name, Client, Address, Type (Office, Retail, Construction, Event, or Residential), Hours Covered, Guards Required per Shift, Bill Rate per Hour, Client Contact, Notification Rule (hours to inform the client of a serious incident), and Status (Active or Ended).
- Guards stores your team. Add: Name, Phone, Role (Guard, Supervisor, or Patrol), Licence Number, Licence Expiry, Status (Active or Off), and Notes.
- Shifts stores each post and time. Add: Site (relation), Date, Start, End, Hours (a formula), Guards Assigned (relation), Guards Required (rolled up from the site), Status (Open, Filled, or Cancelled), and Notes.
- Incident Reports stores each incident. Add: Report Number (a Unique ID with a prefix like IR), Site (relation), Reported By (relation), Date and Time Occurred, Type, Severity, Summary, Actions Taken, Emergency Services Called (checkbox), Client Notified At, Status (Draft, Submitted, or Reviewed), and Follow-up Needed.
- Site Reports stores the summary for each site each month. Add: Site (relation), Period, Hours Delivered, Shifts Covered, Incidents Logged, Rounds Planned, Rounds Completed, Highlights, and Recommendations.
- Training and Licences stores dates. Add: Guard (relation), Item (Licence, First Aid, Fire Safety, or Site Induction), Date Obtained, Expiry Date, and Certificate Link.
- Purpose of the post: what you’re protecting, and why
- Hours and staffing: who’s required, and when
- Duties: access control, patrols, visitor handling, and reporting
- Patrol route: the order of checks, written without secrets
- Contacts: who to call, and in what order, with the control room first
- Incident procedures: what to do for fire, alarm, theft, medical, and aggression
- Rules for visitors and contractors
- What the guard must never do: such as leave the post unattended without permission
- Renewals due: items with the flag, sorted by date.
- By guard: all licences and training for one person.
- Not cleared to work: guards with an expired licence, so they’re not scheduled.
- Today by site: today’s shifts, grouped by site.
- This week: a calendar view.
- Gaps: shifts with the Unfilled flag.
- By guard: one guard’s upcoming shifts, to check hours and rest.
- Shift details: site, guard, and times
- Handover: what the last shift told you
- Rounds: time of each one, and any observations
- Visitors and contractors: who came, and when, without storing more personal detail than you need
- Events: anything unusual, in a line each
- Handover out: what the next shift needs to know
- Basic details: report number, site, date and time, and who’s reporting
- Type and severity: a choice list, such as Alarm, Theft, Trespass, Damage, Medical, Fire, Suspicious Person, or Other, with severity Minor, Serious, or Critical
- What happened: facts in the order they happened, in plain words
- People involved: roles first, and names only if needed, with factual descriptions
- Actions taken: what you did and when, including calls made
- Emergency services: whether they were called, and any reference number
- Evidence: a reference to any CCTV, photos, or witness statements held in secure storage
- Client notified: who, when, and how
- Follow-up needed: what remains to be done
- Drafts: reports in draft, sorted by age.
- Needs review: submitted reports waiting for a supervisor.
- By site: incidents grouped by site, to spot patterns.
- Serious and critical: reports with those severities, for management.
- Incident reports: one per incident, for the client, insurer, or authorities as required
- Post orders: a printable copy for guards, with no codes in it
- Shift schedules and rotas: a weekly plan for guards and clients
- Monthly site reports: hours, incidents, rounds, highlights, and recommendations
- Invoices: hours delivered and rates. Notion Receipt Template shows how to structure a receipt.
- Guard licence and training registers: for audits and regulators
- Induction checklists and acknowledgements: signed by guards
- Proposals for new sites, with a risk summary and pricing. Notion Proposal Template shows a structure that works.
- Create your template with your company name, logo, and layout.
- Add placeholders in double curly braces where the data should go, such as
{{Report_Number}}or{{Summary}}. - Make sure each placeholder matches the name of a Notion property.
- Start the document with a Notion database button or a status property.
- Ready to Generate creates a PDF from the database record.
- Generate Page converts the Notion page into a PDF.
- Generate PDF and Doc creates a PDF and a Google document.
- Preview creates a Google document so you can check it before making the final PDF.
- Generate E-Signed Doc creates an e-signed PDF in the database workflow.
- Give guards access only to their own sites’ post orders and the templates they need, not to other sites, rates, or other guards’ details.
- Keep bill rates, client contract details, and revenue in views that only the owner and managers can open.
- Keep incident reports limited to supervisors and managers, with guards able to create but not edit submitted reports.
- Keep licence numbers and personal details limited to the people who manage compliance.
- Never give clients access to the workspace. Send them finished PDFs.
- Turn on the strongest sign-in protection your plan offers.
- Never store codes, passwords, or camera logins.
- Remove access on the day someone leaves, including temporary staff.
- Review who has access every few months.
- How to Use Notion for Property Management
- How to Use Notion for a Cleaning Business
- How to Use Notion for an IT Services Company
- How to Export a Notion Database to PDF
Notion is not made for:
If you already use a guard tour system, a dispatch tool, or a time clock, treat Notion as the planning and reporting layer beside them. In an emergency, your procedures and the emergency services come first, and the paperwork comes after.
What Must Never Go Into Notion
Security records are a target, so the rules are stricter than in most businesses.
Never store these in Notion:
Write how access works, such as “keyholder contacted via control room,” and keep the secret in a secure tool built for it. Treat your workspace as something that could one day be exposed, and store only what you could defend.
Be careful with personal information. Incident reports can include the names, descriptions, and sometimes photos of suspects, witnesses, and victims. Collect only what the report needs, record facts and not guesses, and limit who can see them. CCTV footage and photos should be stored in secure systems and referenced, not uploaded.
Know your legal duties. Licensing of guards, use of force, searching, detaining, recording people, and handling personal data are all regulated, and the rules differ by country, region, and type of work. Check what applies to you, ask your regulator or a legal adviser if you’re unsure, and keep official records in the format required.
While you are testing, use made-up sites, guards, and incidents.
Use These 6 Databases
Start with these 6. You can add more later, such as Equipment and Clients.
A relation connects a record in one database to a record in another. Link Shifts, Incident Reports, and Site Reports to Sites, and link Training and Licences to Guards. Now a site page shows its shifts, its incidents, and its reports together.
Sites and Post Orders
Every site has rules. Post orders tell a guard what to do, what to check, and who to call. A guard who arrives at a site for the first time should be able to read them in ten minutes.
Make a Post orders page for each site, with sections such as:
Keep the document short, specific, and current. Add a Last Reviewed date, and a flag:
Orders flag: if(dateBetween(now(), prop("Last Reviewed"), "months") >= 6, "Review orders", "")
A view called Orders to review lists sites whose post orders are older than six months. Change the period to suit your contracts. Ask each guard to confirm they’ve read the orders for a new site, and record it in the Shifts or the guard’s record. Keep the codes and combinations out of the page, and say where guards get them.
Guards, Licences, and Training
In many places, guards need a licence, and working without one is a serious problem for the guard and the company. This is the most important dates list you have.
On Training and Licences, add:
*Days to expiry: dateBetween(prop("Expiry Date"), now(), "days") Licence flag: if(prop("Days to expiry") < 0, "Expired", if(prop("Days to expiry") <= 60, "Renew soon", ""))*
The flag shows Renew soon within 60 days of expiry, and Expired afterwards. Change the 60 days to give guards enough time to renew. Make these views:
Never schedule a guard whose licence has expired. Check licences against the official register, as your rules require, and don’t rely on a Notion tick alone. Store certificates in a secure place and link to them. Licence numbers and personal details are sensitive, so store only what you need, and limit who can see them.
How to Use Notion for an IT Services Company has a similar renewals setup.
A Site induction template, with a checklist of what a guard must know before a first shift, helps new guards start safely: the post orders, emergency contacts, assembly points, hazards, and reporting steps.
Shifts: Cover, Hours, and Billing
A rota is a promise to a client. An empty post is a breach of it.
On Shifts, add formulas:
*Hours: dateBetween(prop("End"), prop("Start"), "minutes") / 60 Guard Hours: prop("Hours") * prop("Guards Assigned Count") Cover flag: if(prop("Status") != "Cancelled" and prop("Guards Assigned Count") < prop("Guards Required"), "Unfilled", "")*
On Shifts, add a rollup that counts the assigned guards, and name it Guards Assigned Count. The flag shows Unfilled for any shift that has fewer guards than the site requires. A view called Gaps, showing shifts with the flag, sorted by date, is the first thing a scheduler should check each morning.
Call for cover early, because last-minute gaps are the hardest to fill.
Here is a made-up site that needs two guards overnight. Amounts are in your own currency.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Shift | 8 pm to 8 am (12 hours) |
| Guards required | 2 |
| Guard hours per night | 24 |
| Nights per week | 7 |
| Guard hours per week | 168 |
| Bill rate | 22 per hour |
| Weekly billing | 3,696 |
Billing: prop("Guard Hours Total") prop("Bill Rate per Hour")*
Contracts often have different rates for nights, weekends, and holidays, and sometimes minimum hours, so adjust the formula to match yours. Working time, breaks, rest, and pay rules for guards differ by place, so follow the rules that apply to you.
This calculation leaves out guard pay, overheads, and tax, so use it for invoicing and planning, and check the full figures with an accountant. Test the formulas with made-up shifts and check them against a calculator.
Make these views of Shifts:
Pro Tip: Check the rota against licences every week. A formula can't stop you from scheduling an expired licence, but a quick look at the Not cleared to work view can.
Patrol Checks and the Daily Log
Many sites need regular rounds, and clients like to see that they happened.
If you use a guard tour system with tags or GPS, it holds the verified record. Bring summary numbers into Notion each month. If you don’t, guards can record rounds by hand, but remember that manual entries aren’t independent proof, so don’t present them as more than they are.
Create a Daily log template for each shift, with:
Keep it short, because a long log doesn’t get filled in. If something serious happens, an incident report replaces a log line.
For the monthly report, record how many rounds were planned and completed, and add a formula on Site Reports:
Rounds Completed: if(prop("Rounds Planned") > 0, prop("Rounds Done") / prop("Rounds Planned"), 0)
If 8 rounds were planned for a night and 7 were done, that’s 87.5%. A figure below 100 percent isn’t always a failure. A guard may have been dealing with an incident. Record the reason, and be honest with the client.
Incident Reports: The Core Document
An incident report may be read by a client, an insurer, the police, a regulator, or a court. It has to be accurate, timely, and complete. It’s the most important document a security company produces.
In an emergency, act first and write second. Follow your procedures, call the emergency services if needed, and make people safe. Then write the report as soon as you can, ideally during the shift while memory is fresh.
Use a short Incident report template with these sections:
Write facts, and leave out opinions, guesses, and blame. “I saw a person climb the fence at 22:40” is a fact. “A thief tried to break in” is a guess. Use times, and write in the first person for what you saw yourself. Don’t alter a report after it’s submitted.
If something needs correcting, add a dated addendum, and say who added it. Notion keeps some page history depending on your plan, but it isn’t a tamper-proof record. If a report may be used in legal proceedings, export a PDF, and store it in a secure system as your rules and your legal adviser require.
Add a completeness check:
*Complete: and(prop("Summary") != "", prop("Actions Taken") != "", prop("Reported By") != "", prop("Date and Time Occurred") != "") Report flag: if(prop("Status") == "Draft" and dateBetween(now(), prop("Date and Time Occurred"), "hours") >= 12, "Overdue draft", "")*
The flag shows Overdue draft for any report still in draft twelve hours after the incident. Change the number to your standard. Make these views:
A supervisor should read every report within a day, check that it’s factual and complete, and sign it off. Test the formulas with made-up reports.
Client Notification and Follow-Up
Contracts often say how quickly a client must be told about a serious incident. Missing that deadline can turn a small problem into a contract dispute.
On Incident Reports, add formulas using the notification rule from the site:
*Notify Due: dateAdd(prop("Date and Time Occurred"), prop("Notification Hours"), "hours") Notify flag: if(prop("Severity") != "Minor" and prop("Client Notified At") == "" and prop("Notify Due") < now(), "Notify late", if(prop("Severity") != "Minor" and prop("Client Notified At") == "" and prop("Notify Due") < dateAdd(now(), 1, "hours"), "Notify soon", ""))*
The flag shows Notify soon when the deadline is within an hour, and Notify late once it’s passed. Record when and how the client was told, because you may need to prove it. A view of unnotified serious incidents should be empty at the end of every shift.
For follow-up, create tasks from the report: repairs to report, evidence to preserve, changes to the post orders, or a debrief with the guard.
A short After action note on each serious incident, with what you’ll change, shows clients you learn from events. Over time, patterns appear, such as the same gate being forced, or the same time of night. Patterns are the most valuable thing in your records.
Site Reports: Show the Value You Deliver
Security is invisible when it works. A monthly report shows clients what they’re paying for.
At the end of each month, create a Site Report record for each site, with the numbers from your shifts and incidents, and add a few short, honest sections:
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Hours delivered | 744 |
| Shifts covered | 31 of 31 |
| Incidents logged | 4 |
| Rounds planned | 248 |
| Rounds completed | 241 |
| Rounds completed | 97.2% |
Because the key numbers sit on one record, a report template can show them directly, without listing individual incidents. Check each report before sending, and remove anything the client shouldn’t see. Test the formulas with made-up numbers and check them against a calculator.
A Friday Night at a Company With Eight Sites
To see how the pieces fit, here is one made-up Friday.
4:00 pm. The scheduler opens the Gaps view. One night shift at a retail site is short by one guard. She calls two guards, and fills it by 5:30. The Not cleared to work view reminds her that one guard’s licence expires next week.
6:00 pm. A new guard starts at an office site. He reads the post orders, completes the site induction checklist, and confirms he’s read them.
9:30 pm. A supervisor opens the Drafts view. A guard at a construction site has an incident report in progress about a fence breach. It’s marked Serious, and the notification clock shows the client must be told within two hours.
10:15 pm. The guard finishes the report. The supervisor reads it, and calls the client contact. He records the time in Client Notified At. The flag clears.
11:30 pm. The guard at another site logs round 4 of 8 in the daily log. A short note says a contractor stayed late with permission.
6:30 am. The morning scheduler reviews overnight reports in Needs review, and signs off the three that came in. One needs a missing time added. The guard adds a dated addendum.
Nothing was written three days later from memory.
The Documents That Leave Notion
Clients, insurers, and authorities don’t use your workspace, so some records need to become files:
For a single page, you can use Notion’s export option. How to Export Notion to PDF shows the settings, and How to Export a Notion Database to PDF helps with tables, such as a rota. If you also manage buildings or crews, How to Use Notion for Property Management and How to Use Notion for a Cleaning Business cover similar ground. Clients judge a security company partly by the quality of its reports, and Notion’s own export gives you limited control over layout. How to Add Your Logo and Brand Colors to Notion PDFs explains how a template solves that.
Generating PDFs with PDFOutput
PDFOutput creates documents from your Notion data using a template. A template can be a Google document, a Word file, a PDF file, or a Notion page. If you already have an incident report layout in Word or Google Docs, you can reuse it.
Here is how it works:
These are some of the status options:
The e-signed option may help with induction acknowledgements and post orders sign-off. Whether an electronic signature is valid for a given document depends on your location and the type of document, so check before you rely on it. You can save the finished file to a property in your database, so an incident report stays on its record. You can also save it to a Google Drive folder and store the link in a property.
An incident report is a good fit, because it’s one record with clearly named properties: report number, site, date and time, type, severity, summary, actions taken, and client notification. A monthly site report works the same way, using the summary numbers on one record. If you’d like a list of every incident in a monthly report, test a template with a sample site that has several, and check that each appears. If it doesn’t, keep a short text summary on the site report.
Before using any document tool with security records, ask the provider how data is handled, where it’s stored, and what agreements are available, and keep the answers with your records. The safest approach is to generate documents from records that hold only what the recipient should see, and never from records that hold codes or secrets. Incident reports sent to third parties contain personal information, so check what you’re allowed to share, and remove what you aren’t. If a report may be evidence, keep the official copy in a secure system as your rules require.
Start with the incident report, since it’s the most important document you produce. Use Preview first and check for empty fields, the right site and date, and wording that’s factual and complete. A supervisor should read every report before it’s sent.
Key Takeaway: Write incident reports during the shift, in facts and times, and have a supervisor sign them off within a day. Keep codes and secrets out of Notion, and let it do what it does well: rotas, dates, hours, and tidy reports.
Who Can See What
Your workspace will hold site details, guard information, and incident records, so control access tightly.
Common Mistakes
Storing site secrets. Codes, combinations, and key locations don’t belong in a planning tool. Write how access works, and keep the secrets elsewhere.
Writing reports late. A report written three days later from memory is a weak one. Write during or right after the shift.
Mixing facts and opinions. “I saw” is evidence. “He was obviously planning to” isn’t.
Editing submitted reports. Add a dated addendum, and don’t change the original.
Scheduling an expired licence. Check licences against the register, every week.
Missing client notification deadlines. A flag and a named person prevent the most avoidable contract disputes.
Treating manual rounds as verified. Unless you use tags or GPS, say so honestly.
Too many properties. If an incident report takes thirty minutes to enter, guards will write it on paper, or not at all. Keep the template short.
No owner for the structure. Pick one person responsible for the setup. Properties get renamed and formulas break, so tell that person not to rename properties used in PDF templates, because the placeholders must match exactly.
Skipping a test. Run a week with made-up sites, guards, and incidents first, and fix what annoys the team before you use real records.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Notion be used to run a security company?
Yes, as a scheduling and records workspace for sites, post orders, shifts, licences, daily logs, and incident reports. It isn’t a guard tour system, a dispatch tool, a camera system, or a tamper-proof evidence store, so use dedicated tools for those.
Should I store alarm codes or key information in Notion?
No. Never store alarm codes, door codes, safe combinations, key locations, passwords, or camera logins in Notion. Write how access works, and keep the secrets in a secure tool built for that.
How do I write a good incident report in Notion?
Use a short template with the basic details, type and severity, a factual account in time order, actions taken, evidence references, and client notification. Write it during or just after the shift, stick to facts, and have a supervisor sign it off within a day.
Can I use Notion incident reports as evidence?
Notion isn’t a tamper-proof record. If a report may be used in legal proceedings, export a PDF and store it in a secure system as your rules and your legal adviser require, and never edit a submitted report. Add a dated addendum for corrections.
How do I make sure every post is covered in Notion?
Record the number of guards each site requires, count the guards assigned to each shift, and use a formula that flags shifts with fewer guards than required. Make a view of unfilled shifts, and check it every morning.
Can I create incident reports and site reports from Notion?
You can export a page as a PDF, or use a template-based tool such as PDFOutput to fill a report template with data from each record. Keep the key facts on one record, test it on a few sample records first, and have a supervisor check every report before it goes out.
Is it safe to store security records in Notion?
Notion lets you control who sees each page, but your duties depend on your contracts, your licence, and the rules where you work. Keep secrets and codes out, limit access, use strong sign-in protection, and keep official records in the format and place required.
Related Reading
Conclusion
A good security company setup in Notion covers the paperwork that clients judge you by: post orders every guard has read, a rota with no gaps, licences that never lapse, incident reports written on the night, and a monthly report that shows the value you deliver. Keep every code and secret out of the workspace, write facts and not opinions, and run a week of made-up sites first. When your incident reports and site reports need to leave Notion, PDFOutput can fill your template from each record and save the PDF to your chosen storage.
Want incident reports and site reports as clean PDFs? Try PDFOutput.