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Daily activity report (DAR) template (Word & Excel): a security shift log
A free security daily activity report in printable, Word and Excel copies: a shift header, a time-stamped log, patrol rounds, visitors and vehicles, hazards, keys and a closing summary. Here is how to fill it in and get the most from it.
Printable template
What a daily activity report is for
A daily activity report, or DAR, is the running record of one officer’s shift. Every round, lock check, visitor, delivery and anything out of place goes on it with a time beside it. Read across a week, a stack of DARs shows what a post really does hour by hour, which is hard to see from a schedule alone.
The officer on post keeps it through the shift and writes entries as things happen, rather than rebuilding the night from memory at the end. On an overnight construction site that means each perimeter walk, each gate check and each car that slows at the fence. At an office lobby desk it means arrivals, deliveries, after-hours tenants and the closing walk. A patrol officer logs each visit to each property the same way.
The parts of the form and what they capture
- Shift header: site, post, officer, date, start and end times, and who handed the post over. It ties every entry below to one person and one stretch of hours.
- Shift log: a table with time, location, activity or observation, and action taken. This is the heart of the report, and it should have no unexplained gaps.
- Patrol rounds: each round’s start and end, whether every checkpoint was reached, and anything found. It shows that rounds happened and how long they took.
- Visitors and vehicles: name or company, plate, time in and out, and who they came to see.
- Maintenance and safety hazards: a burned-out light, a leak, a blocked exit, with where it was and who was told.
- Keys and equipment: what the officer received and returned, and its condition.
- Shift summary and signatures: a few lines on what the next shift and the manager need to know, then the officer’s and supervisor’s signatures.
Writing entries that hold up later
A DAR is only as useful as its least careful entry. A few habits keep it clear for anyone who reads it after the shift.
- Write each entry at the time, not in a batch before relief arrives
- Pick one time format for the whole report and stick to it
- Name the exact spot: “north stairwell door, level two” rather than “a door”
- Give each event its own line
- Write “all secure” only after checking, and say what was checked
- Stick to what you saw and did; leave out opinions and guesses
- When something needed an incident report, log that it was written so the two records connect
What the property manager gets from the DAR
For the client, the DAR is proof of coverage and an early warning system. It shows rounds walked and doors checked, and over a few weeks it surfaces patterns: contractors arriving before the site opens, a gate left unlocked by a vendor, a parking lot light that keeps failing. Those lines become repair requests, vendor conversations and changes to the post. On sites like construction projects, the hazard and equipment lines are often the most read part of the page.
HALO reports from patrol visits include photos, which turns a log line about a damaged fence panel into something the manager can act on without a site visit. Office buildings get the same value from lobby logs, and our corporate office security page covers how those posts run.
Adapting the template to your site
Shape the log around the work. A construction site may add rows for equipment and material checks and gate lock times. A lobby post may add a line for packages received. A parking structure may track vehicles left overnight. The Word copy is easy to retitle and reorder, and the Excel copy suits sites that collect logs digitally and sort them by date. The other forms a post runs on are gathered on the security director resources page.
Match the patrol rounds block to the checkpoints written in your post orders, so the officer and the manager count the same stops. When you are ready to staff the post, send your hours and concerns through the quote form.
Resources
Related guides
A few useful answers
Common questions
What is a daily activity report in security?
It is the officer’s time-stamped log of a full shift: rounds, checks, visitors, vehicles, hazards and handoffs. Managers read it to see what the post did and to spot problems that repeat.
How often should an officer write in the DAR?
Whenever something happens and at every round. A quiet stretch still gets a round entry, so the log never shows a gap nobody can explain.
Who reads the daily activity reports?
The site supervisor and the property or facility manager who receives reports for the site. HALO patrol and incident reports include photos, so the manager sees what the officer saw.
Can a patrol officer use the same DAR template?
Yes. Give each property visit its own block in the shift log with arrival and departure times, the checkpoints walked and anything found. The Excel copy makes it simple to add rows for a longer route.