Guard Scheduling

The Guard Scheduling system enables you to roster guards for regular shifts and generate billing and payment records. It also enables the Safety Check system (if installed).

Basic concepts

Terminology

A Contractor is the person or organisation you send payment to for the work done.

A Service Provider may be best thought of as a 'run' or 'vehicle' which may provide different services and be paid various rates for them. Payment for the service provider's services is made to the contractor. In the case of Guard Scheduling the Service Provider determines the default rate of pay.

A Person is the person carrying out the service (in this case, a guard). You can apply a specific rate of pay to a guard.

Recurring shifts are set up as Periodic Services , which act as templates. Each Periodic Service generates a job, and each job can generate on or more shifts.

Operational

If you simply want to record the standard shifts for a location without billiing, payments, or monitoring, add them in the Location Details window. If you want to bill, pay for, or monitor a shift you must create a job.

If you want to create a one-off guard job, create a new job. If you select a guard service a 'Labour' section should be displayed (if it doesn't display, check your system setup).

If you want to create regular guard jobs (e.g. each week, month, or fortnight), create a Periodic Service.

To manage guards (view shifts, allocate guards to them, handle guard availability etc), use the Guard Scheduling window (see below). In this window you can also create and view jobs and Periodic Services.

To handle guard safety checks and/or monitor shift starts and finishes, use the Monitor window. You can also use this window to dispatch and update other jobs, create jobs, and replace guards which have become unavailable.

To set up guards and manage such things as availability, licencing, and equipment, go the Person Details window

Adding a new guard

To add a new guard to SMART (or update details of an existing guard), select \Maintenance \Personnel from the Main Menu, or go to the Guard Scheduling window.

Right click in the list of guards and choose Add or Change.

Documents

The purpose of this section is to keep track of licences, employment contracts. and other documents. It is found on the Documents tab of the Personnel Details window (Select \Maintenance \Personnnel from the Main Menu).

It also enables you to prevent scheduling of guards if a licence has expired, or warn the operator if a licence is about to expire.

The ! symbol means that this document (licence) must be current before the person is permitted to work. If the document has expired, this symbol appears in red. The symbol appears when the Required box is checked in the Document Details window.

To add a document, drag it from Windows Explorer, press the Insert key, or right click and choose Add. To view a document, right click on it and choose View. Only documents supported by your Windows configuration can be viewed. This may include 'documents' such as photographs or drawings.

You do not need a copy of the document, it is enough to enter the document name.

Expiring documents

If a document is checked Required (in the Document Details window) and has expired, that person cannot be allocated work. The operator can be warned that a document is about to expire depending on the Operator Configuration setting Guard Scheduling, Days warning of licence expiry. If this setting is zero, no warning is given.

By default, the operator is warned about documents which are expiring only the first time they reference a guard in a Smart session. To display the warning every time the operator references the same guard, change the Operator Configuration setting Guard Scheduling, Repeat warning of licence expiry to Yes.

Guard Availability

If you don't specify otherwise, it is assumed that guards are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, except public holidays.

A guard may be considered to be unavailable if their licences are not current (see above).

You set up exceptions to this rule in the Personnel Details window (Scheduled Shifts/Availability tab). Right click to add an Availability record. You can also specify whether a guard should be available at a specified location (see below).

Availability records are processed in this order

- if one or more required licences has expired (see above), or the guard is not permitted to work at this location, the guard is considered not available.

- if there is an entry for a specific date, those settings are used.

- if the day is a public holiday and there is an entry for Public Holidays, the settings for that availability record will be used. If there is no such record it is assumed that the guard is not available on the public holiday.

- if there is an entry for the specific day of the week, the settings for that availability record are used.

- if there is no entry for the specific day of the week, the settings for 'weekend' or 'weekday' are used (if any).

- if it is not a public holiday and there are no other settings, the setting for 'Any Day' is used.

- if you do not enter any availability records, it is assumed the guard is available 24x7 except for public holidays.

Guard location availability

By default, the operator may allocate any guard to any location. You exert tighter control by setting up Guard Locations in the Personnel Details window, Locations/Service Providers tab.

Right click in the list or press the Insert key to add a location. In the window that appears next (or if you double click in the list of locations) you can determine whether the guard is permitted to attend this location.

This information is displayed in the Guard Scheduling window. If 'Never' is selected, the operator is prohibited from allocating this guard to this location.

Guard Pricing

Customer pricing for guard work operates in the same way as pricing for other services. Customer pricing is not affected by the choice of guard for the job.

Pricing of the rate paid to the guard is handled according to the settings in the Rates tab of the Personnel Details window, as follows:

If an over-ride rate is entered for any shift, that rate is used. Zero rates are ignored.
If a standard hourly rate is selected (Level 2, see below) that rate is used for any shift which does not have an over-ride rate.
If no rates are entered in this window
- If a Service Provider has been specified for the job, the Service Provider rate is used.
- If no Service Provider has been specified for the job, the standard rate for the Service is used.