Types of checkpoint tags
Three technologies are common in India. RFID or iButton tags are read by a dedicated wand; they are durable but need the wand and a docking step to upload. NFC tags are small stickers or discs read by tapping an NFC-enabled Android phone; they cannot be scanned from a photograph, which makes them the most tamper-resistant phone-based option. QR codes are printed stickers scanned with any phone camera; cheapest and easiest to replace, but a guard can photograph the code and scan the image from the guard room unless GPS and placement rules prevent it.
For most agencies the practical choice is NFC where phones support it and QR elsewhere, with GPS captured at every scan. Mixed sites work fine as long as the guard tour definition knows which tag type sits at which point.
Where to place checkpoints
Place checkpoints at the locations you actually want inspected, not at convenient spots near the gate. Typical points are the far perimeter corners, every fire exit, the DG set and electrical room, the water tank or terrace door, cash and server rooms, basement parking levels, and any area with a history of theft or trespass. A tour with 8 to 12 well-chosen checkpoints beats one with 30 that the guard rushes past.
Mount tags where they are protected from weather and tampering, at a height a phone can reach, and away from metal surfaces that interfere with NFC reads. Number each tag and keep a site map; when a tag is damaged, the replacement must be registered against the same checkpoint so history stays continuous.
- Cover the perimeter and the highest-risk interiors first.
- Avoid placing QR codes in spots visible from the guard post.
- Photograph each installed tag with its location for the site file.
- Keep spare tags at the site so a damaged checkpoint is replaced the same day.
Tolerance windows and missed-checkpoint alerts
Each checkpoint in a tour carries an expected time relative to the tour start and a tolerance, for example plus or minus 10 minutes. A scan inside the window is on time; outside it is late; no scan by the end of the window is a miss. Set tolerances wide enough to absorb a visitor at the gate but tight enough that a guard cannot complete the 02:00 round at 03:30 and still be marked on time.
A miss should trigger a push or SMS alert to the site supervisor and appear in the shift report sent to the client. Agencies that track miss rates per site and per guard find that a handful of guards account for most misses, which turns the patrol record into a training and deployment tool.
A factory compound of 8 acres has 12 NFC checkpoints: 4 perimeter corners, 3 gates, the DG room, the raw-material store, the finished-goods store, the effluent plant and the terrace door of the admin block. The night tour is expected to take 35 minutes with a 10-minute tolerance per checkpoint, run at 22:00, 00:00, 02:00, 04:00 and 06:00. On a night when the 04:00 round records only 7 scans, the supervisor receives an alert at 04:45 and the morning report shows a 42% miss on that round, which the client raises with the agency.
Attend Mitra supports NFC and QR patrol checkpoints registered per site, tour definitions with expected times per checkpoint, GPS capture at each scan, and live supervisor alerts for missed or late checkpoints. Patrol history exports site-wise for client reports and internal review.