The example at a glance
Blank formats are easy to find; what most agencies want to see is a security guard attendance sheet that has been filled in for a real month, with the awkward days included. This example does that for one site. The names, site and agency are fictional, but every number reconciles, and the filled sample is available as a three-page PDF from the download button at the end of this page.
The site is Sunrise Heights, Tower B, a residential tower with three posts, each manned by one guard on 12-hour duties: Main Gate day (08:00 to 20:00), Main Gate night (20:00 to 08:00) and Tower Lobby day (08:00 to 20:00). The month is September 2026, which has 30 days, so the client's deployment order sanctions 3 posts x 30 days = 90 duties. The layouts and codes used are the standard ones described in our security guard attendance format guide.
- G-101 Ramesh Kumar: Main Gate, day duty, weekly off on Sundays
- G-102 Sunil Yadav: Main Gate, night duty, weekly off on Wednesdays
- G-103 Mohan Singh: Tower Lobby, day duty, weekly off on Fridays
- G-104 Ajay Patil: reliever, covers this site's weekly offs and leave and works other sites on the remaining days
Step 1: Plan the weekly offs and the reliever
Before the month starts, the supervisor marks each guard's weekly offs and checks that the reliever is never needed in two places on the same day. September 2026 starts on a Tuesday, so Ramesh is off on the 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th; Sunil on the 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd and 30th; and Mohan on the 4th, 11th, 18th and 25th. Mohan has also applied for leave on Monday 21st and Tuesday 22nd.
That makes 15 days on which this site needs Ajay: 4 Main Gate day duties, 5 Main Gate night duties and 6 Tower Lobby day duties. None of the dates clash, so one reliever is enough. On his other days Ajay works at other sites, and those duties appear on their sheets, not this one. A duty roster for security guards is where this planning normally happens.
Step 2: Fill the monthly sheet day by day
Each day, the supervisor copies the daily register into the monthly sheet as a code per guard. The first week (Tuesday 1st to Monday 7th) looks like this, with a dash on Ajay's row for days he is not at this site:
- G-101 Ramesh: D D D D D WO D
- G-102 Sunil: N WO N N N N N
- G-103 Mohan: D D D WO D D D
- G-104 Ajay (reliever): - R - R - R -
Step 3: The day that goes wrong (15 September)
At 18:40 on Tuesday 15th, Sunil phones to say he cannot come for his night duty. Ajay is already deployed at another site that night, so the supervisor asks Ramesh, who is finishing his day duty at the Main Gate, to stay on, and Ramesh agrees. The post is covered, but the record now has to show three things: Sunil was absent, Ramesh worked two duties back to back, and the second duty is overtime.
On the monthly sheet, Sunil gets A and Ramesh gets DN, which counts as two duties. In the daily register, Ramesh's day and night are written as two rows with their own times (07:54 to 20:00, then 20:00 to 08:06 on the 16th), so the 24 continuous hours are visible and the 12 hours of the second duty are paid as overtime rather than hidden in one long entry. The remark notes that Ramesh consented and why no reliever was available. Under the Labour Codes, overtime needs the worker's consent, so that note matters. For recurring cases, see handling security guard no-shows.
Step 4: A late arrival and two leave days
On the 8th, Sunil arrives at 20:25 for a 20:00 duty. He still did the duty, so the monthly sheet shows N; the daily register shows the actual in-time and a remark ('late 25 min'). Whether late arrival leads to a deduction is a matter for your HR policy and the client contract, but the record has to show it either way.
On the 21st and 22nd, Mohan is on approved leave. His row shows L on both days and Ajay's row shows R on both days, so the Tower Lobby has exactly one duty each day. That pairing (R on the reliever, WO, L or A on the regular guard) is the rule that keeps a site sheet from double-counting a post.
Step 5: Month-end totals per guard
At month end, each row is totalled with Duties = D + N + G + R + 2 x DN and Nights = N + DN. This is what the example sheet shows:
- G-101 Ramesh: 27 duties (25 day duties plus the double duty counted as 2), 1 night, 4 weekly offs, 12 overtime hours
- G-102 Sunil: 24 duties, all nights, 5 weekly offs, 1 absence
- G-103 Mohan: 24 duties, 4 weekly offs, 2 leave days
- G-104 Ajay: 15 reliever duties at this site, 5 of them nights
- Site total: 27 + 24 + 24 + 15 = 90 duties, 30 of them nights, 12 overtime hours
Step 6: Reconcile each post before the invoice
Before anything goes to the client, the operations desk checks each post separately, because a correct site total can hide one post that was short and another that was double-counted. In this example every post is covered on all 30 days:
- Main Gate day: 30 duties (26 by Ramesh, 4 by Ajay)
- Main Gate night: 30 duties (24 by Sunil, 5 by Ajay, 1 by Ramesh's double duty)
- Tower Lobby day: 30 duties (24 by Mohan, 6 by Ajay)
- Total: 90 recorded against 90 sanctioned, no gap, 90 x 12 = 1,080 man-hours
Step 7: What billing and payroll take from the sheet
Billing takes the site figures: 90 duties, or 1,080 man-hours if the contract is hourly, with the monthly sheet countersigned by the client's facility manager attached to the invoice. The guard billing calculator and our guide to how security agencies bill clients for guard man-hours cover rates and annexures.
Payroll takes the guard figures, but only after they are combined across sites in the head-office summary. Ramesh, Sunil and Mohan worked only here, so their totals go straight to salary, PF and ESIC days. Ajay's 15 duties here are added to his duties at other sites. Ramesh's 12 overtime hours are paid at twice the ordinary rate. If your wage structure treats a 12-hour duty as 8 normal plus 4 overtime hours, every full duty also carries 4 overtime hours; follow your own structure and the state's rules, as explained in security guard salary calculation.
The same month in an attendance app
Nothing about the codes or the totals changes when attendance is captured in an app; what changes is the evidence and the effort. Each duty becomes a clock-in and clock-out with a selfie and a GPS position inside the Sunrise Heights geofence. Ramesh's double duty shows as two shifts, Sunil's absence shows as a missed shift the moment 20:00 passes without a punch, and Ajay's reliever duties land against the post on the roster. At month end the site-wise and guard-wise totals come out as an export instead of being counted by hand.
If you are moving to an app, run it beside the paper register for a month and compare the two, as described in how to set up a security guard attendance app. The blank versions of every format used here are in the security guard attendance sheet PDF.