What this security guard duty roster is for
A duty roster answers one question for every post on every day: who is standing there, and on which shift. For a security agency it is also the document the client sees when they ask why the back gate was unmanned on Tuesday night. This template is the planning side of guard management; the security guard attendance sheet is the actual side. The two should reconcile at month end.
It is designed for a site with 2 to about 15 posts covered around the clock in two 12-hour shifts, which is the most common pattern in Indian residential societies, commercial buildings, warehouses and factories. Posts with a single general shift (a 9-hour office reception, for instance) fit in too. The Strength sheet is the part most agencies lack: it tells you how many guards a site needs once weekly offs are honoured.
Who fills it: the operations manager or field officer prepares it before the month starts, the site supervisor keeps a printed copy in the guard room, and guards check it for their offs. If your guards currently learn their duty from a WhatsApp message the evening before, this roster is the first step towards fewer no-shows.
What is inside: Roster, Strength and Codes sheets
The Roster sheet has a header with Site and Month. Each row is one guard on one post and shift: Post (Main Gate, Back Gate, Basement, Patrol, Control Room and so on), Shift (Day 08-20 or Night 20-08 by default, editable), Guard Name, then Day 1 to Day 31. Cells carry the codes D (day duty), N (night duty), WO (weekly off), L (leave) and R (reliever on duty here, used on the reliever's row). At the end of each row are COUNTIF totals: Duties, Weekly Offs and Leave. A coverage row under each post counts how many D and N codes appear per day so a gap shows as 0.
The Strength sheet is a small calculator. For each post you enter Shifts per Day (2 for a 24-hour post, 1 for a general-shift post) and the sheet computes Guards Required. The formula is guards needed = posts x shifts x 7 / 6, because each guard works 6 days and rests 1, so covering 7 duty-days a week per shift takes 7/6 of a guard. A site with 4 round-the-clock posts needs 4 x 2 x 7 / 6 = 9.33, so 10 guards with the fractional 0.67 becoming the reliever's share. The sheet rounds up and shows the Relievers column separately as the difference between rounded strength and posts x shifts.
The Codes sheet lists the five codes with their meaning and whether each counts as a paid duty, a paid off or leave, so supervisors at different sites use the same letters. It also holds the shift timings referenced by the Roster's Shift column, so changing Day to 07-19 in one place updates the roster header.
- Duties per guard row: =COUNTIF(D6:AH6,"D")+COUNTIF(D6:AH6,"N")+COUNTIF(D6:AH6,"R")
- Coverage per day per post: =COUNTIF(D6:D9,"D")+COUNTIF(D6:D9,"N") across the rows belonging to that post
- Strength per post: =ROUNDUP(Posts*Shifts*7/6,0), with Relievers = Strength - Posts*Shifts
How to build the month's roster step by step
Start on the Strength sheet. List the posts from the client's work order with the shifts each needs, and read off the guards required. If you have fewer guards than that number, the roster will have gaps or double duties no matter how cleverly you arrange it, so fix strength first. The deployment sheet template tracks sanctioned versus deployed strength across all clients if you run more than one site.
On the Roster sheet, create one row per guard under their post and shift. Fill weekly offs first, staggering them so no two guards on the same post and shift are off on the same day. Then fill D or N for the remaining days. Finally add the reliever rows: one reliever typically covers the offs of six guards, so their row shows R on six different days across the month at different posts, and WO on their own off day.
Check the coverage row for every post: it should read 2 on every day for a 24-hour post (one D and one N) and 1 for a general-shift post. Any 0 is an unmanned shift; any 3 is a wasted duty. Print the roster for the guard room and share a PDF with the client before the month starts. The full method, including how to rotate day and night fairly, is in how to make a duty roster for security guards.
- Rotate guards between day and night every fortnight or month, not every few days; frequent flips increase fatigue and absenteeism
- Give each guard the same weekday off where possible; predictable offs reduce unplanned leave
- Keep the reliever's row at the bottom of each post block so their coverage is visible against the gaps
How to customise shifts, posts and codes
For 8-hour posts, change the Shift options on the Codes sheet to I (06-14), II (14-22) and III (22-06), add a third row per post, and change the coverage formula to count all three codes. The strength formula becomes posts x 3 x 7 / 6. For a mix of 8- and 12-hour posts on the same site, keep both shift systems in the Codes sheet and pick per post.
Agencies that pay a night allowance should add a Night Duties column with =COUNTIF(row,"N") so payroll can read it directly. Agencies that bill relievers at a different rate can add a Reliever Duties column. Add a Client Sanctioned Strength cell in the header and a check cell that compares it with the number of D and N cells per day to catch over-deployment.
If you manage several sites, keep one workbook per site and consolidate at head office, or keep all sites in one Roster sheet with a Site column and use filters. Beyond about five sites the single-sheet approach becomes hard to print and share, which is where the security guard scheduling software approach starts to pay for itself.
- Add Data Validation with the list D,N,WO,L,R on the day cells to block typos
- Conditional formatting: colour N cells dark blue and WO cells grey so the pattern is readable at a glance
- Add a Contact Number column next to Guard Name for the supervisor's convenience on the printed copy
Rules and compliance context
The roster is where legal working hours are decided. A 12-hour duty for 6 days is 72 hours a week against the 48-hour norm under the Factories Act, state Shops and Establishments Acts and now the Labour Codes; the excess must be paid as overtime at double the ordinary rate, and under the Codes overtime needs the worker's consent. A roster that plans 12-hour duties therefore commits you to overtime pay, and the payroll must reflect it. The security guard salary calculation guide shows how the 26-day divisor and the overtime hours combine.
Every guard is entitled to a weekly off. A roster that shows a guard with 31 duties in a month is evidence against you, not for you, in a wage dispute. The WO code and the Weekly Offs total are there so this is visible before the month begins, not discovered at payroll.
PSARA requires that only verified and trained guards are deployed; the roster should only carry names that appear in your section 15 register with completed police verification. For a client who is a principal employer under the Contract Labour Act, the roster is also part of the evidence that sanctioned strength was actually deployed, which affects both the invoice and the client's own compliance.
When the Excel roster stops working
An Excel roster is a plan. It does not know that a guard called in sick at 19:30, that the reliever is already covering another post, or that the guard who reported to the site is not the one on the roster. It also does not tell the guard about a change unless someone forwards a screenshot. Most agencies end up with two truths: the roster in Excel and the reality on WhatsApp.
Attend Mitra's roster builder takes the same post, shift and guard structure, lets you save a site pattern as a preset and publish the month with one action, and then pushes each guard's duties to their phone. Open shifts can be offered to available guards, swaps need approval, and the roster warns you when someone with approved leave is scheduled. Because guard attendance is marked on the same platform with GPS and selfie, the planned duty and the actual duty sit side by side, and the site man-hours export goes to billing. See the security guard duty roster software page for the workflow, or the duty roster glossary entry for the general concept.