Security agency software in the Philippines, a buyer's guide.

An agency's day is posts and people: who is on which post, on which shift, and whether they actually arrived. Everything after that, payroll and billing, is only as good as that record.

• Clients, sites and posts, with the number of guards and shifts each contract calls for.
• Deployment that refuses a guard whose licence, clearance or training has lapsed.
• Clock-in at the post from the guard's phone, guard tour scans at checkpoints and duty logs.
• Relievers, roster exceptions and floating guards waiting for a new post.
• Incident reports, and firearms issued, returned and moved, with the paper trail the PNP asks for.

The Private Security Services Industry Act of 2022 (RA 11917) replaced the old RA 5487. It requires the agency to be licensed and every security professional to hold a licence to exercise the security profession, with the training it requires. The PNP Civil Security Group, through its Supervisory Office for Security and Investigation Agencies (SOSIA), issues and renews them. Firearms are licensed under RA 10591.

Software should keep each licence with its expiry date, warn before it lapses, and stop a guard with a lapsed licence from being deployed at all, not only flag it in a report.

DOLE Department Order No. 150-16 sets the working conditions of security guards in the private security industry: at least the regional minimum wage, overtime, night shift differential, holiday and rest day premiums, service incentive leave and 13th month pay, and the SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG contributions. Agencies that supply guards to clients are also covered by DOLE's rules on contracting, under which they register with DOLE.

Guard pay should be computed from the duty logs, not typed in from a paper logbook. The same hours then become the client's bill, so a correction on one side shows on the other.

A security service contract sets a rate per guard that has to cover the guard's wage and premiums, the government contributions, the agency's overhead and margin, and VAT. When a wage order raises the minimum wage, the contract rate has to move with it.

A system should bill from the posts actually covered, issue the invoice and official receipt, and give the client the compliance pack many clients ask for: proof of remitted contributions and payslips for the guards on their post.

With a spreadsheet the logbook, the payroll and the billing are three files that never quite agree, and a lapsed licence is found by the client. A system makes one record of each duty and builds the pay and the bill from it, with a trail of who changed a log and why. Guards' IDs, licences and contribution numbers are personal information under the Data Privacy Act (RA 10173), and should be visible only to the people who need them.