The rota went from a Sunday job to a Monday coffee
I used to lose most of Sunday to next week's rota. Patterns and copy-last-week did away with that almost entirely. The team see it the moment I publish.
DHDean H.Operations Manager · 3 weeks ago
Guarding · Patrol · Events · Door supervision
Never leave a site unmanned.
The rota, the check-in, the timesheet and the invoice in one system built for UK security companies — and it won’t let an expired SIA licence anywhere near a site.
- 30-day free trial
- No card required
- From £34.99/month for 10 staff
- Cancel any time
Contract types
Built for every kind of UK security contract
Most operators run a mixed book — a retail park, two building sites, a dog unit and a Saturday festival. On The Shift handles them in one system instead of one spreadsheet each.
Static guarding
Gatehouse and entrance control, access logs, visitor management and a licensed officer on post around the clock.
Door supervisionSIA DS
Clubs, bars and the night-time economy: door teams, refusals and ejections logged on the night, with a licence check before anyone works a door.
Security dog unitsNASDU
Handler and dog logged as a single deployable unit, with certification dates and rest periods tracked against the shift.
Mobile patrol & alarm response
Multi-site rounds with GPS-stamped arrival and departure, lock-up and unlock, keyholding and response times you can show a client.
Construction site security
Plant and materials protection, hoarding checks, delivery gate control and the site diary an insurer will accept after a theft.
Warehouse & logistics
Distribution centres and industrial estates: goods-in checks, trailer seals, shrinkage reporting and search records held per shift.
Retail & shopping centres
Loss prevention, detentions and civil recovery paperwork, plus banning notices and incident packs shared to centre management.
Event & crowd security
Pit and barrier teams, ejections and capacity counts — with a licence check on every officer before the gates open.
CCTV & remote monitoring
Remote video response, alarm verification and out-of-hours cover, with operator activity logged against the same site record as the guards.
Corporate front of house
Concierge and reception security, where the officer is the first person a client's customers meet — presentation and training tracked accordingly.
Government & public buildings
Public-sector contracts with tighter vetting and audit expectations — screening files, clearances and access logs held to the standard the contract demands.
Vacant & void property
Empty commercial and residential stock: sealed-unit checks, squatter and fly-tipping reports, and evidence dated for the insurer and the landlord.
The gap that costs you
Four systems. None of them agree.
A spreadsheet for the rota. WhatsApp to tell people about it. A paper book for attendance. Another spreadsheet for licences. Every gap between them is an argument about hours, an unbillable shift, or a compliance failure a client finds first.
Hours you can't prove
Check-in by text message means the start time is whenever someone remembered to send it.
Licences that lapse
A renewal missed on a spreadsheet becomes an officer working a site on an expired badge.
Sites you can't evidence
A client asks whether a patrol happened, and a signed paper book is the only answer.
Lone workers you can't reach
Ringing round at 2am to check everyone is safe is not a safety system.
Put a number on it
Your admin already has a price
You are paying it every month, just not on an invoice. Move the sliders to your own numbers.
What is rota admin costing you?
Every month, roughly
£572
of someone’s time, spent moving hours between a spreadsheet, a phone and payroll.
- Admin time
- £572
- On The Shift Starter (40 staff)
- −£79.99
- Difference
- +£492.01
Your numbers, multiplied — 6 hrs × £22 × 4.33 weeks. It ignores the disputed hours and the unbilled overtime, which are usually the bigger number.
One system
Everything from the rota to the payslip
Each part feeds the next. Nothing here is a separate product you have to reconcile at the end of the month.
Build next week's rota in the time it takes to make a coffee
Drag shifts from reusable patterns, fill gaps from a list of who is actually available, and publish to every phone at once. If someone is not qualified to work a site, the rota says so before you assign them — not after.
- Patterns, not copy-pasteNights, four-on-four-off, weekend cover — save the shape once and drop it onto any week.
- Clashes caught as you typeDouble bookings, insufficient rest between shifts and unqualified assignments are refused at the point of the drag.
- Everyone sees the same rotaPublish once. Every phone updates. No more 'I never got the WhatsApp'.
The rota knows who holds a valid licence, so an expired badge cannot quietly end up on a client site.
More on rota & scheduling
Post orders an officer has actually read
Site instructions, patrol routes, the occurrence book and every incident report held against one live site record — versioned, acknowledged, and on the phone before anyone books on. The screen opens on the sites with nothing written at all, because that is the order an ACS assessor will find them in.
- Worst site firstNo post orders at all, then review overdue, then draft-only, then acknowledgements outstanding. The gaps are the headline, not a footnote.
- Publish once, everybody has the current versionChange an escalation contact and every officer's app updates. You can see who has acknowledged the new version and who is still working to the old one.
- Written on shift, not from memory at 8amIncidents are raised from the app with photographs and a location, timestamped against the site and attributable to a named officer and device.
A document that exists is not the same as a document in force. Acknowledgements are the difference, and they are recorded per officer per version.
More on post orders & site records
Your team already has the app they need. It's their phone.
Staff see their shifts, get directions, read the arrival instructions for that specific site, and clock in and out. No training, no handsets to buy, no paperwork to chase at the end of the month.
- Geofenced check-inClocking in only works at the site. Out-of-area attempts are flagged for review or refused outright — your choice.
- Briefed before they arriveGate codes, key locations and who to report to, on the shift itself, so nobody rings the office at 6am.
- Works with no signalReminders are scheduled on the handset, so a basement or a rural yard does not mean a missed check call.
Check-in data becomes the timesheet. Nobody types hours in twice.
More on the staff app
Know your lone workers are safe, without ringing them all night
On The Shift asks each lone worker to confirm they are safe at an interval you set. If they do not answer within the grace period, your control room is told — automatically, with their name, their site and when they were last seen.
- The phone buzzes, even when the app is closedReminders are scheduled by the operating system, so they arrive whether or not the app is open and whether or not there is signal.
- One button to raise the alarmSOS sends the guard's location and a note straight to the office, and marks the shift on the live board.
- Escalation you can evidenceEvery call, answer and missed deadline is timestamped — the record an insurer or an ACS assessor asks for.
Safety features keep working even if an account is suspended for billing. We do not take an alarm away from a person to settle an invoice.
More on lone worker safety
The licence check that happens before the shift, not after the audit
Track SIA licences, right to work, DBS certificates and anything else you need. Set which documents block scheduling, and On The Shift simply will not let an unqualified person be rostered.
- Chased automaticallyReminders go out before something expires, to the person who holds it, on the schedule you set.
- Blocking or warning, per documentAn expired first-aid certificate might warn. An expired SIA licence should stop the assignment dead.
- Evidence on demandEvery document, its expiry and who checked it — exportable when a client or assessor asks.
One place to answer 'prove everyone on this site was licensed on the night in question'.
More on compliance & vetting
Hours that came from the door, not from memory
Timesheets are built from real check-in and check-out data, with breaks, overtime and holiday already applied. Approve the exceptions, export to payroll, and invoice the client from the same approved hours.
- Only the exceptions need youShifts that ran as planned approve themselves. You look at the late ones, the short ones and the overtime.
- Holiday accrued properly12.07% of hours worked, the way the Working Time Regulations actually define it — not a flat guess.
- One set of numbersThe hours you pay and the hours you invoice come from the same approved record, so they cannot disagree.
Payroll goes from a day of spreadsheets to an export and a coffee.
More on timesheets & pay
Evidence the patrol happened, in the order it was supposed to
Place NFC tags or QR stickers at checkpoints, numbered in the order they should be visited. Guards tap each one as they go, and you get a timestamped route rather than a signature in a book.
- NFC or QR, same tagTap a phone on the tag, or scan the printed code. One token behind both, so a damaged sticker is not a dead checkpoint.
- In sequence, on purposeCheckpoints are numbered. Skipping one is visible, which is the entire point of a patrol record.
- A route your client can seeTurn the night's scans into a report worth attaching to an invoice.
Answers the client question that ends contracts: 'how do I know anyone actually walked it?'
More on patrols & checkpoints
Getting started
Running a real rota inside a week
Not a six-month implementation. Setup takes about ten minutes; the rest is deciding your own rules.
- 01Tell us what you runPick your sector and On The Shift changes its vocabulary and its rules to match. Sites and officers, not 'resources'.
- 02Build one real rotaImport your people from a spreadsheet, add a site, drop in a shift pattern. Ten minutes and your team has it on their phones.
- 03Stop retyping everythingCheck-ins become timesheets, timesheets become payroll and the client invoice. The same approved hours all the way through.
Lone worker safety
The check call that buzzes even with no signal
Reminders are scheduled by the handset’s operating system, not sent from a server, so they arrive in a basement and with the app closed. If nobody answers within the grace period, your control room is told automatically — with a name, a site and a last-seen time.
Offline
reminders fire without any signal
One tap
to raise an alarm with location
And it stays on. If an account is ever suspended over an unpaid invoice, check calls and SOS keep working. We do not take a safety alarm off a person to settle a bill.
The staff app, on the phone they already own
What operators say
Reviewed by the people running the rota
The licence block has already earned its keep
It refused to let me put someone on a site with a lapsed SIA card. I'd have missed it. That one refusal is worth the subscription on its own.
PRPriya R.Managing Director · last month
The guards actually use it
That was the bit I was worried about. Company code, email, done — and it keeps working in the car park where there's no signal. Check-in disputes have stopped.
MFMarcus F.Director · 2 months ago
Placeholder reviews — replace with Trustpilot’s official widget once the profile is live.
In their words
What changes, according to the people running it
Six things operators tell us after the first couple of months. Each one is about a different part of the system.
Timesheets
“Nobody debates hours any more, because the hours came from the door. That one change removed most of the friction between the office and the officers.”
Compliance
“We used to prepare for the ACS assessment for a fortnight. Now we export what already happened and spend the afternoon on it.”
Margins
“We were losing money in the gap between what we billed and what we paid, and we could not see the gap until it was measured.”
Lone worker
“The check calls run themselves now. My supervisors got a shift's worth of time back every single night, and nothing depends on somebody remembering at 3am.”
Licensing
“An officer with an expired badge simply cannot be put on a site. It stopped being something we had to remember and became something that cannot happen.”
Evidence
“Client complaints about missed sites get answered with a timestamp instead of an apology. The complaints themselves dropped once staff knew it was recorded.”
Who it’s for
It speaks your industry, not “resources”
Pick your sector at signup and the whole product changes its vocabulary and its rules. Sites and officers, not a generic scheduler with your words pasted over it.
Security & guarding
Manned guarding, mobile patrols, event security and door supervision. On The Shift knows what an SIA licence is, what a check call is for, and why a patrol needs to be evidenced rather than assumed.
12.07% holiday accrual applied correctly, per hour worked
Commercial cleaning
When the same twelve people cover forty buildings, the difference between profit and loss is whether the hours you invoice match the hours you paid for.
0 hours retyped between clock-in and payroll
Facilities management
Planned maintenance and reactive callouts across a portfolio, with the certification checks and attendance evidence your clients build their own reporting on.
Live view of who is on site right now
Straight answers
What people say before they say yes
“My team won't use an app”
They already use one — this runs on the phone in their pocket, with no training. Signing in is a company code, an email and a password. Most guards use exactly two buttons: check in, and check out.
“We've been burned migrating before”
Bring a spreadsheet of your people and we import it on the call. You can run On The Shift alongside what you have for a month; nothing is deleted and there is no exit fee if it is not working.
“We're too small for this”
Starter is £34.99 a month and covers up to 10 staff. If you spend two evenings a week building a rota, it costs less than the time it gives back.
Last step
See it against your own rota
Half an hour, screen shared, using your sites and your shift patterns rather than a demo account. We build one of your real weeks live on the call.
- A real rota for one of your sites, built while you watch
- Your compliance rules set up, including what should block scheduling
- The staff app on a phone, so you see what your team sees
- An honest answer on whether we're a fit — including when we're not
Prefer to just try it? Start a 30-day trial with no card and no call. The demo is for people who would rather be shown than read documentation.
1/3
Step 1
What do you run?
So we can show you the version built for your work, not a generic tour.