Already in business?

Most of what we publish is written for someone who has not started yet. This page is not. If you are already licensed, already running posts and already invoicing clients, your problem is not how to begin — it is that the paperwork underneath the business was assembled in a hurry, and it has not caught up with what you now do.

That is the normal way a security company grows. You win the first contract on a document someone sent you years ago. You hire your first officers before you have a handbook. The reports are whatever the client agreed to look at. None of it is a crisis, and all of it is quietly costing you time.

What tends to be missing

These are the gaps we hear about most often from owners who already have a running company:

• One contract doing every job. The same agreement is used for a static guard post, a mobile patrol, an armed assignment and a subcontract to another firm — and it was written for none of them.
• No post orders. Officers are briefed verbally, so what happens on site depends on who is working, and a client complaint has nothing to refer back to.
• No employee handbook. Policy exists in your head. It is consistent right up until the day somebody disputes it.
• Reports that vary by officer. Daily activity reports and incident reports in whatever form each person writes them, which makes them hard to hand to a client and harder to rely on later.
• Proposals written from scratch each time. Every bid costs you an evening because there is no document to start from.
• Invoicing and authorisations on ad-hoc paperwork. Quotes, invoices and credit card authorisations built in a spreadsheet for each new client.

What the package is

The Security Business in a Box is the paperwork set we built and used running our own security company: service agreements for each type of work, a standard operating procedures manual, an employee handbook, post orders, HR and hiring forms, field reports, proposals and the quote and invoice forms that go with them. Every document carries bracketed placeholders for your company details, so the work is branding them rather than writing them.

State-variable sections are marked [CONSULT YOUR STATE REQUIREMENTS] rather than guessed at, so you can see exactly where your own state's rules need to be checked.

If you would rather not do the find-and-replace yourself, we also brand the whole set with your company name, address, contact details and logo before you receive it — see the customization service.

Already have some of it?

Most established companies do, and nothing here asks you to throw out a contract your attorney has already reviewed. The package is a set of individual documents, not an all-or-nothing system — take the post orders and the handbook, keep your own agreement. Individual templates are also available on their own if you only need one or two; each one is listed on the templates page with a free watermarked sample so you can read the quality before you decide.

Professionally prepared templates, not legal advice. Requirements vary by state — have an attorney review before use.