5.1 Branches
Where: Organization > Branches · Plan: Free tier allows 1 branch; unlimited on paid plans · Roles: Admin
Branches divide a company into regions or business units. Every site belongs to one branch, and branch managers only see their own.
- Add Branch (the dialog is titled Create Branch): enter the Branch Name and Location, then save. Employees are company-wide records; a branch manager is tied to a branch through the assignment below.
- List tab: search branches, open one, or select several and Delete.
- Bulk Operations tab: upload a CSV to create or update many branches at once. The field mapper lets you match your columns to InstaNotified fields before importing.
- Assign Branch Manager: open the branch and use the Assign Branch Manager dialog — pick the Branch Manager (an employee who already holds the Branch Manager role) and, optionally, Assign to Branch. Edit Branch Assignment changes it later.
- Branch detail page sections: Overview, Sites, Guards, Schedule > Schedules and Incidents for that branch.
What the Branch Filter scopes. Choosing a branch in the profile menu (or being a branch manager) limits sites, shifts, the live map, patrols, incidents, payroll and invoicing lists to that branch's sites, and a branch manager's customer list to customers with a site in their branch. A branch manager whose employee record manages no branch sees none of these until an admin sets them as a branch's manager. Employee lists remain company-wide — filter them by Branch or Site on the Employees page instead.
5.2 Customers
Where: Organization > Customers · Plan: All plans · Roles: Admin, Branch Manager
Customers are the clients you provide service to. Sites, bill-rate codes, guard requests and invoices hang off a customer (see section 3.1 for how they connect).
Creating a customer
- Click Add Customer (the dialog is titled New Customer).
- In Customer Info fill in Customer Name (required), Email, Phone, Billing Address, Payment Terms (free text such as Net 30, printed on invoices) and Notes.
- Under Sites, tick the existing sites this customer owns (you can also set the customer when creating a site).
- On the right, Bill Rates lets you Add customer-scoped bill-rate codes straight away (section 11.3).
- Create Customer. When editing later (Save Changes), an Active switch lets you retire a customer without deleting its history.
Branch managers see and edit only customers that have at least one site in their branch, so a branch manager must tick at least one of their sites under Sites when creating a customer.
Customer list tools
- Search by name, address, or terms.
- Filters: Status (Active only / Inactive only / Active + Inactive), Site assignment (All sites / Has sites / No sites) and Payment terms.
- Open a customer by its name for its detail page.
- Delete (the bin on a customer's row, admins only) first shows what the delete touches: sites that are kept but unlinked, customer-level bill rates that are permanently removed, or Cannot delete while invoices still reference the customer (void or reassign them first). To remove several at once, select them and use Delete in the selection bar.
Customer detail sections
| Section | What you can do |
|---|---|
| Overview | Summary of sites, open requests, contacts and recent activity. |
| Sites | The sites belonging to this customer; open one or add another. |
| Contacts | Client-side people. Add Contact asks for the Site, Contact Type (Company Management, Client Representative or Other), Name, Title/Position, Phone, Email, Notes and three switches: Active, Show in Guard App (guards see the contact on the site's detail screen) and Receive Incident Reports (emailed when an incident at the site is resolved with notification on). A fourth switch, Receive Invoices, pre-selects the contact when you send an invoice. Filter the list by type, status, Invoice Preferences (Receives Invoices / No Invoice Delivery) and Incident Preferences. |
| Requests | This customer's guard requests (Complete plan), plus the Email intake card: switch on Accept emailed requests from this customer, choose who Requests land on (The company default or a named dispatcher), optionally set Forward their email to (leave empty to use the company list), and Generate an address — a unique inbound email address for this customer (or Replace this address to rotate it). Emails sent to that address become requests automatically. |
| Financial (Complete plan) | Three panels. Invoices lists every invoice for the customer's sites with filters for status (Draft, Generated, Sent, Paid, Void), source (Payroll, Custom, Manual), site and date range. Bill Rates is the customer-scoped code catalogue (section 11.3). AR Report ages open invoices into Not Yet Due, 1-30 Days, 31-60 Days, 61-90 Days and 90+ Days, shows Total Outstanding, Overdue (past due date) and Paid (All Time), and can be filtered to All Balances, Has Overdue Invoices or Current Only; each row is a site (consolidated invoices appear as Consolidated invoices (all sites)) with Outstanding, Overdue Invoices and Open Invoices. |
| Reports | Active Subscriptions the customer receives (with Unsubscribe) and Available Report Schedules to Subscribe them to — the scheduled reports built under Insights > Reports > Schedules. |
5.3 Sites
Where: Organization > Sites · Plan: Free tier allows 2 sites; unlimited on paid plans · Roles: Admin, Branch Manager
A site is a place where guards work: a building, campus, event or route base. Nearly everything else in InstaNotified — shifts, patrols, incidents, geofences, invoices — is attached to a site.
Creating a site
- Click Add Site.
- Enter the name, address (with address autocomplete), customer, branch and time zone.
- Save. Open the site to fill in post orders, geofence and clock-in rules.
Site list tools
- List / Map / Bulk Operations tabs. The map view plots every site.
- The Geofence / Rules column shows the fence shape (circle / polygon, or Add Geofence) and, underneath, the clock rules in force for that site after the company › branch › site cascade: Block when Block clock-in outside geofence is on (amber Block (no fence) if the site has no geofence, so it cannot be enforced), GPS when Require GPS for clock-in is on, the grace (+20 m, or Inside only for 0), and Override when the site sets any of these itself. Hover a label for the full explanation. Shown on plans with payroll access.
- Bulk Alerts sends a notification to the guards at all selected sites.
- Select sites and Delete to remove them.
- Bulk Operations imports sites from a CSV using the field mapper.
Site detail sections (left column when a site is open)
| Section | What you can do |
|---|---|
| Overview | Address, customer, active guards, upcoming shifts, quick stats. |
| Schedule > Shifts | This site's shifts with filters for Upcoming, Active Now, Completed, Cancelled; add a shift directly. |
| Schedule > Patrols | Patrols run at this site, filter by route and status (Completed, In Progress, Abandoned). |
| Guards | Employees assigned to the site; assign or remove people. |
| Activity > Incidents | Incidents at the site, filter by severity (Critical / High / Medium / Low) and status (Open / Investigating / Resolved / Closed). |
| Activity > Verifications | Location verifications (Within Geofence / Outside Geofence), and below them Refused Clock-Ins — clock-in attempts the geofence block turned away in the last 7 days, with the reason and distance. |
| Activity > Logbook | Daily log entries recorded by guards in the app. |
| Activity > Forms | Custom Form Results: custom forms submitted at this site in the last 30 days, with the form name, who submitted it, how many answers and when. Search or filter by form and guard, Export CSV, or click a row to open the submission in Operations > Custom Forms/Poll Submissions (use View All Submissions there for older results). Shown when Custom Forms is enabled for your industry. |
| Activity > Requests | Guard requests for this site. |
| Post Orders | Standing instructions guards see in the app when they open the site. |
| Contract / Customer | Add Contract / Edit Contract: link to the Customer Account, Contract Type (Permanent, Temporary, Seasonal), contract dates, Next Rate Increase and Increase Percentage (%), Union Site and Prevailing Wage flags (read by the Compliance hub). |
| Documents | Upload files guards and managers can reference (contracts, post orders, insurance, licences). A branch manager uploads, edits and removes documents at their own branch's sites only. |
| Holidays | Site-specific holidays and overrides of company holidays (disable one, or change its Pay Multiplier / Bill Multiplier here) — see section 10.7. |
| Financial > Base Rates / Pay Rates / Invoices | The site's hourly billing rates by rate type (section 11.3), site pay-rate overrides (section 10.4) and the invoices generated for the site (Complete plan; Base Rates and Invoices are admin-only). Site-scoped bill-rate codes are created under Invoicing > Bill Rates with the Site scope. |
| Settings > Contacts | The site's contacts — the same records as the customer's Contacts section (section 5.2); a branch manager edits the contacts of their own branch's sites. Those marked Show in Guard App appear to guards on the site screen with one-tap call; those marked Receive Incident Reports are emailed when an incident is resolved with notification on; those marked Receive Invoices are pre-selected when sending invoices. |
| Settings > Scheduling Settings | Default Shift Start / Default Shift End, Shift Duration (hours), Operating Days, Requires 24/7 coverage, Min / Max Hours/Week (Site Total), Min / Max Employees/Shift, Min / Max Hours/Guard/Week, Allow Overtime and Required Certifications; Save Scheduling Settings. The optimizer and eligibility warnings use these. |
| Settings > Geofence | Geofence Type Circle (with Radius (meters)) or Polygon drawn on the map; Map Style Street View / Satellite View. This drawn boundary (plus the GPS tolerance grace) is what clock-in checks, location verifications and geofence-violation alerts all measure against. |
| Settings > Clock In/Out | Site overrides of the payroll clock rules: Require GPS for clock-in (default on; punches without GPS are still recorded but flagged), Block clock-in outside geofence (default off; see Locking clock-in to the site below), GPS tolerance (meters) (100 — how far outside the geofence a punch may be and still count as on site; 0 = strictly inside), Auto clock-out after (hours) (12) and Early clock-in window (minutes) (15). Each field shows Inherited or Site override; leave a field blank to inherit. Save site overrides or Reset to parent. Admins only. |
| Settings > Notifications | Notification Settings for the site: Notification Delivery Channel (SMS Only, Push Only, SMS & Push); Shift Notifications — Location Verification Tool to attach, Before Shift Starts with Minutes Before Start, Before Shift Ends with Minutes Before End, Periodic Notifications with an Interval (for example Every 2 hours); Message Wording — one collapsible row per automatic message (Before shift starts, Before shift ends, At shift end, Periodic check-in, Meal break starts, Meal break ends); expand a row to edit its Message, pre-filled with the default sentence so you can rewrite it or add instructions; variables {{guard_name}}, {{first_name}}, {{site_name}}, {{shift_date}}, {{shift_start}}, {{shift_end}}, {{break_start}}, {{break_end}} are filled in per shift (click a variable button inside the expanded row to insert it at the cursor), a Preview shows the result, Reset to default restores the original text, and each message holds up to 500 characters; when a Location Verification Tool is attached the link instructions are always appended after your text; Location Verification Notifications — Enable Verification Alerts, Verification Timeout (minutes before on-call contacts are paged) and Check Geofence (page on-call if the guard verifies from outside). Save Settings, or tick Apply to All Sites to push the channel, timing and tool company-wide; wording is only copied when you also tick Also replace message wording on all sites, which overwrites every other site's wording with this site's (or resets them all to the default if this site uses it). Single shifts can override the timing, channel and tool with Notification Override (section 6.2); the wording always comes from the site. |
Locking clock-in to the site
By default an off-site clock-in is accepted and only flagged (the GPS tick next to the entry under Payroll > Time Entries turns into a red cross). To refuse it instead:
- Draw the geofence under
Site detail > Settings > Geofence— a Circle with a radius, or a Polygon traced around the property. Without a geofence the block cannot be enforced and the site's clock form says so. - Set GPS tolerance (meters) to the grace you allow outside the fence (for example 20). Phone GPS drifts 10–50 m indoors, so a tight fence with a small grace will refuse some honest punches at large or indoor posts; widen one or the other per site if that happens.
- Turn on Block clock-in outside geofence — company-wide under
Payroll > Settings > General, or for one site underSite detail > Settings > Clock In/Out(a site can also turn it off while the company has it on).
With the block on, a guard whose position is outside the fence plus grace sees You must be within 20 m of the {site} geofence to clock in. Your current location is {N} m outside it.; a guard with location turned off sees Location is required to clock in at {site}.; a guard whose phone reports a fix worse than 250 m sees Your phone's location is too imprecise to clock in at {site}… (a blurry fix whose centre happens to land on the property proves nothing). No time entry is written until they clock in from on site, so the shift shows as No Clock In on Attendance Monitoring meanwhile. Clock-outs are never refused — a guard who has already left can always close their entry, which is then flagged. Manual entries added by a supervisor under Payroll > Time Entries are not subject to the block.
Every refused attempt is kept. Site detail > Activity > Verifications has a Refused Clock-Ins list for the last 7 days showing when, who, the reason (Outside geofence, No GPS fix, GPS too imprecise, Too early) and the detail — how many metres outside the fence, the reported accuracy, or how early. A guard who keeps trying from across town shows up here even though no time entry exists.
The block relies on the position the phone reports. It stops the honest-but-elsewhere punch and the "forgot I was still at home" punch; it is not proof against a device deliberately faking its location.
5.4 Employees
Where: Organization > Employees · Plan: Free tier allows 5 employees; unlimited on paid plans · Roles: Admin, Branch Manager
Everyone who works for the company — guards, branch managers and admins — is an employee record.
Adding one employee
- Click Add Employee.
- Enter name, email, phone and employment details.
- Choose the role: Guard, Branch Manager or Admin. Guards get mobile-app access; managers and admins get portal access.
- Assign a branch and one or more sites.
- Save. A random temporary password (shaped like
Abcd-234-Efgh!) is generated and shown to you once; the employee only receives their welcome email with it when you send it (see below). Guards normally sign in to the app with a phone code instead, so the password only matters for email sign-in.
If the email or phone already signs in to InstaNotified, the new record is linked to that existing login instead of creating a second one: an email match first, then the phone the person signs in with. They then see your company on Select Company with their usual sign-in, and no temporary password is created. Your company never changes the password, sign-in email or sign-in phone of a login that also works for another company; the person keeps signing in the way they already do and can add a phone number from the app's profile.
Employee list tools
- Filters for Status, Role, Branch, Site and certifications, plus free-text search.
- On the Complete plan, admins and branch managers see a sortable Score column: each employee's overall scorecard score from 0 to 100, coloured Excellent (85+), Good (70+), Fair (50+) or Needs attention. A dash means Not enough data yet. Click a score for a quick preview (radar chart, overall and each dimension) with Open full scorecard. The Score filter narrows the list to one band (Excellent, Good, Fair, Needs attention or Not enough data). See section 17.1.
- List and Bulk Operations tabs.
- Select employees and use the bulk bar: Send Emails (welcome email with temporary password), Assign Sites (opens the Bulk Assign Sites dialog), Export CSV, Delete.
- Bulk Operations imports employees from a CSV. Map your columns with the field mapper, review the preview and confirm. A row with no SMS Opt-In value is imported as not opted in; only an explicit
true,yesor1opts the employee in.
SMS consent is optional. The SMS Consent switch on the add-employee forms is off by default, and an employee is added whether or not it is on. Turn it on only when the employee agrees to receive work texts. Employees can also opt in themselves in the employee app, or by replying START, and opt out with STOP. Without SMS consent they still receive push notifications and email. Sign-in codes for the employee app are sent by the sign-in service, not as a work notification, so they arrive either way.
Editing an employee
Open the employee and click edit. The Edit Employee dialog has three tabs:
- Basic Info — Full Name, Phone, Email, Status (Active / Inactive) and SMS Opt-In.
- Personal — Home Address, Seniority / Hire Date, Primary Language, Date of Birth, Special Accommodations and SSN (Admin Only) (hidden; Reveal is audited).
- Assignments — Roles (Guard, Branch Manager, Admin) and Assigned Sites.
Save Changes to apply. Terminate opens the Terminate Employee dialog: choose the Termination Type — Voluntary (Resignation), Involuntary (Termination), Layoff, Retirement or Other — give a Reason and Additional Notes, then Confirm Termination. Terminated employees lose app access immediately and show as Employment terminated on the app's company picker; their records stay for payroll and compliance and they can be reactivated later. Only the company owner can edit another admin's contact details, status or role.
Saving a guard's Email or Phone checks whether another login already signs in with it. If one does, the record moves to that login, together with its role in your company, and the previous person's devices stop receiving the record's notifications; a record with no login yet is linked to it. The person then finds your company on Select Company under the account they already use. The move is refused, with This email or phone number can't be used for this record, when that login already belongs to your company, when the record is your own, when the employee is an admin or branch manager, or when a branch manager edits someone outside their branches.
For someone who also works for another company, changing their Email or Phone here updates your company's record only, not where they sign in; they change their sign-in email or phone themselves from the app's profile.
Employee detail sections
| Section | What you can do |
|---|---|
| Overview | Contact details, role, sites, current status. |
| Schedule > Shifts | Their shifts; add one directly. |
| Schedule > Call Outs & Tardies | Their call-out and lateness history. |
| Schedule > Availability | Weekly availability and restrictions they set in the app; managers can edit. |
| Scorecard | Their radar chart, overall score, trend and breakdown (Complete plan; section 17.1). |
| Certifications | Licences and certifications with expiry dates and documents. Add picks a Certification Type (from Settings > Certification Types), Issue Date / Expiry Date, Certificate Number and Issuing Authority; edit and delete from the row's icons. |
| Patrols & Verifications | Their patrol and location-verification history. |
| Incidents | Incidents they reported. |
| Payroll > Payroll Summary | Hours and gross pay by period (Complete plan). |
| Payroll > Allowances | PTO & Allowances — leave balances and their accrual method (section 10.4). Balances only; not part of gross pay (Complete plan). |
| Documents | Uploaded HR documents. Confidential types (disciplinary reports, medical notes, termination letters, background checks, drug tests) are for admins only; branch managers upload and edit the others, and only admins delete. |
| Communication > Emergency Contacts | The employee's own emergency contacts. |
| Communication > Messages | SMS conversation history with this employee. |
| Communication > Infractions | Time-and-attendance infractions and disciplinary steps recorded against them. |
Managers can also reset an employee's password from the employee page: the Reset password dialog generates a new temporary password, optionally Also email the temporary password, and shows it once as Temporary password for {name}. If the employee also signs in for another company, their password isn't changed from here: the dialog shows Reset link for {name} and a link to choose a new password goes to their sign-in email. Someone like that with no sign-in email signs in with a code sent to their phone.
5.5 On-Call Contacts
Where: Organization > On-Call Contacts · Plan: Core or Complete · Feature: On-Call enabled
On-call contacts are the supervisors who are paged when something urgent happens in the field — a guard calls out, a relief is late, an urgent guard request arrives, an incident is filed. Being an on-call contact also unlocks the On-Call tab in the mobile app (see the Employee App Guide, chapter 12), where they approve call-outs and arrange coverage. The page has two tabs, Contacts and Notifications.
Adding a contact
- Click Add Contact.
- Employee (required): search the master list and pick the person. They must already exist as an employee (any role — most companies use branch managers and senior guards).
- Role/Title: free text such as Dispatcher or Operations Manager, shown to guards and in alerts.
- Active: on by default. Switch off to pause a contact without deleting them.
- Availability Schedule — when this contact may be paged:
- Quick Presets: 24/7 (every day, 00:00–23:59) or Business Hours (Monday–Friday, 09:00–17:00).
- Available Days: tick Sun to Sat. A contact with no days ticked is never paged (the dialog warns Contact will never receive notifications).
- Start Time / End Time: the daily window. An end earlier than the start is an overnight window (the dialog notes This schedule spans midnight).
- Timezone: the zone the window is evaluated in (Eastern, Central, Mountain, Arizona, Pacific, Alaska, Hawaii or UTC).
- Click Create (Update when editing).
Assigning sites and preferences — a contact is only paged for the sites they cover. Click Assign on the contact's row to open Bulk Assignment:
- Assignment Type: Individual Sites (tick sites; Select All / Deselect All) or Entire Branch (Select Branch, plus Auto-assign to New Sites, on by default, so sites added to the branch later are covered automatically).
- Notification Preferences decide which optional alert types reach this contact:
| Preference | Default | Pages the contact when |
|---|---|---|
| Incident Reports | On | A guard files an incident at an assigned site |
| Guard Requests | On | An urgent guard request is created, or a request escalates past an SLA tier |
| Timeout Notifications | On | A guard does not complete a location verification within the site's Verification Timeout |
| Incomplete Patrol Notifications | Off | A patrol is completed with missed checkpoints |
| Geofence Violation Notifications | Off | A verification is submitted from outside the site geofence |
Call-outs, lateness / relief-delay reports and patrol issues flagged by a guard always page every assigned contact; there is no switch for them. Click Save Assignments to finish.
The contact list shows Name, Phone, Email, Role, Availability (Available now or Off-duty right now), Status (Active / Inactive) and Actions (Assign, Edit, Delete). Filter by Status, Availability (Any time / Available now / Off-duty now), Days covered, Role and Timezone to check that every hour of the week has someone available.
How paging works
- An event occurs at a site. InstaNotified collects the contacts assigned to that site directly and those assigned to the site's branch (an urgent guard request with no site pages every branch).
- Contacts whose preferences exclude this event type are dropped; then only contacts who are Active and inside their availability window (day and time, in their own timezone) remain. Duplicates by phone number are removed.
- Everyone remaining is paged at the same time — there is no rotation, order or escalation ladder between contacts. (Guard requests have their own SLA escalation tiers under Dispatch settings, which can page the same contacts again.)
- Each contact receives an SMS from your company number and a push notification titled On-Call Alert in the app. Companies without a phone number get push only.
- The page is logged under Notifications with its delivery status.
Attendance no-shows on the Attendance Monitoring board do not page on-call contacts; managers handle those from the portal.
What triggers a page
| Trigger | Where it comes from | Message the contact receives |
|---|---|---|
| Call-out submitted | Guard taps REQUEST CALL OFF in the app, or a manager files one | 🚨 CALL-OUT ALERT - Coverage Needed! with site, date, time, guard and reason, then REPLY TO RESPOND: ACK · DENY · DETAILS |
| Lateness / relief delay | Guard taps NOTIFY OF RELIEF DELAY | ⏰ LATENESS REPORT with site, reporter and Issue: "…", Please investigate and send coverage. |
| Urgent guard request | Request saved with Urgent — pages the on-call roster | 🚨 URGENT GUARD REQUEST with the summary, Reply ACK to acknowledge and a portal link |
| Guard request escalated | A request passes an SLA tier with on-call paging enabled in Dispatch settings | ⚠️ GUARD REQUEST ESCALATED (tier N) with the same body |
| Incident report | Guard submits REPORT INCIDENT | INCIDENT REPORTED - {SEVERITY} with site, reporter, title and description, Please review in the dashboard. |
| Patrol issue | Guard flags an issue on a checkpoint scan and chooses to notify on-call | 🚨 PATROL ISSUE REPORTED with guard, location and Issue: "…" |
| Incomplete patrol | Patrol completed with missed checkpoints | ⚠️ INCOMPLETE PATROL with site, route, guard, scanned and missed counts |
| Verification timeout | Automatic verification not answered in time | ALERT: Location verification not completed at {site}… |
| Geofence violation | Verification submitted outside the geofence plus the site's GPS tolerance grace | ALERT: Geofence violation at {site}… verified location {N}m outside the geofence (allowed {tolerance}m). |
Replying by text. For call-outs and lateness reports the contact can answer the SMS directly:
| Reply | Effect |
|---|---|
| ACK (also YES, OK, ACCEPT) | Records that this contact can cover or is handling it. The call-out stays pending until someone approves it in the app or portal. On the Complete plan the reply also starts an AI coverage analysis whose suggestions appear in the app's AI Recommendations. |
| DENY (also NO, REJECT, DECLINE) | Marks the call-out denied with the note Denied via SMS by {name}. |
| DETAILS (also ?, MORE, WHEN, WHERE) | Replies with the site, address, date, time, guard and reason, and repeats the ACK / DENY instructions. Any unrecognised reply is treated the same way. |
An ACK to an urgent guard request page ticks the request's acknowledge checklist item and moves it to In progress. STOP / START manage the contact's SMS opt-in like any other recipient (section 8.2).
Notifications tab
- Stat cards: Total Notifications, Call-Outs, Other Issues and Delivery Rate.
- The Notification History table lists Sent At, Type (badges Call-Out, Timeout, Geofence, Patrol Issue, Incident, Incomplete Patrol, Other), Triggered By, Related Tool, Notified (the contact), Site, Message, Status (Sent, Delivered, Failed; the filter also offers Pending) and Actions.
- Details opens the full record — Status, Sent At, Notified Contact (name, phone, email), Site, Event Details, Related Tool, Message Sent and the carrier Message SID for support enquiries.
- Export CSV downloads the filtered history, useful for proving response times to a client.