Yes. Documentation is an important part of professional security work, but different records serve different purposes. Firstly, your employer needs accurate records of the work you perform. Security companies invoice clients for the services and hours their officers provide, so patrol logs, occurrence records, timesheets, access-control records and other documentation are important business records. Incident reports serve another important purpose. They create a factual record of significant events such as property damage, injury to a person, disturbances, use of force, emergency responses or other incidents that may later result in an insurance claim, police investigation or civil litigation.

A report written immediately after an incident may become extremely important months or even years later when memories have faded. Crowd control at public places has additional legal record-keeping requirements. Under the Security Providers Act 1993 and Security Providers Regulation 2008, prescribed incidents involving crowd controllers must be recorded in the crowd controller register maintained for the public place. These include incidents where a person is injured or where a crowd controller removes a person from the public place. Security reports should therefore be factual, accurate and objective – not opinions, exaggerations or assumptions.

BARS Training Australia teaches practical security documentation throughout the CPP20218 Certificate II in Security Operations because writing a good report is not simply paperwork. It protects the client, your employer and, importantly, you. A professional security officer should always work on the principle: if something significant happened, document what you saw, what you did and why you did it.