Employees can sometimes become lax about making sure that the buildings are properly shut down and secured at closing time. This puts resources and lives, potentially, at unnecessary risk.

Business owners can rest a little bit easier with the addition of a closing checklist placed in a prominent area, which the staff can mark off each night. Some sample items for a typical security list could be the following:

____ Are all outside doors and windows locked?

____ Have the exterior lighting and entryway lighting been turned on?

____ Has the alarm system been checked and activated?

____ Are the cash registers open and emptied completely?

____ Is the safe lit and locked?

____ Is the back entrance clear of boxes, bins, and debris that might give an intruder a place to hide or a means of climbing onto the roof?

____ Are all the gates closed and padlocked properly?

____ Have the keys been collected and locked away in a secure location?

____ Is the video surveillance system activated?

It’s best to customize your list to suit your security needs as precisely as possible and train your closing staff to consult and mark off the list each night when they leave, signing out with their initials. Once it becomes part of the routine, there will be much less chance of a potentially catastrophic mistake.