Normally when one employs a guard it is assumed that the guards will stay awake and do their duties. Unfortunately, most of the guards are not paid well and they usually do two shifts in a day, there by making them sleepy on the job. To ensure that the guards are doing their jobs, Guard Tour Monitor is very effective device. Basically, a tour monitoring device ensures that the guard is going around his beat in a pre-determined time interval. If he is sleeping on the job or is lax then he shall not be able to cover his beat as desired. The Guard tour systems are designed to catch such situations.

There are different kinds of tour monitor based on different kinds of principles. The electronic guard monitoring system requires that the guard repeatedly presses a switch after a certain time interval. The time interval, in multiple of fifteen minutes or so, can be set up in the system. At the end of predefined interval the system gives a beep and this beep goes on for a minute or so unless the guard presses a switch on the system. Every time the switch is pressed, the guard is marked present at that time. The time clock is built in the system and time cannot be altered by the guard. When the guard is not able to press the switch, he is marked absent. Such systems have a provision to display date & time when the guard was present and when he was absent. Normally such systems can be interfaced with normal printers for taking reports or even be interfaced with computers or a LAN (Local Area Network).