Security systems

The Security Systems pack tunes Manuall for burglar alarm, CCTV, access control and low-voltage smart-home work, including the monitoring account that follows the install. It is deliberately separate from the Electrical pack: a different license, a different vendor set, and recurring monitoring revenue Electrical does not carry. Apply it at signup or from Settings -> Vertical Packs.

What the pack adds

Custom fields

• Customer (5): System Type (Burglar Alarm, CCTV, Access Control, Intercom, Smart Home, None), Panel / Hub (Honeywell / Resideo, DSC, Qolsys, 2GIG, Ring, SimpliSafe, Elk, DMP, Other, Unknown), Monitoring (Professional, Self, None, Unknown), Central Station / Account #, Number of Zones / Sensors.
• Job (1): Signal / Communication (Cellular, WiFi, Hardwired, IP, POTS, Unknown). It is what decides whether a no-signal call is a radio, a router or a dead phone line.
• Equipment (1): Equipment Type (Panel, Keypad, Sensor, Camera, NVR / DVR, Doorbell, Lock, Intercom, Siren, Other).
• No Lead and no Invoice fields ship, and none of the seven are required. Add your own at Custom Fields.
• Decide one thing early: the panel, the monitoring flag and the central-station account number are all customer-level. That fits one house. A commercial account with three buildings gets one panel field and one account number covering all three, so keep the per-site detail on the Equipment record instead.

Job templates

Fourteen, each with a duration for the slot finder. Installs: Burglar Alarm Install 240 min, CCTV Install (4-Camera) 240, Access Control Install 180. Service: Service Call / No Alarm 60, Sensor / Zone Add 45, Camera Add 60, Annual System Inspection 60, System Takeover / Migration 120, Video Doorbell / Smart Lock Install 60, Monitoring Setup and Account Onboarding 45, Camera System Service Call 90. Then Panel Replacement / Communicator Upgrade 180 at High priority, After-Hours Emergency Service 90 at Emergency, and Site Survey and Security Assessment 60 at Low.

Required skills are pre-filled: Security on all fourteen, plus Install on the two big installs, Access on Access Control Install, Troubleshoot on the four diagnostic templates, Inspection on Annual System Inspection and Site Survey, SmartHome on the doorbell and lock template, and Monitoring on account onboarding. If nobody carries those tags at Team and Availability, the finder gates every tech off the job.

All fourteen pre-fill billable lines and all fourteen carry install notes. Watch three of them. Access Control System, per Door pre-fills quantity 1, so a three-door job needs the quantity bumped. Video Doorbell / Smart Lock Install pre-fills only the doorbell line, so swap it on a lock job. Panel Replacement / Communicator Upgrade pre-fills the panel, the radio and the haul-away all at once, and its own notes tell the tech to delete whichever did not happen. Four of the fourteen link a checklist; the other ten do not.

Services

Twenty-five price book lines, each with Default, Member and Commercial tiers and a cost, all badged "Set your price" until you save them. Install and project work: Alarm System Installation (panel, keypad, up to 8 sensors), Security Camera Installation (per camera), Video Recorder Installation and Setup, Access Control System, per Door, Network Cable Run (Cat6), per Outlet, Monitoring Activation, TV Mounting and Cable Concealment, and the two recurring lines, Alarm Monitoring Plan (per month) and Security System Care Plan (per year).

Service, repair and smart-home work: Service Call, After-Hours or Weekend Service Call, Hourly Rate (Security Systems), Add Door, Window or Motion Sensor, Add Camera to Existing System, Annual Security System Inspection, Take Over Existing Alarm System, Wireless Signal Troubleshooting, Alarm Panel Replacement, Alarm Panel Backup Battery Replacement, Keypad Replacement, Cellular Communicator Upgrade, Monitored Smoke or CO Detector Installation, Old Security Equipment Removal and Haul-Away, Video Doorbell Installation, and Smart Lock Installation (Security Systems).

They land under two price book categories, Security for the first fifteen and Security Systems for the ten added later. Merge them before your techs go looking, or the book reads as two trades. Twelve lines are flagged for public booking and the public site: both service calls, the sensor and camera adds, the annual inspection, the doorbell, the smart lock, TV mounting, wireless troubleshooting, the battery swap, the monitoring plan and the care plan. Installs and takeovers are left off, which is right, since neither prices without a survey.

Check the install costs before you quote off them. Alarm System Installation is $750 with a $360 cost, but the truck stock the pack wires to it runs about $595 at the pack's own part costs, leaving $155 for four hours of labor. Access Control System, per Door is the same shape, roughly $458 in material against $650. Raise the price or thin the bill of materials, but do not leave both as shipped.

Checklists

Three, shipped for you to check against your own procedure at Checklists. Fifty-one items between them, and most capture a number or a photo rather than a tick.

• Security: Burglar Alarm Install, 17 items. Zone count, signal type, transformer output in VAC, backup battery under load, entry and exit delay in seconds, cellular signal at the panel in dBm, siren output at 10 ft, the central-station account number, and photos of the panel interior and every protected opening. Four are required, one of them installer code changed from factory default.
• Security: Annual System Inspection, 18 items, filed under the Compliance category. Panel standby battery under load and its age, AC at the transformer, zones tested and zones failed, siren output, communication path, central-station test signals received, batteries replaced this visit, and the alarm permit number and expiry. Five are required. It asks for signal strength twice, once as free text and once in dBm, and battery voltage twice; delete one of each pair before your techs fill in both.
• Security: CCTV Install, 16 items. Cameras installed, retention in days, longest cable run, runs tested, recording mode, drive capacity in TB, NTP sync, night IR checked on every camera, and photos of the live multi-channel view and each camera at final aim. Three are required, one of them default recorder and camera passwords changed.

Parts

Twenty truck items across ten categories: Cameras, Recording, Wire and Cable, Panels and Keypads, Power, Communications, Sensors, Life Safety, Alarm Devices and Access Control. Cost and price are a national average, stock is zero, and no reorder point is set, because nothing here knows what is on your truck. Count it once and set your own numbers at Parts and Inventory.

The bill of materials wires 33 rows to 14 services. Alarm System Installation carries six (wireless panel, touchscreen keypad, six door contacts, two pet-immune PIRs, a 12V 7Ah battery and an outdoor siren). Access Control System, per Door carries five, including ten fobs and 150 ft of 22/4. Both camera lines carry a dome camera plus 100 ft of Cat6 and three plugs. Those cable and fob counts are a guess at a typical job, not a measurement. One part is wired to nothing, the motorized varifocal bullet camera, so a job that uses it needs the line added by hand.

Seasonal pricing proposals

Three rules, all shipped switched off. The engine ignores an inactive rule, so nothing moves until you open one and turn it on at Seasonal Pricing.

• Summer Break-In Season, Jun 1 to Aug 31, 1.15x on Security Camera Installation. Note it is on the per-camera install line only, not on Add Camera to Existing System.
• Holiday Porch Season, Nov 15 to Jan 10, 1.15x on Video Doorbell Installation.
• Winter Slow Season, Feb 1 to Mar 31, 0.90x on Alarm System Installation. A discount rather than a bump, aimed at keeping the install crew booked through the dead months.

Typical workflow

• Survey first. The Site Survey and Security Assessment template counts openings and checks signal, and its notes send the tech to check cell at the proposed panel location rather than at the front door. The count it produces is what the estimate prices, and a deposit is normal on a full system.
• Install day runs off the template's checklist. The central-station account number and the comm-test result belong on the ticket, not in somebody's phone.
• Monitoring is the recurring money. Hold the term in a service contract, bill the monthly plan on a recurring invoice, and put the annual inspection on a recurring job.
• Service Call applies to the repair when approved and stands alone when declined, so it has to come back off the invoice as a line rather than get quietly forgotten. After-hours has its own Emergency-priority template and its own higher line.
• Most cities require a municipal alarm permit and fine the account for dispatches without one. Carry it on the job under Permits and mark the fee billed to the customer or absorbed, so the margin is honest either way.
• Your alarm or low-voltage license and each tech's certifications go in Compliance, which surfaces 30-day expiry warnings on the dashboard.

Monthly monitoring and per-unit pricing

Monitoring is two lines, not one, and the pack keeps them apart on purpose. Monitoring Activation is the one-time enrollment: register the account, program the comm path, run the test. Alarm Monitoring Plan is the monthly charge, $44.99 against a $12 cost, and that spread is what the shop is worth in five years. The Monitoring Setup and Account Onboarding template pre-fills both, so a new account starts them together.

Bill the plan on a recurring invoice, not a recurring job. A recurring job puts a visit on somebody's calendar and nobody drives out to collect monitoring. If you resell a wholesale central station, that $12 cost line is where your wholesale rate goes; keep it current or the plan's margin is fiction. The Security System Care Plan is the other half, $199 a year covering the annual inspection and batteries, and it is the line that gets a customer to answer the phone when the panel goes obsolete.

Per-unit pricing is where a quote goes wrong. Security Camera Installation is priced per camera and the CCTV template pre-fills four of them, so a six-camera job is a quantity change, not a new line. Access Control System, per Door works the same way. Both are honest ways to price this trade, but only if the quantity is set on site rather than left at the template default. Two camera lines also overlap: Security Camera Installation at $175 per camera and Add Camera to Existing System at $165 per unit, same bill of materials behind both. Pick the one a retrofit uses and delete the other.

Re-applying and mixing packs

Applying a pack twice adds only what is missing, so re-apply after an update without losing an edit. Electrical is the usual second pack for a shop carrying both licenses that wants the line-voltage side of a camera or gate job. Locksmith covers the door hardware behind access control, strikes and maglocks and rekeys included. Handyman suits a shop already selling the TV mounting line that ships here. Apply any of them from Settings -> Vertical Packs.