FAQs

We are not a security firm.  We do not “sell” your officer’s services to local businesses.  We are a managed service provider. We administer your program under your direction and using your rules.  We are not a security company who works for their corporate clients supplying your officers. We work solely for you.

We just administer the program – we do all the work and limit the risk.  You still manage the program – you set the rates, the rules and so on. We work for you and take direction from you.

We charge the customers hiring your officers an administrative fee which is a percentage of the extra duty costs.

We set up a local number wherever you are located along with a dedicated email address.  Any inquiry, be it from a customer or an officer, is directed through that number or email.  Your account team handles those incoming inquiries. We do not use a “call center” approach in which such inquiries can be handled by any account coordinator and we never outsource calls to a call handling service.  Night and weekend calls are handled by our night and weekend account coordinators. All of these coordinators are our W2 employees working in our offices. Moreover, your recurring customers can be set-up with a logon into a customer portal.  There they can see what details they’ve previously scheduled, upcoming details, associated dollar amounts, which officers are working or have worked which details (if you permit them to see such information). They can even request service within the portal.

Every officer receives a logon to the officer portal.  Officers can access that portal via anything that connects to the internet.  They can also download an app for iphones and android phones (we have both the web-based logon and the app in case some officers do not have app-friendly phones and/or prefer to use a computer, ipad, etc. over a phone).  Details are communicated to officers via email and/or text, individual officers’ choice, and can be communicated in real-time, or in a batch mode (e.g., once a day a communication is sent with new detail information). If your assignment process entails assigning details with no choice to the officer, no “available detail” communications will be sent.  Likewise, if you prefer, officers can simply check their portals to view available details and we don’t need to communicate new details – the choice is yours.

The detail award process is largely up to you.  No two of our departments have the exact same scheduling process.  We are also happy to share with you the scheduling processes we see around the country if you are considering migrating to a different process.

An officer can cancel in the portal or call the account team.  If you have rules regarding officer cancelation, we employ them (e.g., officer who cancels with valid reason within 7 days of a security detail receives disciplinary action, etc.).  Customers call the account team to cancel. If your agency has cancelation notification timing requirements, we enforce those.

About half of our client departments routinely work 85%+ road job details.  We are very used to the complications which come from handling road jobs: calls today for tomorrow and last minute emergency traffic control calls, details ending early or going long, officers not being able to stay at a site going into overtime and needed ASAP relief, last-minute or mid-day location changes, split jobs, middle of the night ASAP jobs, etc.  We routinely handle these situations.

Yes, we handle the flow of vouchers in a hassle-free way to your officers and administration.

That’s fine.  We work with a number of agencies who fail-over to callbacks for extra duty details which are deemed public safety concerns, or for BOE details, etc.  We can ensure the differing pay is properly accounted for.

We do what you want us to do.  There are a variety of ways different agencies deal with unfilled details and we employ whichever method each department wants us to.  We are happy to discuss with you the options.

We pay the officers in the same cadence as their on-duty pay which is usually either 24, 26 or 52 paychecks per year.  Different states have different rules governing what is and is not acceptable for third party officer payments – we pay in a manner consistent with your state requirements.

We have never been even one day late on a payroll at any of our departments.

The same way we pay the officers.  Once per payroll period we pay the municipality for all such fees.

Nothing.  No cost to your municipality or department at any time.  That includes set-up, training, on-boarding – you’ll never get an invoice from us.

Yes.  We handle all invoicing and collections from the customers and we offer multiple payment options.

We have a standard agreement or we can use one you have.  Our standard agreement is month-to-month – no long-term commitments.

That’s fine.  You fire us. Our standard contract is month-to-month for that reason.  If we under deliver – you should fire us.

Yes and we can afford the coordinators as much or little decision-making authority as you want.

Throughout time the most influential forces proved to be even stronger when working together. Since our inception, Jivasoft has been our preferred scheduling software provider not only because of their great products but also their everlasting commitment towards delivering personalized service like no other in the public safety sector.

In 2019, both EDS and Jivasoft leadership agreed to officially merge to become the industry’s preferred one-stop shop for best of breed scheduling solutions and services.

No. We use plenty, and a wide variety of software to do what we do – but we are a managed service provider acting as your agent and partner.  Administering a full extra duty program is not possible just with software. There are always customer questions, lost invoices, missing vouchers, no-shows at job-sites, emergency jobs, and a whole host of other one-off situations which require humans and human thinking.  Contractors and utility firms we interact with have the ability to enter detail requests into their customer portals – but they usually just call us from cell phones in pick-ups during their work day. Forcing them to interact with software for everything results in horrible customer service and annoyed customers.

If you’re interested in purchasing public safety scheduling software, we’d be happy to provide you with best-in-class solutions for your on and off duty needs through our subsidiary, Jivasoft.

No, we’re not a software supplier and, if we were, we wouldn’t do something like that.

You can, and should, call as many of our customers as you want.  We’ll provide you the whole list.

We take risk and infrastructure security very seriously.  We undertook a SOC I audit in early 2018 and again in 2020 which we passed with high marks.  We are happy to share the auditing firm’s 54 page final report with you.

We started in 2015 to help corporations attain extra duty officers to help with their security needs.  In interacting with law enforcement agencies, we quickly realized these programs were causing administrative burden and risk to the agencies and their municipalities.  In 2016 we started working with law enforcement agencies to administer their programs. In 2017 we exited the corporate market to avoid the conflict of interest which exists if one firm is representing and acting as an agent of both the agency and the customer.

Typically none.  In fact, in some cases we’ve seen a slight increase in total extra duty hours due to the fact that our account managers follow-up with customers, asking how details worked out for new customers and providing recurring customers with portals so they can track their details online anytime.  We do sometimes see pullback with small customers such as restaurant/pubs used to paying for service with food, etc. Even with that, we’ve never seen total hours decrease.

On the financial side, we pay your officers and any associated fees (city admin fees, cruiser fees, etc.) at the end of each payroll period.  If we’ve invoiced the customer and they go bankrupt the following week, or take 5 months to pay us – that’s our problem. We assume full responsibility for all market and credit risk and thus eliminate the financial risk for you.  We carry general and professional liability insurance which protects your officers while working extra duty. Our insurance contains no-fault medical, covers armed individuals, K9s, bodiy amd ?personal injury, property damage, assault & battery coverage, lot key, privacy/ data breach, employee theft, etc.  Our insurance also has a blanket waiver of subrogation. We can also cover your officers under workers compensation insurance if need be.