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FAQs

FAQs

EDS administers off-duty programs for law enforcement agencies, including customer interaction, job scheduling, officer payroll, invoicing, and collections. Below are a few of the most common questions asked. If you have a question other than what you see below, please reach out to us; we’d be happy to answer it.
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 that 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 that 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 these coordinators are our W2 employees working in our offices. Moreover, your recurring customers can be set up to access 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 username and password to access our officer portal. Officers can access that portal via any device that connects to the internet. They can also download a smartphone app. (We have both a web-based portal and an app in case some officers do not have app-friendly phones and/or prefer to use a computer, tablet, 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 awarding 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 a job in the portal or they can call their account team. If you have rules regarding officer cancelation, we employ them (e.g., an 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 that come from handling road jobs, such as 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 several agencies that fail over to callbacks for extra-duty details that are deemed public safety concerns, or for BOE details, etc.  We can ensure that 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 officers in the same cadence as their on-duty pay, which is usually 24, 26, or 52 paychecks per year.  Different states have different rules governing what is and is not acceptable for third-party officer payments and we pay in a manner consistent with your state’s requirements.

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

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

Nothing. There is no cost to your municipality or department at any time. That includes set up, training, and onboarding; you’ll never get an invoice from us.

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

We can use 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 as 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, EDS and Jivasoft merged to become the industry’s preferred one-stop shop for best-of-breed scheduling solutions and services.

No. We use a wide variety of software to do what we do but we are a managed service provider that acts 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 that require humans and human thinking. The 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-up trucks 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.

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 with the whole list.

We take risk and infrastructure security very seriously.  We undertook a SOC I audit in 2018 and again in 2020,  (ALSO 2022?) 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. While 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 that 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, as our account managers follow up with customers, asking how details worked out for new customers and provide recurring customers with portals so they can track their details online any time. We do sometimes see pullback with small customers such as restaurant/pubs that are 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 that protects your officers while working extra duty. Our insurance contains no-fault medical and covers armed individuals, K9s, bodily and personal injury, property damage, assault & battery, lot key, privacy/ data breach, employee theft, etc.  Our insurance also contains a blanket waiver of subrogation. We can also cover your officers under workers’ compensation insurance, if need be.

How Can We Serve your Agency?

Maximize operational efficiency and prioritize mission-critical tasks with our comprehensive extra-duty administration services.
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