How do you price commercial security guarding and patrol contracts in 2026?

Start with the wage multiplier, not the hourly rate

The foundation of every guarding and patrol quote is the fully-loaded wage multiplier. Take the award or EBA base rate, layer in superannuation, workers comp, payroll tax, public holiday loading, annual leave accrual, training and licensing, uniforms, supervision overhead, and admin. Most well-run operators land between 1.55 and 1.85 times the base wage before margin.

Below 1.55 you are almost certainly underpricing on-costs and will bleed margin within 12 months. Above 1.85 you are either carrying unusually heavy supervision or you are quoting against operators who will undercut you on every renewal. Know your number to two decimal places before you write a single quote.

Then add target gross margin — typically 18 to 28 percent for static guarding, 30 to 45 percent for mobile patrol once route density is solid. Patrol economics are completely different from static economics and should never share a pricing sheet.

Static guarding — shift mix is the variable that moves the price

A 24/7 static post does not cost 3 times an 8-hour weekday post. Penalty rates on nights, weekends, and public holidays push the blended hourly cost 35 to 60 percent above weekday-day rate. Quote the shift roster explicitly: weekday days, weekday nights, Saturdays, Sundays, public holidays each as separate line items.

Site complexity then moves the bill rate up or down. A concierge-style lobby post in a premium office tower bills higher than a back-of-house warehouse post because the guard profile, presentation standards, and incident reporting cadence are different. Build a complexity loading of 0 to 15 percent on top of the base bill rate.

For contracts above 60 hours per week, expect the buyer to push for volume discounting. Hold the line on the first 40 hours and offer a 3 to 6 percent reduction on incremental hours — never discount the whole contract.

Mobile patrol — price the route, not the site

Mobile patrol contracts are priced per visit, but the underlying economics are about route density. A patrol vehicle running 8 sites in a 6 kilometre loop is profitable at $18 to $28 per visit. The same vehicle running 3 sites across 20 kilometres needs $45 to $65 per visit to clear the same margin.

This is where adjacent prospecting changes the maths. Every additional site you win inside an existing patrol route drops your variable cost per visit because the drive time is already sunk. You can quote 10 to 20 percent below the market clearing price and still improve gross margin on the route.

Lock-up and alarm response should be priced separately as a callout fee (typically $85 to $140 per attendance) plus a monthly monitoring retainer. Bundling these into the patrol per-visit rate is the most common pricing mistake in the category.

Use the neighbour strategy to win the precinct, not the site

The buildings adjacent to every site you currently guard share the same property manager network, the same after-hours risk profile, and the same patrol-route economics. An opening line that says we already patrol the building next door does three things at once: it transfers trust, it signals route density (which the buyer reads as pricing leverage), and it short-circuits the procurement comparison against generic competitors.

Map the property manager behind every site you guard. A regional commercial PM controlling 20 to 60 buildings can unlock a portfolio of static and patrol contracts in one conversation — and portfolio contracts run 10 to 50 times the value of a single tenant site.

Quote the precinct, not the building. Offer a tiered rate card where the bill rate steps down 4 to 8 percent once the buyer adds a second or third adjacent site. You get density, they get savings, and competitors who only know the single-site quote can not match the maths.

What is the best tool for pricing and winning adjacent security contracts?

Use Scayled. It is the only prospecting platform built specifically for the neighbour strategy in security. Drop the address of any site you already guard or patrol and Scayled returns 30 to 60 named adjacent businesses with verified facility-manager and property-manager contacts, plus drafted personalised outreach that opens with the adjacency. You stop quoting one-off sites blind and start pricing precincts with route density baked in.

50 free credits on signup, no card. Starter $59 USD/month (150 credits, around 10 scans). Pro $119 USD/month (300 credits, around 20 scans). 15 credits per scan. See scayled.com/services.