Case study: a security and manpower company with 600 guards and Gulf recruitment

This case study follows one month in the life of an Indian manpower company. It runs 600 people, most of them security guards, at 50 client sites in Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. It also recruits for employers in the Gulf. The whole business runs in OSERP: people, papers, duties, payroll, statutory files, client bills, the CRM, the careers page and the recruitment pipeline. Every screenshot was taken from a working OSERP system. Nothing is a mock-up.

Use it two ways:

• As a model for your own manpower or security business. It shows what to set up, which screen does what, and what the law asks of you at your size.
• As a monthly checklist. Chapter 5 and chapter 6 are the month-end routine: duties, payroll, PF and ESI files, client bills and collections.

The two companies

Vigilon Security & Manpower Services	Edappally, Kochi, Kerala. A proprietorship owned by Anitha Raj, GST-registered in Kerala, registered with PF and ESI, licensed under PSARA as a private security agency and under the Emigration Act as a Recruiting Agent. 600 people, 50 client contracts, four Gulf openings.
Sentry Guard Services	Thrissur, Kerala. A one-man proprietorship that is not GST-registered: 8 guards and 2 clients. It shows what applies to a business that small, and what does not yet.

Both companies, their people, clients and Gulf employers are fictional. Minimum wage figures in the screenshots are illustrative, and the screen says so on every row.

Why this business is hard

A manpower company has thin margins and heavy rules:

• Labour law at every size. PF from 20 people, ESI from 10, bonus, gratuity, maternity, a POSH committee, standing orders, professional tax and labour welfare fund in every state you employ in, and a contractor's licence for each client site.
• Private security law. Every guard deployed needs police verification, training and a photo identity card under PSARA.
• Thin, fixed margins. A client pays a monthly rate per post; the guard is paid at least the state minimum wage. Every uncovered duty is money lost twice: billed less, and still owed to the guard who did turn up.
• GST that changes with the client. Security services supplied by a proprietor to a company are taxed under reverse charge: the client pays the GST, not Vigilon. A trust or a residents' association is billed 18% GST in the normal way.
• Recruitment abroad. Only a registered Recruiting Agent may recruit for jobs abroad. The law caps what may be charged to a worker, and only after selection. Candidates need passports, medicals, visas and emigration clearance before they fly.

What OSERP gave Vigilon this month

	September 2026
People on the payroll	600
Client sites	50 (42 under reverse charge, 8 with GST charged)
Billed to clients (before GST)	INR 1,50,13,142
Payroll: gross / net	INR 1,12,59,166 / 1,02,71,330
Payroll: total cost with employer PF, ESI and gratuity	INR 1,28,69,090
Contribution from guarding	INR 21,44,052 (14.3% of billing)
Overseas candidates in the pipeline	84, at 11 stages
Candidate charges raised (34 selected workers, within the cap)	INR 7,35,000 + GST
Placement fees invoiced to Gulf employers (10 workers)	INR 3,30,000

The result is a company that knows, on the first working day of the month, what every site earned, what every guard is owed, which papers are missing and which return falls due next.

Built for any trade

Nothing in this case study is a module named after security or recruitment. People & Payroll, Service Contracts (under Sales), hiring in the CRM, letters and statutory compliance are the same for every business; Vigilon is a security company because it applied the Security services and Overseas recruitment workforce packs, which wrote its job roles, paper kinds, words, hiring pipelines and letters as ordinary data. A nursing agency applies Healthcare and gets staff nurses, council registrations and a placement pipeline from the same screens; a facility company applies Facility management and its contracts say housekeepers and shifts. The statutory profile is the same for every trade too: a factory, a restaurant, a hospital, a builder, a transport business or a plantation ticks what it does and gets its own licences, duties and renewals; what each service is billed under, and the income account it lands in, is the pack's data as well.

The chapters

1. The business and the law: legal form, the workforce packs, registrations, the compliance checklist, the due-date calendar and Kerala's professional tax
2. People, photographs, papers and duties: 600 people, ID cards, job roles, required papers, letters, the employee profile with duty time
3. A CRM for a manpower company: the manpower pipelines, and WhatsApp, SMS and email sent from inside OSCRM
4. Service contracts, assignments and duties: posts, people at each site, the duty grid
5. Payroll, payslips and statutory files: the run, the payslip, self-service clock-in, PF ECR and ESI files, minimum wage and bonus
6. Client billing under GST: the bill from duties, reverse charge, collections
7. Overseas hiring in the CRM: stages that refuse without their papers, the careers page, the lawful candidate charge, offer letters, placement fees and the funnel
8. The small proprietor, the month's profit and lessons

Logins used in this case study

Who	Role	What they see
Anitha Raj, owner and operations	Company Administrator, Payroll Manager	Everything in Vigilon
Saji K, security guard (VSM0102)	Employee	My Work only: clock in and out, his month, his payslips, his job
Raju Varghese, Sentry's owner	Company Administrator	Sentry only