QR code visitor sign-in

Somebody walks up to your door with a phone in their hand. They point the camera at the code taped to the glass, and their phone offers them a link the way it would offer any other link. They tap it, a sign-in form opens in the browser they already use, and they fill it in standing where they are: their name, whatever else you have asked for, and the person they are here to see. They confirm, the screen tells them they are signed in, and the host is emailed. On most arrivals the whole thing takes less time than finding a pen.

There is no download at any point in that sequence, because scanning a code opens a web page rather than an app. The visitor has already used the mechanism a hundred times (a menu, a parking meter, a wifi code), so nothing has to be explained, and if they hesitate, someone can say “point your camera at it” and be understood.

Signing out is the same motion in reverse. A visit and sign-out code lets someone scan on their way past and close their own visit, which matters more than it sounds: an on-site list is only worth reading if people come off it as well as go on it. Automatic sign-out sweeps up the ones who left without scanning, so the list does not accumulate ghosts over a week.

It is worth being blunt about why this matters, because it is the whole argument. A courier who is at your gate for ninety seconds will not create an account. A tradesperson who visits eleven different sites this month will not carry eleven apps. A candidate arriving for an interview is not going to stand in your car park agreeing to an app store licence. Anything that asks a visitor to install software is, in practice, a request that gets refused, and what gets refused at the door is the record you were trying to keep.

A code in a browser has no such friction, and that shows up in the data you end up holding. The sign-in rate is what decides whether your on-site list can be trusted, and it is driven almost entirely by how little the visitor is asked to do. So keep the form short: ask for what you need to run a safe site and reach someone afterwards, not everything a form builder will let you add.

There is a quieter privacy benefit too. Each person sees only their own form, on their own screen. Nobody reads the name, employer and mobile number of the four people who signed in before them, which is exactly what a paper book on a counter hands to every person who picks up the pen. How those records are secured once they are in Entrica, and how we handle them under the Privacy Act 2020 and the Australian Privacy Principles, is set out on our security page and in our privacy policy.

A code belongs to a doorway, not to a person. You create the location in Entrica, generate its code, print it, and put it where an arriving visitor is already looking: beside the handle, on the glass at eye height, on the gate post, on the counter they stop at anyway. Location QR management is in the Core plan. Some sites pair the printed code with an NFC tag, so a phone can be tapped against it instead of aimed at it.

Print it larger than feels necessary, and laminate it if it lives outdoors, because a code that has faded in the sun or curled in the rain is a code that does not scan. Add a line of plain text underneath, such as “Visitors: scan here to sign in”, so somebody who has never seen your building recognises that the square is meant for them.

Because the code is print, duplicating it costs a sheet of paper. That is the practical difference between covering one door and covering a site: the marginal cost of the fourth entrance is nothing. What does change is your plan. QR and NFC sign-in are included on every plan; Core covers one location and one device, and running several locations, or several devices at once, is what the Professional plan is for, along with hierarchical locations, a location switcher and location scoping so the right people see the right site. The split is set out in full on the features page, and the plans themselves are on pricing.

The point of the scan is not the form. It is that somebody inside the building now knows a person is standing outside it. When a visitor picks their host from host search and signs in, that host gets an email on arrival (included in Core), so nobody has to make a phone call, and a visitor at an unstaffed entrance is not left wondering whether anyone knows they are there. Host SMS on arrival, which is what you want when hosts are on a factory floor or across a yard rather than at a desk, is part of the Professional plan.

Behind that, the arrival becomes a record on the live on-site list, in the visits admin and on the dashboard, with the times attached. A duplicate visit guard stops the same person appearing twice because they scanned again while waiting, and activity logging keeps a trail of what was changed in your account and by whom. None of that requires anyone to be standing at the door when the visitor arrives, which is the entire reason a code suits a building without a reception desk.

Every scan feeds one thing in particular: the evacuation list, the live roll of who is on site right now. It sits in the Core plan rather than behind an upgrade, and so does the emergency PDF, which counts for more at a site with no front desk, because there is no clipboard to grab on the way out and the phone in somebody’s hand is the only device that made it as far as the car park.

What a printed code really changes is who can be on the roll at all. Every entrance can have one, including the ones nobody stands at, so the list is not merely the people who happened to walk past reception: the gate, the loading dock and the side door are on it too. And because mark safe and self-safe let people account for themselves, a visitor who walked out the back can confirm they are clear from wherever they ended up, rather than waiting for their name to be called at an assembly point they never went to. Emergency alerts reach them out there as well. What is left on the list is the list of people to go and look for.

The duty does not shrink because an entrance is unstaffed. Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 the emergency plan, the testing of it, and the health and safety of the people your work affects stay with your organisation, whether those people came in past somebody or past a poster. A code widens what the roll can see; it does not decide anything for you. The wider picture (those duties, the Privacy Act 2020 side of visitor records, and what to check before you buy anything) is written up on visitor management systems in New Zealand.

A printed code earns its place when there is no reception desk to put a screen on, when there are several ways into the site, when the entrance is outdoors, or when people turn up outside office hours. It suits gates, yards, warehouses, clinics with no permanent front desk, and anywhere a mounted tablet would be an odd thing to leave unattended. Nothing to buy, nothing to charge, nothing to bolt down and nothing worth stealing.

It is not the right answer everywhere. A code says nothing until somebody chooses to scan it, so a busy staffed reception often wants a screen that greets people and makes signing in the obvious next thing to do. If your visitors arrive with their hands full, wear gloves, or work somewhere phones are not carried, a poster is asking them for something they cannot easily do. For hands-full and low-light arrivals, an NFC tag beside the code lets people tap their phone instead of aiming a camera; see NFC visitor sign-in.

Plenty of organisations run both: a tablet on the desk at the main entrance, a printed code on every other door. If that sounds like your site, the companion to this page is tablet kiosk sign-in, which covers the reception desk, the hardware and what happens when nobody is standing behind it. And if you are weighing Entrica against another product, our comparisons with other visitor management systems are sourced and dated.