A free parcel log book template.
The sheet a security desk actually needs: what arrived on the left, what was handed over on the right, one line each and nothing erased. Print it, clip it to a board, and start today.
The sheet a security desk actually needs: what arrived on the left, what was handed over on the right, one line each and nothing erased. Print it, clip it to a board, and start today.
Nine columns, landscape, nineteen lines to a page. The heavy rule down the middle is the only line on it that means anything: everything to the left of it happened when a parcel arrived, everything to the right when somebody took it away.
| Date | Time | Apartment | Packages | Carrier | Logged by | Date | Collected by | Signature |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 05/08 | 09:14 | 302 | 3 | Shopee | TD | 06/08 | Ms Lan (302) | ✓ |
| 05/08 | 11:40 | 1204 | 1 | GHN | TD |
A line with an empty right-hand half is a parcel still in the room. That is the whole trick of the layout — what is outstanding is what has not been filled in yet, and you can see it by looking down one column rather than by adding anything up.
A log book is only worth keeping if it can settle an argument. These four habits are what separate a record from a pile of handwriting, and they cost nothing at the counter.
Strike the mistake through so it can still be read and write the correction on the next line. A page that has been tidied up cannot be told apart from a page that has been altered, and neither proves anything.
Three packages for the same apartment on the same trolley are one line with a 3 in the count. Splitting them makes the sheet longer without making it truer.
Pick one form — 302, not A302 and not 3.02 — and hold everyone to it. Searching a paper book means reading, and reading fails on a number written three ways.
Not afterwards, not on a separate slip. The signature and the line it belongs to are one piece of evidence, and they stop being that the moment they are on different pieces of paper.
Not straight away, and not at intake. Paper is quick to write on — the cost lands later, and always with somebody waiting in front of you.
"Is anything here for 302?" means reading back through pages for lines with an empty right-hand half. It takes a minute at fifty parcels a week and it is not possible at all at five hundred.
Whoever has it is the only person who can answer. Two entrances mean two books, and two books mean the count is wrong in both.
Which is in a drawer, or is not. The one moment the record is worth anything is the moment it is hardest to lay a hand on.
The app version of this sheet keeps the same shape — append-only, nothing deleted, a signature on the line — and does the reading for you: type the apartment and what is outstanding is on screen. It works with no signal, needs no account for residents, and exports any apartment's whole history as a PDF when somebody disputes a delivery.
The template is free and always will be — print as many as you like. If the desk has outgrown it, the app is on the front page.