How I Set Up the Closing Safety Check Template with Customers in Pilla
Closing checks are the thing that gets rushed. I've seen it across hundreds of sites: the shift's been long, everyone wants to go home, and the check becomes a quick glance and a set of ticks rather than a proper walk-through. The consequences show up overnight. A fryer left on low, a fire exit chained but not locked, a rear door pulled shut but not actually secured.
The majority of commercial fires happen when buildings are unoccupied. That stat alone should change how you think about the last ten minutes of the day. This article covers what your closing check needs to address, gives you a template you can set up as a daily work activity, and walks through the parts that matter most, particularly fire prevention and the handover to your opening team.
Key Takeaways
- What is a closing safety check? It's a structured walk-through at the end of the day covering fire prevention, equipment shutdown, security, cash handling, and handover notes. The person locking up works through every area of the building before leaving
- Why do you need one? Most fires in commercial premises start when the building is empty. A closing check systematically removes ignition sources, secures the building, and captures anything the opening team needs to know
- How do you set it up in Pilla? Use the work template below, set it as a recurring daily activity, and assign it to whoever closes the premises each day
- How do you automate the follow-up? Set up Poppi to flag when a closing check hasn't been completed, notify managers of any issues logged, and send a weekly summary of completion rates
Article Content
Understanding What's Required of You
A closing safety check prepares your premises for the overnight period. It covers three things: fire prevention, security, and handover. Get any one of those wrong and you're looking at a fire, a break-in, or the opening team walking into a problem they didn't know about.
Fire prevention is the critical one. Most hospitality and commercial premises fires start outside operating hours. The pattern is almost always the same: cooking equipment left energised, waste left inside the building providing fuel, or an electrical fault in equipment that should've been switched off. A proper closing check eliminates these ignition sources systematically. I worked with a pub in Leeds where the closing manager had been turning the fryer to its lowest setting instead of off for months. Nobody caught it until I walked the close with them. That fryer was sat at 80 degrees Celsius overnight, every night, surrounded by oil residue.
Security is more straightforward but still gets missed. Doors pulled shut but not locked. Windows left cracked for ventilation. Alarm not set because someone was rushing. An improperly secured building isn't just a burglary risk. If someone enters and gets injured, you may be liable.
Handover is the part most businesses neglect entirely. If the walk-in fridge temperature was running slightly high at close, or the rear door lock wasn't engaging properly, or there's an early delivery expected at 6am, that information needs to reach the opening team. If it's only in your head when you drive home, it's lost.
There's no single regulation that says "you must do a closing check." But your general duty under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 to provide a safe workplace, combined with fire safety obligations under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, means you need a system for ensuring the building is safe before you leave it unoccupied. A closing check is how you do that in practice.
Setting It Up as a Work Activity
I've built a closing safety check template in Pilla covering equipment shutdown, gas isolation, electrical safety, cash handling, waste, external areas, windows, doors, alarm, keys, overall security confirmation, and handover notes. It gives you a structured walk-through that the closing manager works through each night.
When you create the work activity, set it up as a daily recurring schedule. Pilla will create a new instance each day, assigned to whoever's closing. Tag it with something like "Closing Safety Check" so it's easy to filter and so Poppi can track completion rates across days.
The template is designed to be completed during the walk-through, not afterwards from memory. The closing manager should have their phone with them as they physically move through each area, ticking items off as they verify them. Completing it from the office defeats the purpose.
1. Closing safety checks
This is the main checklist. Each item covers a specific area of safe closure: people accounted for, all areas physically walked, cooking equipment off, gas isolated if required, non-essential electrics off, tills cashed up, waste removed, external areas secured, windows closed, doors locked, alarm set, and keys managed.
What I'd want to see when reviewing this:
The cooking equipment section is the most important item on the entire check. I'd want to see that the person closing is actually verifying equipment is off, not just glancing at dials. "Off" means off. Not turned down, not on standby, not on the lowest setting. If you have gas equipment, the pilot lights need addressing too. Some operations isolate gas overnight at the mains, which is the safest approach. Whether you do that depends on your risk assessment, but know what your procedure is and follow it.
The waste section matters more than people think. Waste left inside the building is fuel. I've seen bin bags left by the back door because the external bins were full, cardboard stacked against a wall near the fuseboard. Remove it from the building. Every night.
Common mistakes I see:
The most common problem is the alarm. Staff rush, they forget to set it, or they set it but don't wait for confirmation. I've reviewed CCTV footage where the closing manager walked out before the system had armed. They assumed the beeping meant it was working. It wasn't.
Another one: doors pulled shut but not double-locked. A UPVC door that's been pulled closed feels secure. It isn't. The deadbolt needs engaging. Same with fire exits, which can be externally secured overnight when the building is unoccupied but must be unlocked again before anyone occupies the building the next day.
2. Premises secured?
This is the gate question. Yes means everything's done and you're comfortable leaving the building overnight. No means something couldn't be completed or needs flagging.
What I'd want to see when reviewing this:
A "No" isn't a failure. It's a communication. If the rear lock is stiff and you've secured it with the internal bolt as a backup, that's a "No" with a clear explanation, and it's exactly the right thing to do. What I don't want to see is "Yes" when there are known issues. That undermines the whole point of the check.
If you're seeing "No" repeatedly for the same reason, that's a maintenance issue that needs fixing, not just noting.
3. Issues or handover notes
This is where you record anything the opening team needs to know. Equipment concerns, expected deliveries, maintenance issues, incidents, anything unusual.
What I'd want to see when reviewing this:
Specific, actionable notes. "Walk-in fridge temp at 7 degrees at close, monitored for an hour and stable, opening team should check first thing" is useful. "Fridge a bit warm" is not.
Write as though the person reading it knows nothing about what happened today. Include what the issue is, what you did about it, and what needs to happen next.
Common mistakes I see:
The biggest one is leaving the field blank when there's something worth noting. If you secured the building with a workaround because something wasn't working properly, that's a handover note. If there was a difficult customer incident, that's a handover note. If the closing team ran out of bin bags and couldn't take the last load of rubbish out, that's a handover note.
The other mistake is noting things here but not escalating when the issue is serious. A faulty fire alarm panel isn't a handover note. It's a phone call to the manager, now.
Automate the Follow-Up with Poppi
Completing the check is one thing. Knowing it was actually done is another. In practice, closing checks get skipped when it's late, when the closing manager is tired, or when there's a new person locking up who hasn't been properly shown the process. Without a system flagging the gaps, you won't know until something goes wrong.
Once your closing safety check is set up as a daily work activity in Pilla, you can use Poppi Actions to track completion and flag problems. Poppi can notify you when a check hasn't been completed by a certain time, alert managers when issues are logged in the handover notes, and send a weekly summary showing which days were completed and which were missed.
The best time to set this up is on the same day you create the template. That way tracking starts immediately and you've got a complete picture from day one.
Kitchen Opening is overdue by 30 mins
Overdue work escalation
Automatically chase when a work activity hasn't been completed on time. Set how long to wait before Poppi sends the alert.
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Work completed notification
Get notified when a work activity is finished, so you know it's done without having to check.
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