The end of the paper sign-in sheet

What is the RedAlert Kiosk?

The RedAlert Kiosk is a biometric attendance station for fire departments. It is a wall-mounted or desktop touchscreen device installed in the firehouse that records who responded to each call, drill, training, meeting, and duty shift. Members identify themselves with a fingerprint, proximity key fob, or building ID card, and the device photographs each check-in for verification. Every record is timestamped and written directly into the department's RedAlert personnel records, where it feeds LOSAP point calculations, pay-per-call payouts, stipend programs, grant documentation, and ISO staffing records.

Alpine Software has offered the Kiosk since 2010, and it remains the only station-mounted biometric attendance system built into a fire department records management platform.

How does the Kiosk stop people from claiming calls they weren't on?

By controlling when check-in is possible, and by requiring members to be physically in the station to do it.

The Kiosk opens for a call automatically, triggered by your CAD system. Your department chooses the trigger: the start of the alarm, the end of the alarm, when the last unit clears, or an officer opening it manually. From that moment, the call is available to claim.

Then it closes. Thirty minutes after dispatch. Four hours. End of shift. Whatever window fits how your department operates. Once that window expires, the call is locked and nobody can add themselves to it (besides an admin within the department). A member who forgot to sign in cannot wander in tomorrow and tag themselves onto yesterday's structure fire, and an officer who wants to make a correction has to make it deliberately, in the record, where it's visible.

The same works for scheduled events. Open the Kiosk fifteen minutes before drill starts, close it fifteen minutes after. Members who show up get credit. Members who don't, don't. Nobody has to make a judgment call about it, because the window already did.

Every parameter is configurable, because a rural department with a twenty-minute response radius and a busy suburban department running four calls a shift need different rules. You set them once to match how your department actually works.

Why does a digital sign-in sheet matter?

Because for most volunteer and combo departments, attendance is money.

If your department runs a LOSAP, pay-per-call, stipend, or points program, attendance records decide who gets paid and how much. That's usually taxpayer money, and it's usually being distributed on the strength of a clipboard by the door and a spreadsheet one person maintains. Everybody signs the sheet. Somebody types it in. At the end of the year, the numbers come out, and every member is expected to accept them.

That system holds up fine until somebody questions it. A member disputes their point total. A board asks how the numbers were derived. An auditor wants documentation. A municipality asks what controls exist on a program distributing public funds. At that point, “Dave keeps the spreadsheet” is not an answer.

The Kiosk replaces a custom with a process. Every check-in is tied to a fingerprint or credential that only one person has, taken at a device bolted to the wall of the firehouse, inside a window the call itself defined, with a photograph attached. When the numbers come out at the end of the year, they came out of a system, and the system can show its work.

That's the difference between attendance you report and attendance you can defend.

What can the Kiosk track?

Call attendance. Members check in after the run, claiming the specific incidents they responded to and self-tagging their riding assignment: driver, officer, station response, or any other assignment you want to track. The record ties to the incident in RedAlert.

Drills, trainings, and meetings. Any scheduled event on the department calendar opens for check-in inside its own window. Members can also sign up in advance for future events at the Kiosk, so officers can see who's committed to next month's training before it happens and plan around it.

Duty crew shifts and standby hours. Members clock in and clock out at the Kiosk, and the hours flow back into RedAlert. For volunteer and combination departments trying to document round-the-clock staffing coverage for ISO purposes, this is the record that proves it.

Department elections. The election module runs officer elections on the device. Votes are anonymous, but the system records who voted and when, so you get a verified turnout list without compromising the ballot. One member, one vote, enforced by the same credential that handles attendance. No ballot box to watch, no triplicate forms, no counting night.

Member self-service. Members can check their own point totals, call counts, and hours right at the Kiosk. Someone who needs three more drills to qualify for their stipend can see that in November instead of finding out in January. Departments consistently report that visibility alone drives participation.

What does the hardware look like?

The Kiosk is a ruggedized Windows touchscreen PC built for a firehouse environment that comes with a warranty. Most departments wall-mount it near the apparatus bay door, where members pass on their way in and out, but you can have it sitting on a desk or table as needed.

Departments choose how members identify themselves:

• Fingerprint and thumb readers
• Proximity key fobs and ID cards, including the building access cards your members already carry
• HID-compatible readers
• Manual PIN entry as a backup

An integrated camera photographs each check-in, adding a second layer of verification to the credential.

Departments with multiple stations typically put a Kiosk in each one. Larger stations sometimes run more than one, near separate entrances. All of them write to the same database.

See the capability behind this product: Attendance & Award Programs · Scheduling & Personnel.