The short answer
Celayix and Calvis both show up when you search for security guard software, and that is where the similarity ends. They are sold to different people to solve opposite halves of the same industry.
Celayix is employee scheduling and time-and-attendance software. A security agency buys it to build guard schedules, control overtime, verify that officers are where they said they would be, and push clean hours into payroll. The customer is the agency. The end client at the warehouse or the hotel never logs into it.
Calvis is a marketplace. A business that needs officers on site describes the coverage, compares licensed local agencies on published rates, and books. The guards are employed and licensed by those agencies, not by Calvis.
So the filter is one question: are you staffing guards, or hiring them? If you are staffing them, you are shopping for scheduling software and Celayix belongs on your list. If you are hiring them, no scheduling product will help you, because none of them sell you coverage.
Compare published guard rates →
What Celayix actually is
Celayix is a Vancouver, British Columbia company that has been building workforce management software for around 25 years. It is a general shift-scheduling product with a deep security specialization, and that specialization is not marketing. On Capterra, Security and Investigations is the single largest industry among Celayix reviewers, at roughly 26 percent of them. When a scheduling vendor's biggest customer segment is guard companies, the product tends to grow the features guard companies actually need.
The suite breaks into a few pieces:
Scheduling. Rules-based autofill proposes the best-fit officer for an open shift based on qualifications, availability, seniority, and cost. Business rules can encode union agreements, certification requirements, and client-specific restrictions, so a scheduler cannot accidentally put an unqualified officer on a post that requires a specific credential.
Overtime control. This is the feature Celayix leans on hardest in security, and for good reason. Non-billable overtime is where guard company margin quietly dies. The scheduler flags a shift assignment that would push an officer into overtime before the assignment is committed, rather than after payroll runs.
Time and attendance with geofencing. Officers clock in through a mobile app, web, tablet, or a physical clock, and geofencing restricts check-in to the actual post location. That closes the buddy-punching and off-site-clock-in gap that plagues distributed workforces.
Guard touring. Tour verification via QR codes, NFC tags, or in-app task confirmation produces proof-of-presence records the agency can hand to its client. If you are evaluating this piece specifically, our guard tour and patrol app roundup covers the category.
Payroll and billing integration. Verified hours flow into payroll systems including ADP, Paychex Flex, Paycom, Dayforce Powerpay, QuickBooks, Sage, Greenshades, and isolved, which removes the re-keying step where errors and disputes originate.
Reviewers consistently praise the implementation and support experience and the clarity of the clock-in data. The recurring complaints are mundane rather than damning: limits on printing a full calendar schedule, a thinner administrative view on mobile, and PTO tallied in hours rather than in days or shifts.
None of this is faint praise. Scheduling a distributed, credentialed, 24/7 workforce against client-specific rules is a genuinely hard problem, and Celayix has spent two decades on it. Calvis does not do that job and is not trying to.
What Celayix costs, and why that matters to the comparison
Celayix publishes indicative pricing bands rather than a public per-seat rate card. Their site groups buyers into up to 100 employees at roughly $400 to $800 per month, up to 1,000 employees at roughly $1,000 to $8,000 per month, and custom pricing above that. Third-party software directories list a Pro tier at around $8 per employee per month with a 25-employee minimum on an annual term, with higher tiers quoted individually. There is also a lower-cost rostering license for people you keep in the system but do not schedule regularly, which is a sensible fit for a guard company carrying a large casual bench.
The reason to state this plainly in a comparison article is that it tells you instantly whether the product is for you. A 25-employee floor and an annual term is a business tool for a business with a payroll. If you run a 40-officer agency, that is a rational operating expense measured against the overtime it prevents. If you are an office park manager who needs one overnight officer on Fridays, you are looking at a subscription that costs more per month than the coverage you wanted to buy, and it would not deliver a single guard.
What Calvis actually is
Calvis is a marketplace that connects businesses with independently licensed security agencies. You describe the post, the hours, and the requirements. You see vetted local agencies with flat hourly rates attached before you commit. You book, and the shift runs with GPS check-in, incident reporting, and shift records visible in your dashboard.
Three things matter about how that is structured:
Calvis is not the security provider. The officers are employed, licensed, insured, and supervised by the agencies. Each agency's license is attributed to it through its state regulator, and licensing is verified against state databases as a condition of being on the marketplace. That verification is the work most buyers cannot do well on their own, and our guide on how to vet a security guard company walks through what it involves.
Rates are published up front. You see the hourly number before a sales conversation, not after one. Unarmed, armed, mobile patrol, and specialized posts are priced accordingly.
There is no annual minimum to begin. One shift, one weekend, one event, or ongoing recurring coverage are all bookable without signing a term agreement.
Book coverage from vetted local agencies →
Head-to-head
| Factor | Celayix | Calvis |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Workforce scheduling and time-and-attendance software | Marketplace connecting buyers with licensed agencies |
| Who pays for it | The security agency | The buyer pays for guard hours, not for access |
| What you get | A system to run your existing workforce | Officers on site from an independent licensed agency |
| Does it supply guards | No | Yes, through partner agencies |
| Pricing model | Subscription, roughly $8 per employee per month at the Pro tier, 25-employee minimum, annual term | Flat published hourly rate per post type |
| Commitment | Annual software contract | None required to start |
| Overtime and payroll | Core strength: autofill, overtime alerts, payroll push | Handled by the agency, not by the buyer |
| Guard tour verification | Yes, QR, NFC, and in-app tasks | GPS check-in and shift records in the buyer dashboard |
| Best fit | An agency with 25 or more officers to schedule | A business that needs coverage on a specific site |
Read the table as two different jobs rather than a winner and a loser. Celayix optimizes the supply side. Calvis organizes the demand side. Neither substitutes for the other, and an agency running Celayix can perfectly well take work from a marketplace.
If you are an agency owner
Celayix is a legitimate candidate, and the honest way to evaluate it is against its direct peers rather than against a marketplace. Our roundup of security guard scheduling software covers the field, and the broader software landscape guide explains how the categories divide.
When you demo, pressure-test the things that actually cost you money:
- •Overtime prevention in practice. Does the alert fire before the assignment is saved, or does it produce a report after the fact?
- •Rule enforcement. Can it hard-block an officer without a required certification from being scheduled on a post, or does it only warn?
- •Fill speed for callouts. The 3 a.m. no-show is the real test. How fast does it surface qualified, available, non-overtime replacements?
- •Payroll fidelity. Confirm your specific payroll system is a supported integration, not a CSV export you will maintain by hand.
- •Total cost at your headcount. Multiply the per-employee rate by your full roster, including the casual bench, then compare against the rostering license option.
The separate question worth asking is where the shifts come from. Scheduling software makes you better at filling the work you already won. It does not generate demand. Agencies that want a demand channel alongside their operations stack can join the Calvis agency network and receive bookings from buyers in their coverage area.
If you are a business that needs guards
You almost certainly landed on Celayix by accident, and the useful thing to know is that you cannot buy guards from it. It is sold to the agency, and even if you licensed it, you would own an empty schedule with nobody to put in it.
What you are actually deciding between is the traditional route and the marketplace route.
The traditional route is calling agencies one at a time, describing the job repeatedly, waiting on quotes that arrive over days, and having no reference point for whether the rate you were given is normal. It works. It is slow, and the pricing is opaque by design.
The marketplace route puts several vetted licensed agencies in front of you at once with rates attached, which turns a negotiation into a comparison. Guard pricing by post type explains what drives the number so you can sanity-check any quote, marketplace or not.
The one scenario where you would care about Celayix at all is indirect: an agency that runs proper scheduling and time-and-attendance software is measurably less likely to hand you a no-show or a billing dispute. That is worth asking about during vetting. It is a signal about the agency, not a product you buy.
Where people get confused
The confusion is structural, not anyone's fault. Search engines file every security-adjacent product under the same handful of phrases, so "security guard software" returns scheduling tools, guard tour apps, dispatch systems, video monitoring products, and booking marketplaces on one page. They share vocabulary and share almost nothing else.
A clean way to sort any of them: ask who signs the check and what shows up afterward. With Celayix, an agency signs and a better-run schedule shows up. With Calvis, a business signs and an officer shows up.
Start with published rates for your coverage type →