The First 24 Hours After a Break-In at Your Business: What to Do, in Order

You get the call at 6 a.m. Or you pull up, coffee in hand, and the front glass is shattered. Your stomach drops and your brain starts racing in ten directions at once.

That is normal. It is also the moment when people make the mistakes that cost them later. They walk inside alone. They start sweeping up glass. They spend an hour on the phone before anyone thinks about the camera system, and by the time someone checks, the overnight video is already gone or hard to find.

Here is the order that works. Print it, tape it inside the office door, and hope you never need it.

1. Make sure everyone is safe

If the door is open or you hear anything inside, do not go in. Step back, get to your car or across the street, and call 911. You have no way to know if the person is still there, and nothing in that store is worth a confrontation.

If employees are arriving, stop them at the door too. Keep everyone outside until police clear the space.

2. Call the police and leave the scene alone

Even if it looks small, file a report. Your insurance company will almost always ask for a report number, and you want an official record of the date and time.

Until officers are done, do not touch anything. That means no sweeping glass, no straightening shelves, no opening the register to count what is left. Fingerprints, footprints, and the way things were moved all tell a story. Once you clean it, that story is gone.

While you wait, write down what you noticed when you arrived. Which door. What lights were on. Whether the alarm was sounding. Small details fade fast.

3. Save the footage before it overwrites

This is the step most owners miss. Most camera recorders keep a set amount of video and then start recording over the oldest footage. Depending on how the system is set up, that might be a month or it might be a few days. If nobody exports the clip, it can simply disappear.

As soon as you can, do this:

• Find the time window. Start from when you closed and go to when you arrived.
• Export every camera that saw anything, not just the one pointed at the broken door. The parking lot and the sidewalk camera often show the car or the face.
• Save the clips in at least two places, like a USB drive and a cloud folder.
• Write down which camera each clip came from and the time stamps.

If you find out your cameras were not recording, or the footage is too dark to use, write that down too. It is painful, but it tells you exactly what to fix.

4. Document everything for insurance

Once police release the scene, become your own adjuster. Take photos and video of every damaged door, lock, window, shelf, and display before anything gets cleaned or repaired. Get wide shots and close ups.

Then make a list of what is missing or broken. Cash, inventory, equipment, tablets, the cash drawer itself. Pull receipts or invoices where you can. Keep every repair receipt from this point on, including the emergency board-up or glass company.

Call your insurance company the same day and ask what they need from you. Every policy is different, so ask instead of guessing, and keep notes on who you spoke with and when.

5. Check who had access

Look closely at how they got in. Was the door forced, or was it just open? If there is no damage at all, that is a different conversation.

• If you have an access control system, pull the door log for the night. It shows which credential opened which door and when.
• Check if the alarm was armed, and if it was, whose code disarmed it.
• Think about recent changes: an employee who left, a contractor who had a code, a key that never came back.

This is not about accusing anyone. It is about knowing whether you have a broken door or a broken process. Either way, change any codes that were shared widely, and turn off any fobs or cards that belong to people who should not have them anymore.

6. Fix the gap before you close tonight

Whatever they used to get in is still there. A pried door with a weak strike plate. A back window with no sensor. A camera aimed at the sky after last winter's storm. A rear exit everyone forgot about.

Get the immediate repair done the same day if you can, even if it is temporary. Then take a harder look over the next week. Break-ins do sometimes repeat at the same location, especially when the first attempt worked.

A break-in is stressful, and most of what happened is out of your control. What you do in the next 24 hours is not. Stay safe, protect the evidence, save the video, and close the gap.