System and method for collecting information pertaining to a defeated electronic article surveillance (EAS) tag are disclosed. The method includes the steps of providing a recording unit for collecting data pertaining to missing merchandise having at least one user interface, recording the data into the recording unit in response to a series of user interface prompts displayed on the recording unit, the interface prompts being programmed according to a predetermined user input sequence, the recording unit being adapted to transmit the data through a communications network, and transmitting the data through the communications network to a data processing unit, the data processing unit being configured to analyze the data and to generate a report based on the data.