established in February to provide lab-organization tools.Ĭollection: FundingThe spreadsheet implements several useful features, such as simple formulae to monitor spending. We recently made it freely available through Organizō, a company that C.M.T. Our lab uses a Google spreadsheet to track purchases and inventory. However, for labs operating on a tight budget, paying a monthly fee to use a commercial platform might simply not be possible. We acknowledge that, for some labs, the convenience of a commercial system could outweigh the cost savings and easy maintenance of a home-grown system. Implement a systemĪlthough commercial lab-inventory platforms are available, such as Quartzy and LabSpend, a home-grown system can ensure longevity - not to mention protection against abrupt third-party feature changes and price increases. This helps researchers and administrators to request updates on the status of orders from vendors, and helps with budgeting for current and proposed projects. Vendor order number/purchase order number.Knowing whether an item has been ordered, is back ordered (with an estimated delivery date) or has arrived allows members to track key materials and to plan their work accordingly. This tells lab members where to store materials when they arrive and allows them to be found again later. Each order gets its own row in our spreadsheet, so no data are overwritten when new orders are placed. We suggest logging the lot or batch numbers associated with each order, in case of experimental variability. The efficacy of certain materials, such as growth factors and cell-culture reagents, differs between lots. This simplifies reordering and allows researchers to review product details easily if more information is needed to support an experiment - for instance, the host species that generates an antibody, or the fluorescent tag to which that antibody is attached. Catalogue numbers, vendors and product web pages.Here are some details to consider documenting: Our purchasing spreadsheet also functions as an inventory system because of the information we include for each item. Where will items be stored? Create a planįor our lab, documenting the details of commercially available materials has enhanced experimental design, saved money and created an educational resource for early-career scientists.What information needs to be documented for each purchase?.What information would make it simpler to reorder commonly used items?.We suggest doing this in a group meeting where all lab members, from the most junior researcher to the principal investigator, can express their opinions. Start by determining what works and what doesn’t in the way your lab is organized overall. Here, we highlight steps scientists can take to better organize their lab ordering and inventories. Since then, we have shared our spreadsheet with more than 500 labs across 20 countries. discussed the strategy on Twitter, the thread received more than 300,000 views. Clearly, there’s an unmet need for such tools: when C.M.T. We created a master spreadsheet that transformed our inventory management. We think it is each researcher’s responsibility to organize this information so that scientists - colleagues as well as the wider community - can have the technical information necessary to build on discoveries when they are published. With published protocols, extended methods and detailed reagent lists required for manuscript submissions, now is the time to better manage your lab inventory. These days, journals and funding agencies expect extensive documentation of research methods. If she cannot physically show someone where an item is located, how will they find it amid a sea of freezer boxes? And if she unpacks a newly received item, how will the person who ordered it know that it’s arrived? One day it clicked: there is a better way to organize our lab’s purchasing and inventory. But N.J.S., who divides her time between the main laboratory, the cell-culture room and the core facilities, isn’t always available to help. “Yes!” replied N.J.S., opening the fridge to show her where they were.ĭirect communication worked great in this scenario. “Did the new antibodies arrive?” one of us (C.M.T.) asked. Good lab inventory management can save you time, money and frustration.
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