Laboratory Inventory Workflows

Common tasks and where to find them.

Administrators and lab managers can open Help → Lab setup or Settings → Lab setup. Choose what you already have: a spreadsheet, invoices or delivery notes, or nothing yet. If you have AI access and team credit, you can describe your lab to get suggested storage and project names to review.

1. Lab basics: an admin checks the name, currency, time zone and audit trail. Lab managers see these settings but cannot change them.
2. Storage: add locations and one level of places inside them. Use Quick add, paste an indented list, or review the suggested names before saving.
3. Projects: add studies or grants, or choose one project for general lab supplies. Every use of stock needs a project, even when the stock is shared.
4. Catalog: import a spreadsheet, add products by hand, or add new products while reviewing deliveries.
5. Starting stock: add stock by hand or review invoices and delivery notes with Ask Laima. You can also start with the next delivery.
6. Team: an admin enters email addresses and roles and chooses Send invites and continue, or It's just me for now.

Save each step before leaving. Steps with Skip for now can be completed later. The Ready page shows what is done or missing and links to labels, weekly briefings and the welcome tour. Resume from the dashboard's Continue setup button, or reopen Lab setup from Help or Settings.

Start by aligning the team on names, currency, and access.

1. An admin opens Settings → Team settings. Team settings and invitations are admin-only.
2. Confirm the team name, currency and lab time zone. Currency can change later, but existing prices are relabelled without conversion. The time zone decides what counts as today for stock use, expiry and reports.
3. Invite teammates and assign roles and AI access. A lab manager or admin can change saved prices (a stock entry's price only until any of its stock is used) and thresholds, whether an item can be ordered or used after expiry, set received stock back to In transit, and undo anyone's use.
4. Turn on Enable audit trail if you need audit history. Turning it off deletes every entry recorded so far, and nothing is recorded while it is off.

Catalog items standardize naming, package sizes, and pricing.

1. Add a clear item name and catalog number.
2. Set Default package (for example, Box) and Default quantity in package (the number of units in one package).
3. Choose a preferred distributor and add a link if needed.
4. Define warning thresholds and pricing. Once the item is saved, only a lab manager or admin can change its price, threshold, “Can be ordered” and “Can be used after expiry”.
5. Add tags and notes for handling or storage tips.

Capture new stock with clear ownership, storage, and expiration tracking.

1. Open Warehouse → Inventory → Add stock and select the catalog item. Create it first if it is missing.
2. Set the Purchase date and choose Received for stock already here, or In transit for an order still on its way. Add an Expected arrival date for an order when known.
3. Assign a location. Select a project for dedicated stock, or leave it unassigned for shared stock.
4. Enter the packages, the quantity in package, the package and the price per package. Leave an unknown price blank; zero means the stock is free.
5. Add expiration dates, tags, and notes if needed.
6. Save. Received stock can be labelled with Print stickers; in-transit stock must be received first.

Attach a delivery note, label photo or spreadsheet to Ask Laima and say “Prepare inventory drafts from this delivery.” You can also type or paste the delivery details.

1. Open Review and receive in the reply. Every line is already filled in with what Laima read: product, quantity, package, pack size, lot number and expiry.
2. Set the distributor, Received date, location and project once for the whole delivery. For newly added stock, Received date becomes its Purchase date and dates its spend; an existing order keeps its original purchase date. Open More on a line to give it its own location, a price or a note.
3. A product, distributor or package that is not in your catalog yet is marked as new and is added when you receive. Choose Find in catalog if the product already exists under another name.
4. Answer the question on any highlighted line, such as an unclear expiry date, a pack size that differs from your catalog or a lot that was already received. Lines without a question are ready.
5. If a line matches stock in transit, choose which order or orders are arriving, or say it is extra stock. Enter only the quantity delivered; anything not delivered stays in transit. Choosing extra stock leaves the open orders unchanged.
6. Untick the lines you do not want yet and choose Receive. One Receive saves at most 100 lines; lines you leave out stay in the draft for later.

Preparing a draft does not add stock. Your edits stay on this page until you choose Receive; if you close it, the link opens again with what Laima read. After receiving, use the usual sticker workflow to label received stock.

Ask Laima “What should we order?”, choose View low-stock suggestions on the dashboard, or open Warehouse → Order requests → Low-stock suggestions. The list shows orderable items at or below their warning threshold, one line for each project or shared-stock balance, grouped by distributor, with packages to order.

1. Select the lines you want to order and change the number of packages where needed. A line that an open order already covers starts unselected.
2. Choose a distributor for any line that has none. Add a note, such as the delivery address or cost centre, to print it on every document.
3. Choose Save draft request for each distributor. Find the requests under Saved requests. If a saved request already covers a line, review it before choosing to save another.
4. Open the request and choose Email to distributor. Check the address, message and Send me a copy option, then choose Send and mark as sent. Laima emails the PDF and the spreadsheet; the distributor’s reply goes to your inbox. To send it yourself or through your purchasing office, download the PDF or XLSX and choose Mark as sent.
5. When the distributor confirms the order, choose Add to in transit on the request page. You can also attach the confirmation in Ask Laima, check it on the Add order confirmation page and choose Add to in transit there.
6. When the delivery arrives, receive it as usual. A line for a product that is in transit asks whether that order is arriving. Anything not delivered stays in transit.

Only the request's creator, a lab manager or an admin can edit or delete it, email it, mark it sent or add it to in transit. Draft quantities and notes can be edited; sent requests keep their saved details. Deleting a request does not cancel an email or remove stock already added from it.

A saved or sent request is not an order yet and does not change stock. The order counts as in transit only after Add to in transit. The suggested packages fill the gap to one unit above the warning threshold, minus what is already in transit.

Stickers make scanning fast and reduce stock-selection mistakes.

Contents list for the door. Choose "Contents" next to a location to download a PDF of everything in stock there and in its sub-locations: sticker number, item, project, lot, units left and next expiry. Expired units are red and units that expire within 30 days are orange, so the list also shows what to clear out. The sheet shows when it was printed; print it again after big changes.

Scan labeled inventory or select stock manually to log usage and keep project budgets accurate.

1. Open Use stock from the header.
2. Choose Scan to use for labeled inventory, or choose Use manually and select a catalog product.
3. Select the project and, when prompted, the location. Enter the quantity in the product's base unit.
4. Review the proposed allocation. Laima selects the project's own stock first, then shared stock, each in first-expiring-first-out order, and can split the quantity across batches. An archived project can use only its own stock.
5. Choose different stock only when needed. Later-expiring stock requires confirmation and a reason. A scanned sticker always uses the stock it is on.
6. Select Use to log usage and update stock instantly.

Keep inventory accurate when items move or quantities change.

1. Open the inventory record you need to update.
2. Edit location, tags or notes. The item, quantities and expiration dates can change only until some of the stock is used, so stock added under the wrong catalog item can be moved to the right one.
3. Save changes to update reports, and the audit trail while it is on.

Project views combine stock, consumption, and upcoming expirations.

1. Review project stock to catch low inventory early.
2. Use Cost breakdown and Distributors for spending, and Used stock for recorded use. The Expenses and Reports buttons open those pages filtered to the project.
3. Check expiring items to reduce waste.
4. Add stock directly to the project when needed.

Find out whether you have everything a protocol or experiment needs before the day you need it.

In Ask Laima, attach or paste your materials list and ask “Do we have everything for this protocol on Friday?” Include each item's quantity and unit. Use the stock selector beside the message box, which shows the current project, Shared stock or Whole lab.

1. Laima lists what is missing, what is ready and where to take it from, with its location, lot and expiry date, and anything it could not match to your catalog.
2. An active project uses its own stock first, then shared stock; an archived project uses only its own stock. Shared stock and the whole lab use only shared stock, so another project's stock is never promised.
3. Stock that expires before the date does not count, unless its item can be used after expiry. Stock without an expiry date counts as usable. Orders are shown separately and never cover a shortage.
4. When something is missing, choose Order missing items. The order list fills in package counts, less anything already in transit, and ticks the linked items that have a distributor. Choose a distributor for the others and check the selection before saving a request for each distributor, then email it from its page.

Checking does not save, reserve, consume or order anything. To check again later, reopen the chat from Previous chats and ask again. A project readiness answer covers the project's setup, such as missing stock thresholds, not whether an experiment's materials are in stock.

Ask “Give me a weekly lab briefing” for upcoming expiries, low stock, unusual consumption and unused inventory, with suggested next steps and links. Choose the whole lab, shared stock or a project. You can ask for a different period, expiry window or threshold, such as “Show stock unused for 90 days.”

To receive a briefing by email:

1. Open your account menu (the avatar at the top right) and choose Emails.
2. Choose which stock to include, your timezone, the day and local delivery time.
3. Turn on Send me a weekly briefing and choose Save briefing schedule.

Emails go to your own verified email address. The settings show the next delivery. To stop the emails, clear Send me a weekly briefing and save. Asking for a briefing in chat does not turn on emails. Scheduled briefing emails do not use AI or team credit. Their figures follow the lab's time zone; the time zone in your schedule controls delivery. Briefings do not create orders or change stock.

On the same Emails page, Email me Laima news controls product news separately. Notices about your account, terms or outages still reach you when news is off.

Speed up onboarding by importing items in bulk.

To start from Ask Laima, drop a spreadsheet or PDF on Import a catalog on the dashboard, or attach it in the chat and say “Import the products in this file into the catalog.” Choose Review and import in the reply: the import opens with your file and goes on to its preview. Continue from step 2.

For a PDF, Ask Laima extracts the products and opens the preview directly. Check every product and its extracted values against the listed PDF page before choosing Import. Supply a default package if the document does not name one. Prices must be per package in your lab's currency; ambiguous values and duplicates are flagged. This adds catalog items only. Ask Laima for a corrected preview if any extracted value needs changing.

1. Open Warehouse → Catalog → Import and upload a supplier price list (XLSX, XLS or UTF-8 CSV) or the filled-in Laima template, which you can download there. Laima finds the separator, the heading row and the sheets with products itself.
2. Laima reads each column's heading, and AI chooses the rest if you have AI access and team credit. A pack size such as 100 g goes into the item's name, and the package is what you buy it in, such as Each or Box. When AI is done, the preview opens; Choose columns myself stops AI on the way. Without AI, or when AI finds no column with product names, you choose what each column holds yourself; tick the sheets to import, use Show columns to open one, and Columns look wrong? changes the heading row or separator.
3. The preview says how many items will be added and which packages, distributors and tags are new. How Laima read your file shows which column became which field; choose Change columns to correct it. Give a package or distributor for every row there when no column holds one, then choose Apply changes and refresh preview. Prices use your lab's currency; Laima does not convert currencies, so a price column in another currency is left out and the preview says so. With several sheets, the preview shows how many items each one adds.
4. Rows that can't be imported are listed first, grouped by reason with the fix for each; rows already in your catalog are skipped and keep their prices. Choose Add N items to catalog to start the import in the background; you can leave the page and Laima emails the result.
5. The result links to the new items. Open Import history and select the import to review its result and download its skipped rows when available. Correct them in the source file before trying again. Remove added items on the import's page takes back the items it added that have no stock and are on no order.

You can ask Laima which imports need attention and which rows failed. Errors from supplier files include the source sheet and row. Members see their own imports; managers and administrators can review the team's imports. Catalog imports belong to the team, regardless of the stock selected in chat.