Reagent and instrument tracking for labs
Labs are meticulous about results and casual about stores. The same group that will record a pipetting step to three decimal places will discover on a Tuesday that there is no acetonitrile, because the record of what was left was a bottle somebody looked at.
No card, no sales call. Set up as laboratories and the whole system uses these words — reagents, instruments, project code.
Why the reagent shelf surprises people
Consumption is bursty. A method development run eats a month of a reagent in two days, and nothing tells the person who orders it until the shelf is bare.
Shared instruments are booked in whatever the group uses for booking — a whiteboard, a shared calendar, a group chat — none of which knows whether the instrument came back or who had it last when something is broken.
And the paper logbook, which exists for good reasons, only answers questions you thought to ask when you designed the columns. It cannot answer "how much of this did we get through last quarter".
What Nilstock does in a laboratories store
Consumables counted, not guessed
Tips, tubes, gloves, solvents and reagents get minimum levels and a low-stock digest, so ordering happens on a threshold rather than on an empty shelf.
Instruments booked out against a project
Check an instrument out to a researcher with a project or grant code and a due date. Who has it and since when is one screen, and overdue kit chases itself.
Calibration and service dates in view
Instruments carry calibration and service dates, and the compliance view lists what is due — the thing an audit asks for, before the audit asks.
Consumption you can actually report on
Because every movement is a ledger entry with a person, a date and a reference, "what did this project consume" is a filter and an export rather than an archaeology exercise.
Replacing the logbook without losing it
The ledger is append-only and exports to CSV in full. Nothing is edited away, and you are never locked in — the whole history is one download.
All of it is the same engine everyone else gets — see the full feature list.
Questions people in this sector ask
- Do you handle lot numbers and expiry?
- The model carries batch and expiry, and the workflow around them — first-expiry-first-out issuing, expiry alerts — is on the roadmap and not built. We would rather you knew that before buying than after.
- Is this a LIMS?
- No. A LIMS manages samples, methods and results. Nilstock manages the stores: what is on the shelf, who has the instrument, and what happened. Many labs run both, and the boundary is clean.
- Is it 21 CFR Part 11 compliant?
- No, and nobody should claim it without an audit. The ledger is append-only, attributed and timestamped, which is the substance of the requirement — but the formal validation package does not exist.
- Can students and visitors take things?
- Yes. Anyone who takes something is a person on the system with a number or a badge, not a licensed user. Pricing is per site, so adding a cohort of students costs nothing.
- Can we track hazardous materials?
- Items can be flagged as hazardous and carry alternate codes, so they are visible as such at the terminal. Full COSHH register functionality is not built.
Guides worth reading first
Stock control
How to set reorder points that actually prevent stockouts
A reorder point is lead-time usage plus a buffer sized by consequence. The formula, how to get the two inputs honestly, and two worked examples.
Stock control
Cycle counting: how to stop shutting the store for stocktake
The annual stocktake is disruptive and tells you nothing you can act on. Counting a few lines weekly finds the same errors while they are explainable.
Equipment
How to stop losing tools on site without treating people like suspects
Most tools are not stolen — they are in a van or a toolbox and nobody wrote it down. What works for tool accountability, and what makes it worse.
Same engine, other sectors
Stop guessing what is in the store
Fourteen days free. Import your list, pair a tablet, and find out where things actually go. It takes about half an hour to reach a real movement.
Reagents counted, instruments tracked to a researcher, every movement logged.