Best Software For Lab Inventory Management

When a critical experiment fails because of an expired reagent or a tight deadline is missed due to an unexpected stockout, the true cost of poor inventory management becomes painfully clear.

For growing laboratories, these incidents aren't just frustrating—they can derail research timelines, compromise quality control, and strain client relationships.

Somewhat surprisingly, many lab managers still turn to spreadsheets, shared documents, and traditional paper logs for inventory management. So, what's the answer to these inventory woes for modern labs? Upgrading to specialized software—specifically, LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System).

In this guide, we'll explore why effective inventory management is crucial to your lab's success. We’ll also share real examples of how leading laboratories transform their operations by making the switch to purpose-built software solutions.

Why Inventory Management Matters 

We don’t need to belabor the point that keeping an eye on supplies is important. But many labs miss that good inventory management matters for much more than simply knowing the count of reagents at any given moment.

Proper inventory management matters for labs for the following reasons:

• Safety and compliance: Good inventory management ensures proper tracking and documentation of hazardous materials and meets regulatory requirements.
• Cost control: Costs can easily run wild without proper inventory management. An accurate understanding of inventory prevents waste from expired materials and unnecessary duplicate purchases while optimizing purchasing decisions.
• Efficiency: There’s little worse than a slowdown because your lab ran out of something. Inventory management keeps experiments and tests on schedule by ensuring supplies are always available. 
• Resource optimization: You can maximize limited lab space and budget while keeping equipment properly maintained.
• Quality control: Good inventory management helps maintain material traceability through lot tracking and ensures proper storage conditions.

Clearly, inventory management is important to the success of your lab. Manual methods like pen and paper quickly become out of date (not to mention error-prone) and simply will not do.

5 Key Challenges Your Lab Will Face With Inventory Management - And How a LIMS Solves Them

As we’ve seen, spreadsheets and notebooks quickly break down for labs looking to scale their throughput or meet compliance standards. These manual methods often lead to the following key challenges:

1. Usage overlap/Poor communication
2. Manual tracking systems
3. Decentralized storage
4. Time-sensitive materials
5. Inconsistent naming/labeling

Let’s explore each challenge in more detail and show how a LIMS can help solve it.

Usage Overlap/Poor Communication

If your lab has a team of 2-3, you may get by with an Excel spreadsheet. But the minute you want to scale and have a larger staff spanning across different shifts, communication will break down.

Whether it’s a lack of clarity on who took what, a forgotten re-order of supply, miscounts, or misplaced items in a small lab, these are mere annoyances, but as your lab and throughput scales, they can be major disruptions.

A LIMS resolves this by providing centralized, real-time access with user-specific logins that track all actions and automate notifications for stock changes. Rather than relying on bumping elbows at a lab bench (or, more realistically, reaching for an empty shelf), you have a digital source of truth that serves as a record for your lab.

Error-Prone Manual Tracking Systems

Paper logs or spreadsheets are readily available, but they’re also terribly error-prone. All it takes is one person with illegible handwriting or a “fat finger,” and suddenly, your logs are worth little more than the paper they are written on.

A LIMS automates many of these manual and time-consuming data entry tasks, ensuring your logs are correct and up to date with your existing inventory.

Decentralized Storage

If your lab stores materials across locations (even within freezers, cabinets, and storage rooms in the same facility), it can be challenging to maintain accurate counts using manual methods. As discussed above, this leads to errors with downstream side effects for your staff, but running from one place to the next to verify your records can easily consume valuable hours of time.

A LIMS solves this by creating a unified view of all storage locations with precise mapping and quick search capabilities, making any item instantly locatable regardless of its location.

Time-Sensitive Materials

If your lab stores time-sensitive materials that can expire, managing these expiration dates manually quickly becomes a logistical nightmare on top of everything else we’ve already laid out.

All it takes is one incorrectly entered date or forgetting to check your logs to end up with expired reagents, which slows your lab down and increases costs. For labs that manage inventory that expires, a spreadsheet quickly becomes insufficient for proper inventory management. A LIMS can automatically monitor and alert you of expiration dates, notify you of storage conditions, and ensure first-in-first-out management of time-sensitive materials.
All of this ensures your supplies are properly managed to minimize downtime and wasted inventory.

Inconsistent Naming/Labeling

If your lab has a specific naming convention for items, whether it be abbreviations or internal lingo, this makes it difficult to track actual quantities and find materials – especially for new staff.

A LIMS enforces standardized naming conventions while maintaining searchable aliases, ensuring consistency while accommodating common variations in terminology. Once again, a LIMS serves as a digital record and source of truth that empowers your staff rather than burdens them.

Can You Use Google Sheets/Excel for Inventory Management?

It’s not that spreadsheets don’t work for labs– it’s just that they don’t work particularly well, especially if your workflows become complex or you have a distributed team.

While Excel and Google Sheets are free, they lead to:

• Manual data entry increases error risk
• No audit trail or user accountability tracking
• Lack of support for complex workflows
• Version control issues
• No connection to equipment or instruments
• Limited security features for sensitive materials

Tasks as basic as knowing the supply of a reagent quickly become much more challenging than they ought to be when you rely on spreadsheets for everything. Learn more about how a LIMS is superior to spreadsheets for lab management.

The Best Software Platform For Lab Inventory Management

Say goodbye to Excel and hello to cloud-based software–but which platform will you choose?

There are two common platforms available to labs:

• ELN (Electronic Lab Notebook): An ELN functions as an electronic version of a lab notebook, allowing you to digitize and share lab records.
• LIMS (Lab Information Management System): A LIMS is a comprehensive platform to manage your lab’s data. Think of it as a CRM for your lab: you can monitor inventory, manage samples, log test results, and integrate your lab instruments and other software platforms.

Between the two, we’d recommend a LIMS. Here’s why:

• More robust feature set: A LIMS is a much more comprehensive and complete platform for inventory management than an ELN, which functions more like an electronic version of a lab notebook.
• Automations and workflows: A LIMS supports configurable automations to automate routine tasks and workflows. From usage alerts to automatic re-ordering, you can rely on a LIMS to run in the background while your staff focuses on critical tasks.
• Built-in QMS for compliance support: For those looking to meet regulatory standards, your LIMS can integrate with or may have a built-in QMS for robust compliance support.

Which is the best LIMS for inventory management? We’d suggest QBench!

According to G2’s Top LIMS Rankings, QBench is the best LIMS in North America in 2024. QBench is flexible enough to adapt to your unique NGS workflows and automate your genomics lab to eliminate laborious manual processes and outdated, cumbersome systems.

QBench stands out with its unparalleled flexibility and robust API, which are crucial features for labs in the fast-paced genomics industry. Its no-code configurable workflows mean you can adjust processes, integrate new instruments, and adapt to regulatory changes swiftly. QBench laps the competition on the pace of product improvement by releasing product updates every three weeks, many of which are filled with new features that customers requested.

When you choose QBench, you're not just choosing a LIMS but a partnership that will grow with your lab. Keep your lab at the forefront of innovation by partnering with QBench.

Moving From Spreadsheets to LIMS: What to Expect in Making the Switch

It’s all well and good to say a LIMS is a clear winner over spreadsheets for inventory management, but is it worth the migration headache to switch off your current systems?

Definitely.

Migrating from your existing systems does not need to be a cause for concern (nor is it a reason to delay improving your inventory management for the sake of the status quo).

We break a LIMS implementation and migration into the following stages:

1. A kick-off call: This sets the stage for a successful implementation that allows your lab to hit the ground running.
2. Settings and configuration setup: We’ll review product configuration options, statuses, and custom fields in QBench to ensure you are ready to receive the data for your workflows.
3. A review of worksheets and testing: We’ll cover QBench’s worksheet engine and testing features to capture test and batch results and create calculations for Reports. This also includes Protocol Steps and Control management.
4. Reporting training: We'll walk you through how to utilize the visual template editor to create your different reports (e.g. CoA, CoC) and insert test result information from the worksheet or result fields along with other key information (e.g. order and customer information, charts).
5. ‍End-user training: After configuration is complete, we provide training to your technicians to show them how they will use QBench on a daily basis with their workflow.‍
6. Go-live: Finally, we’ll wrap things up with a final call to check in on any remaining questions and go live.

We’ve written about our LIMS implementation process to ensure you are set up for success and can hit the ground running with your new LIMS.

Ready to Choose a LIMS? Download Our Free Buyer’s Guide

If you’re ready to move beyond the manual grind of spreadsheets and select a LIMS to streamline inventory management for your lab, then download our free LIMS Buyer’s Guide to help you choose the right LIMS for your lab.

Click the button below to download the free buyer’s guide and take the first step toward improving your lab’s processes for inventory management.