R&S categories:

When working with a large number of reagents and consumables — across different laboratory activities and from multiple suppliers — it can quickly become difficult to locate the required product.

Defining precise categories allows laboratory staff to easily find the vial they need and process its withdrawal, or allows the inventory manager to quickly identify all 96‑well plate references.


Packaging sizes (units per carton):

Packaging information must be accurately defined for each product so that, when placing orders with suppliers, the batch quantities added to the system are correctly recorded.

If the packaging value is purely numeric, it will be used for automatic calculations.
If it contains alphanumeric characters, it will be treated as informational only.

Example:

If you purchase plastic tubes in cartons of 20 units, and you define the storage unit as a single tube rather than a carton, the packaging value should be set to 20 (not “1 carton”).
As a result, when a carton is received, the batch quantity created automatically will be 20 units.

Storage:

The simple storage option corresponds to a simple list of locations that can be attributed to the reagent record. ONLY one storage can be assigned. This list is displayed under the storage options by going to Admin > Storage > Simple Reagent Storage.

The main storage uses the general storage browser available in LabCollector. You have to create the storage facilities needed. The location is defined separately from the record, multiple locations are possible and other options too (e.g. alert min/max).

More information in our Knowledge Base KB: manage storage for Reagent & Supplies module.

Linking with a R&S record:

If a record in another module (e.g., Antibodies) is linked to a reagent record, the system can display an icon indicating this association.



Duplicate prevention:


Advanced configuration options allow you to block duplicates for the Name field from the ADMIN > Other > Record Options page.
However, product names may vary based on users or supplier catalog updates, making strict name‑based duplicate detection difficult.

For this reason, this module allows duplicate blocking based on either:

  • the supplier reference, or
  • the brand reference.

This ensures more reliable and consistent duplicate management.


More information in our Knowledge Base KB: manage storage for Reagent & Supplies module.