• Chemical inventory

  The inventory is easy to populate by registering chemicals with a single safety record to be created for each particular chemical. Tools to import existing chemical data are also available on demand. To help with populating the inventory the system provides automatic parsing of Globally Harmonised System (GHS) compatible material safety data sheets for the most common suppliers. There are also manual tools which allow composition of new chemical safety records.
  A searchable list of chemicals available to the user is available from the user's home page. Chemicals can be searched by sub/structure, name, CAS numbers or location. Each chemical has a unique barcode which allows location of the chemical and associated safety record instantly. Chemicals have associated visibility scope – group, department, or site. This helps with sharing chemicals within the given visibility scope.

  Stock control

  Basic stock control features include assigning chemical expiry dates that allow simple location of chemicals that need be be inspected or disposed. Batch operations tool can also simplify some of the routine stock control tasks like transferring or disposing chemicals.
  More advanced tools are available with the order generation and internal stores module.

• Emergency response

  One of the most important features the system provides is the emergency reports that summarise the safety hazards at any particular location with visual map interface helping to quickly locate adjacent locations. The reports account for all chemicals disregarding their visibility scope. The offline versions of these reports are also available and can be scheduled to be generated and e-mailed at regular intervals.
  Each chemical, storage cabinet, location and building can be associated with an emergency contact that can be quickly located by simply scanning the chemical barcode.

• Safe chemical storage

  When a chemical is requested for transfer between storage cabinets, the system will analyse the destination cabinet for any incompatibilities - such as incompatible chemical classes, chemical groups, particular chemicals or storage requirements and will highlight any of the discovered incompatibilities which would disallow the transfer of the chemical.

• Tracking and reporting

  The system records chemical relocations and disposal so that the complete history of the chemical lifetime is recorded. It is possible to set up triggers and associate them with e-mail lists for the particular action - purchase/registration, use, transfer, disposal.

• Protocols and experiment planning

  'Experiment planning' is a tool that is in particular useful for experiments running overnight - the user can specify emergency contacts, what to do with the experiment in the case of an emergency and what central supplies (e.g. water, power) affect the experiment. This tool also is useful for the stock control since when running the experiment the chemical stock is updated.

  For experiments that must be performed according to protocols - the online protocols can be used as an experiment template. This saves time on COSHH assessment and provides information on how the particular experiment should be executed. This tool is in particular useful for students or visitors to the laboratory.

• Categorised chemicals

  This feature allows associating chemicals with particular categories and later create reports regarding the stock or stock take of these chemicals. In particular useful for submitting the scheduled chemicals return.

• Storage analysis

  This tool helps with the analysis of any particular storage cabinet for incompatible materials. An essential tool for safety inspections in any laboratories.

• Safety training

  Labsafe provides all the necessary tools to record the user safety training users have completed and to monitor and store research project progress.

• Purchasing

  Each active purchase is another way to populate the inventory. There are several reasons to use this module that include finer control to access to particular chemicals, expenditure reports and more.

  Any purchase order progress follows from Submitted to Authorised then to Purchased and finally Delivered. Once the order is authorised there is a potential process of negotiating - it can be bounced for updating and resubmitted after the review. There email triggers on the order submission (require authorisation) and delivery (require collection). Also, if any of the purchased items either categorised or on the purchase watch list - people on the associated email lists are notified when the order is authorised.

• Local stores shop

  If there is a local stores shop on site - it can also be included into the system to ensure that the financial reports are accurate. This module provides its own tools for stock control and stock level notifications.

The asset management can be linked with the purchasing module, but also can be as a standalone module. Besides any information about the purchase, the system can hold extra information about the assets - such as deprecation cost, cross-reference codes, serial number, model and other information . Assets also can have associated photographs, notes and any other documents.

The asset module provides comprehensive tools to perform auditing and internal laboratory inspections such as portable appliance testing (PAT) as well as to estimate the potential insurance costs.

As an example of the possible LIMS, Labsafe currently supports submission, handling and deposition of crystallographic samples. The deposited structures can be searched by cell parameters and volume as well by their metadata and a selection of values in the deposited crystallographic files (CIF) such as space group, Z prime values, instrument used for the data collection and many others.
Reports regarding the number of submission and experiment status over a given period of time are readily available for departmental reporting and the key performance indicators assessment.

• Mobile application

  Labsafe has an Android mobile application which allows users to scan a barcode and locate quickly the chemical safety record or the asset record. For chemicals it also offers transfer and dispose actions. The user needs an account in Labsafe in order to access it through this mobile application.

• Internal workshops (e.g. electrical, mechanical, glassblowing)

  It is possible to setup the application so that it allows users to process internal workshop orders with the similar steps of authorisation when orders bypass some PI defined threshold. This is also useful for getting accurate financial reports that are available for the users.

• Financial reports

  The system provides PIs with tools to asses instantly their accounts' expenditures. Stores staff and administrators can run the reporting tool on all of the available accounts and generate combined report with all costs split into relevant categories - external purchase, delivery, internal stores categories, internal workshops. This is an invaluable tool for administrators of all levels.

• Automated expenditure control

  The system provides global funding account expenditure limits and expenditure limits on per-user basis. This helps with preventing accidental over-spending and controlling shared accounts more effectively.