Records to keep after a delivery

A delivery is finished, for the science, when a later person can see what arrived and why it was released for use. The box on the dock is not that record. This guide is the set of notes to make while the box is still identifiable: what arrived, the temperature evidence, the documents, the lot or batch identity the paperwork actually printed, where you stored it, and the acceptance check. The specification those notes refer to is written as in how to write a laboratory sourcing enquiry. The structured route for that specification is laboratory procurement.

Consumable classes sit in the laboratory consumables catalogue. Cold storage after acceptance is described in storing biological samples from fridge to freezer. Packing that uses dry ice is described in dry ice packing for sample shipments. Send questions about a future delivery through the quotation page or the contact page. University laboratories can also use academic research.

What the record is for

You are the receiver, or the person who will be asked next month which bottle was used. The decision is whether this delivery may be released, and whether the release can be explained without the original phone call. A study design that depends on a reagent is only as traceable as this file. ISO 9001 describes documented information in a quality management system. Your institution may use a lighter notebook. The content is the same: identity, condition, documents, location, and the accept or quarantine decision.

Do not invent an identity the papers do not show. If a code is not printed on a document you are holding, it is not part of this delivery's record. Describe the item in words taken from the label.

What arrived

Open the record with the physical facts. Name as printed on the outermost label and on the immediate container, if both exist. Quantity of packs, and whether any pack is missing or crushed. Seal intact or broken. Leaks, cracks, thawed appearance, or a lid that is not the lid you specified. Date and time of receipt, and the name of the person writing.

Compare that list with the specification before you put items away. A box can contain the right common name and the wrong salt, the wrong tip volume, or a brochure instead of a certificate. Those are receipt facts. Write them while the packing is still in the room. A photograph of the label is useful if your SOP allows it, and it does not replace the transcribed words, because a later reader may not open the image.

The branch: if the quantity or the description differs from the specification, mark the delivery incomplete and keep the goods apart from released stock. "Stock" here means the laboratory's released shelf, the place items go after acceptance. Do not "correct" the specification to match whatever arrived.

Temperature evidence

Temperature evidence is whatever the specification asked you to keep, plus a note when that evidence is missing. A data logger file, a strip that changed colour if that is what you required, remaining dry ice, gel packs still frozen, or a warm pack that has already come to room temperature: write which of these you observed. IATA's dangerous goods programme is a public reference for shipping rules that involve dry ice and other hazardous consignments. It does not tell you whether your enzyme was inside its storage range. Your specification does.

If the line was ambient, say so, and say that cold evidence was not required. If the line required frozen arrival and you have no logger and no remaining coolant, the evidence is "none". That word is the record. It is not a failure of paperwork to be polite about. It is the branch toward quarantine until the owner of the specification decides, in writing, whether the item can still be used. Feeling the box is not a measurement.

The documents

List the documents that were in the box or that arrived with it: packing list, certificate of analysis, safety data sheet, calibration certificate, sterility or nuclease statement. Note any document the specification asked for and that you do not have. A safety data sheet tells you hazards. It does not replace a certificate of analysis. A calibration certificate should name a procedure; NIST's laboratory metrology pages are a public reminder of that habit for instruments and volumetric tools.

File the documents with the specification, not in a general drawer of brochures. Write the date you filed them. If a document is electronic, record where it is stored so the next person is not asked to search an inbox.

Lot or batch identity as printed

The lot or batch is the string the manufacturer printed, not a code you remember from a website. Copy the characters from the container. Copy the characters from the certificate and from the packing list. Compare them character by character, including prefixes and trailing digits. If one paper has a lot and another says the lot is not stated, write "not printed" for that paper.

This is the control that catches a certificate from a different batch slipped into the wrong box. The branch is quarantine. Do not assign a lot because the packing list is blank and the vial "probably" matches. A blank is an identity you do not have yet. Ask for the missing statement, and keep the item unreleased until it arrives or until the specification's owner records an exception.

Do not transcribe a code from memory to fill a blank field in your form. The record is allowed to say that the paperwork did not print a lot. That sentence is more honest than a plausible string.

Where it was stored

After you know what it is, write where it went. Freezer, refrigerator, or ambient cupboard, identified so a stranger can find it: the room, the unit, the shelf or the box. Time placed. Person who placed it. For a frozen enzyme, the storage temperature is the one on the product document you accepted, often near −20 °C for many polymerase preparations, and sometimes different. Follow that document and the laboratory SOP. This guide does not assign a universal temperature.

If the item is quarantined, store it in a place marked as not for use, and write that place too. A quarantined bottle on the released shelf is how the record and the pipette diverge. The storage note is part of acceptance, not a housekeeping afterthought.

The acceptance check

Acceptance is the check your specification already named. Run it. Typical checks: seal intact, description matches the lines, lot characters match, required certificate is present and refers to that lot, temperature evidence is present and inside the range you named, and a simple count matches the quantity. Mark each check passed or failed. The delivery is accepted only when the failed list is empty, or when an authorised person in your institution has written an exception that names the failed line.

The branch when any check fails: leave the item in quarantine, tell the scientific owner, and keep the goods out of the method. Do not average a failed lot match with a neat seal and call the delivery good enough. One failed line is enough to hold the item.

Failure modes

The common failure is a complete-looking folder that started late. Someone files the certificate the next week and writes the storage place from memory. The lot on the certificate is then compared with a bottle that may already have been pooled with another lot. Start the record at receipt.

A second failure is copying a catalogue code from the enquiry into the receipt record when the goods did not print that code. The enquiry's code, if you had one from a document, is what you asked for. The delivery record is what arrived. If they differ, both strings stay visible. If you never had a code, the receipt record should not grow one.

A third failure is releasing goods because the study is impatient. A pilot or a cohort can wait on a quarantine. Using the bottle and backfilling the acceptance line makes the record a story about a decision you have already undone.

Safety of the unreleased item

An item in quarantine is still a chemical or a biological material. Read the safety data sheet for hazards, and keep the institution's biosafety rules in force whether or not you accept the goods. Biosafety basics for research benches separates that duty from purchasing. A certificate of analysis is not a biosafety approval, and this page is not medical advice. Do not open a damaged package of an unknown hazard on the bench to "see the lot". Follow the laboratory spill and receipt procedure.

Research-use limits travel with the specification. If the goods were requested for research, the receipt record does not convert them to a diagnostic product because a brochure used clinical words.

Power interruption and the temperature note

In a hot season, and wherever power cuts are part of ordinary laboratory life, the temperature note has a second chapter after receipt. Record the condition on the dock, and record if the freezer or refrigerator alarmed before the item was at its storage temperature. A logger that ended on the dock is evidence about transit. It is not evidence about the hour the item sat in a warm corridor during a power cut. Write that hour if it happened. The next enquiry can then ask for packing that matches the dock you actually have, using the same cold-chain thinking as dry ice packing for sample shipments, without assuming a temperate loading bay.

What to ask before the next delivery

Look at the blanks in this delivery's record. Each blank is a line for the next specification: lot printed on the certificate and the container, temperature evidence of a named kind, a document that was missing, a storage condition the sheet requires. Put those lines in the next file and send them through the quotation page or the contact page.

Keep this delivery's bundle together: specification, reply, what arrived, temperature evidence, documents, printed lot comparison, storage place, and acceptance result. That bundle is what a student, a quality reviewer, or your future self can read. A folder of brochures is not the bundle.