Chemical inventory software for UK schools and hospitals

The register keeps one row per container. A two and a half litre bottle of acetone in the flammables cabinet is one row. Six small bottles of the same chemical on a teaching shelf are recorded against their own location, so you can see that they exist and where they are.

Each row carries the chemical, its concentration, quantity and unit, the container type and size, location, received date, opened date, expiry or review date, supplier and batch, label number, owner and notes. Status runs from in use through low and expired to awaiting disposal and disposed.

Rows link to a chemical in our public database, so hazard pictograms, H and P statements and storage class come with the entry instead of being typed in. If a chemical is not listed, you can still record it as free text. It is flagged as unlisted and creates a review task.

A technician setting up a practical opens the register on a prep room PC, types the first letters of a chemical and sees every container and shelf. They take what they need from the oldest stock and adjust the quantity with a reason, such as used in lesson. That entry goes into the container's history with their name and the time.

An alert may be waiting: a bottle of diethyl ether past its opened-date threshold, or an oxidiser sharing a shelf with a flammable. The alert names the container and the location. Dealing with it is a decision for the technician, and the register records what they chose.

In a pathology lab the same screens answer a different question. Which xylene is open, on which bench, and how much formalin is waiting to go? Views can be saved, so "Awaiting disposal" or "Flammables store" is one click away the next morning.

Migration is the job that decides whether software like this gets used. The import takes an XLSX or CSV file, proposes a mapping for your columns and lets you correct it. Chemical names are then matched to the database, with a confidence shown against each match, so "Conc HCl" and "hydrochloric acid" can land on the same entry. Anything it cannot place comes across as free text for you to deal with later.

You see a preview before anything is written. The import runs as one transaction, and it can be rolled back for 24 hours if the result is wrong. A template following the column layout of CLEAPSS E233 is included for schools starting from that list.

Schools already walk their stores once a year, usually with a clipboard and a printout. Stock check mode moves that onto a phone. You pick a location, walk it and confirm or correct each item by scanning a barcode label or tapping the row. You can add what you find, flag what is missing and photograph anything unlabelled.

At the end you have a signed stock check report as a PDF and a proposed disposal list. Most technicians will recognise the problem that solves: the list of things that should go tends to sit in a drawer until the next year's check.

Department for Education guidance for schools and colleges says it is essential to keep an up-to-date inventory of hazardous chemicals and notes that the fire service will need to see it in the event of a fire. HSE expects employers with five or more staff to record their COSHH findings and review them.

So the questions are predictable. What do you hold? Where is it? What are the hazards? What did you do with the old stock? The register answers them with reports you can generate on the spot: the full register, stock by location or by storage class, a COSHH hazardous substances register, stock check history, disposal history and a consignment note archive. All of them come as PDF and XLSX. The record shows what is on your shelves and what the paperwork says. It does not make a judgement on your behalf.

When stock has to go, you select the rows and build a disposal request from them. Box 4 arranges collection through registered hazardous waste carriers and handles the quote, the paperwork and the invoice. The quote comes back as one price with itemised lines, and accepting it creates a pre-filled consignment note.

Once the signed documents are back, the items move to disposed with the note attached. That closes the loop a spreadsheet leaves open, because the row now shows when the bottle left and under which note.

Plans are set up around how establishments are organised. The School plan covers a single site. The Trust plan adds a dashboard and roll-up reporting across three or more schools. University and research plans are per department, with multi-lab locations and principal investigator ownership. The Hospital and healthcare plan adds HTM 07-01 waste streams and departmental collections. Sector detail is on the pages for schools, trusts, universities and hospitals and pathology. Prices are on the pricing page.

The register does not make your COSHH assessment for you. It can produce a draft entry from hazard data, marked as a draft, and your competent person decides whether it is right.

It does not hold CLEAPSS Hazcard text or supplier safety data sheet prose. Hazard data comes from PubChem and the ECHA C&L inventory, with the source and retrieval date stored, and your supplier's safety data sheet remains the document to check.

It does not show supplier names or prices in the app. The one exception is what the law requires on a consignment note, which shows the carrier and the consignee at the document stage.

The AI assistant makes suggestions. Each one is labelled as a suggestion and nothing reaches the register until a person confirms it.

The full list of what the software will do is on the features page. What we hold, where it is hosted and the certifications we do not have are set out on the security page.