Entering and updating the data your lab inventory is a tedious process.
Lab Spend can now autofill millions of inventory fields. Simply start entering your item details as usual. If there’s an item match in the Lab Spend system, you have the option of selecting to have the information autofilled.
Here’s an example from product requests, you will see an item selection as you type and once selected item fields will be populated:
You have better things to do than inventory data entry and we’re excited to help!
Need an alternative to Quartzy? Today’s lab managers are utilizing lab management and inventory software to help their labs running smoothly. Lab management software has numerous benefits compared to traditionally tracking tasks by hand or using Excel. In this post, we help you decide between Quartzy and Lab Spend for lab management.
Business Model
Feature Description
Quartzy
Lab Spend
Starting Price
Free
Free
Paid Features
$$$
None, complete access
Business Model
Distributor
Distributor
Product Prices
Yes
Save ~15% (see below)
Additional Shipment Fees
Yes
No
Personal Customer Service Rep.
No
Yes
Products and Brands for Sale
Many
Many More
-Access to Sigma Aldrich
Yes
Yes
-Access to VWR
No
Yes
-Access to Fisher Scientific
No
Yes
-Access to Thomas Scientific
No
Yes
How is Lab Spend able to save labs money compared to Quartzy?
The two main methods are that Lab Spend does not warehouse the products. This reduces the costs associated with renting or buying a warehouse along with the staff to process shipments. We also ship directly from manufacturers to your lab reducing shipping costs (direct instead of the manufacturer to warehouse to you). Finally, by shipping direct, we reduce a point of possible errors, for example, wrong sized items or not enough units along with maintaining product quality since products may not be stored correctly or compromised in transit.
Lab Management
Feature Description
Quartzy
Lab Spend
Permission Levels
Two
Seven
Single View Layout
No
Yes
Spend Codes
Basic
Advanced
Lab Spend shows all your management in a single screen instead of multiple so you don’t have to click back and forth to find out the status of an item. Quartzy uses only two permission levels which are admin and normal user. However, lab management software needs to be flexible so handle many types of use cases. For example in an academic setting you many want to undergraduates to be able to view the site, but not order. You may want only one graduate student to be able to order. Lab Spend has seven different permission settings that can be mixed and matched to help your lab run smoothly. In addition, Lab Spend has a clean modern design developed with the latest web technology allowing software to more responsive.
Lab Inventory
Feature Description
Quartzy
Lab Spend
Location Nesting
Two Levels
Unlimited
Location Updates on Site
No
Yes
Customized Search
No
Yes
Multiple Freezer Box Layouts
No
Yes
Advanced Item Auto-complete
No
Yes
Advanced Barcoding
No
Yes
EPA Reporting
No
Yes
Inventory Map
No
Yes
Item Checkout
No
Yes
GHS Pictograms
No
Yes
Item Tagging
No
Yes
Filter by Items with SDS
No
Yes
Filter by Items with CofA
No
Yes
Filter by Location and/or Tags
No
Yes
Bulk Export SDSs and CofAs
No
Yes
Facility Inventory
No
Yes
Quartzy limits your item location to only two levels, but what does that mean in practice? This means you can have an item be placed in Room 24 -> Bay 2 and that’s it. Lab Spend allows for unlimited nesting although for clarity often 4 to 5 levels is sufficient. This allows you to better describe the location of item such as Room 24 -> Bay 2 -> Shelf 3 -> Right Side or Bay 3 -> Freezer 1 -> Self 2 -> Rack 4. As you can imagine, two levels are not enough and Quartzy users can find themselves creating awkward naming schemes to try to stay organized. Your lab inventory should be designed for your needs not you adjusting to it.
Customized search options allow you flexibility in finding items in your inventory. This is very helpful since you may call items by a different name or simply search with the plural. For example, some labs call it a scale while others call it a balance, it’s helpful to have an inventory that can adapt.
Inventory mapping is unique to Lab Spend and it is great especially for new lab members as often locations are named for objects or projects that is unknown to new members. For example, we talk with labs that refer to a place as the microscope room, but if you don’t know where the microscope is then you can’t find it. We’ve solved this allowing you to map your inventory so anyone can search for an item and see where it is located in your lab.
Do all you have all your chemical SDSs on file?
It’s a simple question and with Quartzy you have to find, view, and open each item. In Lab Spend, you have a easily filter in seconds. You can also do this with certification of analysis documents. The result is saved time and better safety compliance.
Unique Tools
Feature Description
Quartzy
Lab Spend
Chemical Search Engine
No
Yes
Pricing Search Engine
No
Yes
The Chemical Search Engine in Lab Spend allows you to search across more than 100 companies based in the USA at once. This saves time searching multiple sites separately and allows you to quickly compare sizes and pricing.
What’s a good price on a give product?
Lab Spend uniquely can provide pricing insights into the chemical, supplies and equipment your lab is purchasing. Often compared to Kelly Blue Book for cars, Price Search allows you to gain insights into the market price on a given item.
Enter a catalog number and a pricing histogram is returned allowing you to make a better informed purchasing decision for you lab.
The features of Quartzy and Lab Spend will evolve over time as both companies evolve their offerings. We would encourage you to reach out (email: support@labspend.com) for a personal demo of Lab Spend.
How researchers describe locations in a lab or building can be unclear. This is especially apparent in transition periods such as on boarding new hires, joining a lab yourself or moving an existing lab.
To solve this problem, Lab Spend now allows you to map your inventory
To get started, upload an image of your lab, freezer, refrigerator or more! Once uploaded go to: Inventory -> Manage -> Map
Creative labs have used images that include safety information such as eye wash stations, chemical showers and the location of gas valves.
Next, simply click from your existing locations on to the image to place a pin.
Inventory Map without pins:
Inventory Map with pins:
Need to move your freezer? No problem, you can update the pins with just a couple of clicks.
Once the locations have been placed, item location paths can be clicked to show their location.
Now anyone in the lab can search for item in your inventory then see where it is physically located in the lab.
How can we help your lab run better? It’s a question we’re always asking! Today, we’re excited to announce a new inventory module that’s free to use.
Lab Spend Inventory Module (don’t worry it’s easier to read full screen)
Our initial focus has been on procurement through a unique marketplace (it’s how we save your lab money), chemical and pricing search engines. Below, we’ve outlined just a couple of reasons we’ve added inventory to Lab Spend.
Save Time
Most labs are currently using a mixture of Excel and shared folders with PDF files to manage their inventory and safety data sheets (SDS). Until now, it’s been one of best solutions, but it has drawbacks such as being difficult to search, share and maintain. Due to these problems, research labs will usually dedicate two or more days each year updating their inventories. This is not only a loss in productivity, but also a compliance concern the inventory drifts over the course of a year (or longer!).
Inventory is a natural progression within Lab Spend. Currently, you make a request, which is ordered then received and that item enters your inventory.
Once in your inventory, you can add SDS, certification of analysis files and more depending on the type of product. For example, chemicals you can add CAS numbers while equipment has service and calibration notifications. Notice that by setting up notifications your lab keeps you up to date instead of trying to remember everything.
Location
A drag and drop user interface allows you to easily stay organized. Need to move a box of plasmids between freezers? Easy enough just drag and drop!
What’s more, you can now create multiple sub-locations in your inventory system. For example in the above image displays: Lab -> Bay2 -> Freezer -> Box1, which allows for flexibility and specificity for more complicated inventory needs.
Locations can also be used as a filter to help you find items in your lab. You know an item is in your freezer, but unsure where – click on the Freezer location and only the items within that freezer will be displayed.
Speaking of freezers, we have special layouts such as freezer boxes that is a grid layout, which you can set whether that’s 3×9 or 25×25.
Freezer Box (or grid layout), 9×9
Tags
Tagging allows for many options when location, filtering and sorting don’t quite work.
Flexible Tagging System
Tag items by project, unique attributions such as HAZMAT, acid or base, expired items or perhaps an item that you borrowed from another lab. You can also instantly filter tags by clicking on them. You need multiple tags on a single item? No problem.
Search, Sort and Filter
Quickly (did we mention we’re using the latest web development technology so your results are really fast) locate your lab supplies and chemicals by name, quantity, type, date added, date updated, payment status and more! You can use filtering and sorting in combination to easily find the item you need.
What chemicals are in my lab that don’t have a SDS file? You can now find out in seconds.
We hope this short overview gives you an idea of why we’re excited and think you should be as well! Site is free to use, sign up at Lab Spend.
Procuring Lab Supplies Internationally to Save Money
Everyday researchers use Lab Spend to find savings on the products their lab needs.
We’ve discussed basics on how to save on lab supplies if you want to negotiate with supplier and manufactures. However, today we want to discuss a technique that most labs don’t consider which is to order internationally. We’re based in the USA therefore in this example we will explore buying items in Canada.
Currently the exchange rate between US dollars (USD) and Canadian dollars (CAD) is 1.29.
This means that if a supplier is offering a product for $10 in the USA then it should cost $12.90 in Canada, but this is not always the case. Scientific suppliers list products with significant pricing discrepancies even when you consider exchange rate.
Let’s look at some examples:
VWR is offering Holmium triiodide, 25 grams for $1,149 USD therefore it should be $1,482.21 in CAD.
As you can see, if you are based in Canada then you would paying about 35% more or $636.05 than the exchange rate would suggest verse ordering in the USA.
This chemical is also non-hazardous therefore the shipping cost will not make up the difference.
Fisher Scientific offers Disposable Animal Feeding Needles that have a list price of $410 USD using the exchange rate this product should sell for $528.90 CAD.
However, this product has a list price of only $277.13 CAD, which is $214.44 USD. The savings when comparing the item in USD would be $410 verse $214.44 resulting in a savings of $195.56 or about 63%.
In these examples, we are comparing list prices which may differ from your account price. We are excluding shipping costs, but the savings can more than make up of the difference. As a reference, a package that ships ground within the USA for $15 would be about $35 to Canada.
At Lab Spend, we analyze a lot of pricing on scientific supplies and chemicals. Labs, distributors and manufactures sometimes ask us what are some good resources to find chemical and product prices.
Welcome to the thrilling world of cleaning data, a good place to get started is to write down all the prices from supplier catalogs. You can request or view them from large distributors such as VWR or Fisher Scientific on line or have them mailed to your lab. Next write down all the information you need about each product such as name, quantity and list price. Using the Fisher catalog as an example, you should end up with about 30,000 products with the total list prices summing to $8.5 million. As you probably already know scientific supplies are not usually purchased based on the list price. To get a better idea of what labs are actually paying, request pricing information from public institutions or look for contracts that are being used such as the NASPO Value Point contract. For example, here is a link to the VWR contract from the NASPO Value Point contract, which lists the discount from list price.
A section of the 6 page discount table is shown above, next locate the category that your product of interest belongs too in the discount table, subtract the discount and the result will give you an idea of what researchers are actually paying. You should keep in mind that prices and discounts do change over time. We built a pricing search engine for scientific lab supplies within Lab Spend that you can use for free, just in case making your search engine looks time consuming and not that exciting.
Save Money by Using the Lab Spend Pricing Search Engine
Kayak, Zillow, TrueCar and many other websites have made it easier for people to comparison shop.
Each of these websites has a specialty such as travel, homes or cars.
At Lab Spend, we’ve built a pricing search to help with scientific lab supplies, equipment and chemicals.
It’s easy to use, just enter a catalog number and a price distribution is returned, here’s an example for parafilm:
Instantly, you now have an idea of what the market is paying for a particular item. As you can see from the image above, it is common for labs to purchase a roll of parafilm for about $20. What is also worth noting is that they’re labs paying 3x (~$66) for the same product. Use Lab Spend to ensure it’s not your lab that is paying waaaay too much! Learn from the mistakes of other labs.
You can now leverage this pricing knowledge to see if what you are paying is fair. If your pricing isn’t great, send us a quote in Lab Spend or reach out to manufactures or distributors for better pricing. We value educated customers, try asking your current sales representatives for the price range that they charge for a product.
Historically, it’s been painful to know if you are getting a good price. Often times labs have a single person whether that it is a principle investigator, lab manager or graduate student that does the ordering. This person gains experience and knowledge about products and pricing, but other lab members often miss out. We’re making this process easier as we would rather have scientists doing research or lab manager focused on more important activities than comparison shopping. By using Lab Spend even lab members which are removed from the procurement process can quickly get a since of how much supplies cost, reducing the amount of time (ie. experience) needed to make wise purchasing discussions.
Recently, Nature published an article entitled, “How to start a lab when funds are tight” by Elie Dolgin. We’re always excited to see more attention on the importance of comparison shopping for scientific research and supplies.
The article mentions, parafilm, which is used in nearly all research labs, from the article, “On Amazon, a $100 roll of paraffin film sells for around $25.” We mentioned lab shopping on Amazon in the past and it’s nice to see them emerging as a competitive vendor. However, the data from Lab Spend is showing that researchers are paying on average $22 per a roll, which is a 12% savings.
Price Distribution, Parafilm, Catalog Number PM996:
The data shows that some labs are paying under $14 per a roll which is about a 45% savings from $25 as mentioned in the article. A scientist or lab manager thinks that paying 75% from list price ($100 verse $25) is a great deal unaware that others are paying even less. This pricing difference largely occurs since the pricing of scientific products is not transparent, which we are fixing. Also it is time consuming for researchers to comparison shop and contact sales reps.
The article mentions Paul Bracher using negotiating tactics with sales reps. Paul was purchasing a mass spectrometer that he didn’t need it right away. Contacted a number of vendors with his pricing and waited. Months later, a sales representative offered the instrument for almost as low a price as Bracher had initially offered. Negotiating matters, mass spectrometers can easily be more than $100,000 therefore he likely saved tens of thousands of dollars.
This line from the article made me smile…
“Besides, there’s often no need for aggressive negotiation tactics; most suppliers will accommodate reasonable requests to secure the business of a newly hired faculty member, notes Lisa Witte, president of Fisher Scientific, a lab-supply company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.”
Of course a person in sales is going to tell you not to negotiate aggressively with them. We see the best method is to attain multiple quotes, which is why at Lab Spend, product requests are sent to multiple manufacturers and distributors. It will also be interesting to see if companies like Amazon will make negotiating obsolete by listing a competitive price for their products.
The article goes on to mention the New Lab Start-Up Programs offered by Fisher, MilliporeSigma and VWR offer something similar so new PIs don’t have to negotiate. We often come across labs that are in a so called ‘special program’ such as New Lab or Academic pricing, please actually compare the prices and wary of them changing. We disagree with this approach and as an experiment (hey, we’re scientists) take the new lab pricing and email your sales rep. asking for 10% less on 5 items. Although 10% may not seem like a lot on smaller products, it can add up as most new labs have start six figure start up budgets. Also search for products on Lab Spend which has a pricing search engine to help you know if you’re getting a fair price.
At Lab Spend, our data is showing a steady increase in the number of products that labs are purchasing from Amazon. This increase has mostly been for office supplies such as printer ink, batteries, cleaning supplies and not lab focused items. Amazon lists many of their scientific supplies, chemicals and equipment in their Industrial and Scientific section, which has existed for a number of years.
As the leader in scientific pricing, we are constantly comparing product offerings taking into account quality, stock and pricing to name a few. Amazon being the leader in consumer online shopping is always worth exploring. Prime Day on Amazon is currently their largest single volume day since it is known to offer special deals and promotions. We thought it would be a good time to compare their offerings on lab products.
Although $46.75 is less than the current list price from VWR of $71.08, it is not competitive compared to what researchers are actually paying as the average pricing is about $19. This means that Amazon is charging more than double what a lab would expect to pay.
The current list price from Globe Scientific for their 10ml serological pipettes is $65.60 and therefore are aggressively pricing on Amazon. However, the average price of what researchers are paying is closer to $30 so not yet competitive the average research lab. The pricing distribution show above represents what labs should expect to pay across the industry for 10ml serological pipettes and not this exact product.
The list price from Celltreat is $142 for their 50ml centrifuge tubes and therefore like Globe Scientific is listing products for less on Amazon. This centrifuge pricing is just on the cusp of what an average lab pays. Again this pricing distribution represents what labs should expect to pay for an equivalent 50ml centrifuge tubes and not this exact product.
Sigma Aldrich (Millipore Sigma) also has some products listed on Amazon, but they are more expensive when compared to their website.
For now, Amazon is not offering competitive prices compared to Fisher Scientific, VWR, Millipore Sigma and other major scientific distributors. The most competitive area for Amazon other than office supplies is in basic general labs supplies such as those used in a high school or undergraduate research labs such as nylon brushes and basic glassware. For example, VWR and Fisher have a 12 packs of nylon brushes for about $25 while Amazon has 20 for only $10. It has not escaped us that companies maybe trying to target different customer segments with their pricing and don’t want to compete with research labs through Amazon.
Since you or your lab manager have limited time to comparison shop, we recommend still focusing on lab suppliers and attaining multiple quotes. If need help knowing if your lab is paying a fair price, feel free to use our free pricing search engine within Lab Spend.
Congrats! You’ve taken the time to set up accounts to buy lab supplies from various scientific distributors. Often by setting up an account, your pricing is less than the list price. What you may not realize is that your account pricing can be greater than the list price.
The images above, show a $45.05 or 24% increase in the signed in price compared to the list price. This is aggravating since it means logging off and on to check if your price has increased or decreased compared to the list price.
In other cases such as in the image above, it is easy to see that your price is greater than the list price (List price $215.26 and Your price $255.00). In most instances, the price is lower, but it’s another pricing trick that labs don’t usually consider.
