Receiving and consuming inventory

A session is a bounded operation on inventory — receiving a shipment, consuming reagents during an experiment, transferring items between freezers. Sessions group dozens or hundreds of item-level changes under one transaction with one operator, one timestamp and one audit reason.

If you're handling a single item, sessions are overkill — just edit the item directly. The moment you have ten or more, sessions save time and keep the audit trail honest.

Three kinds of sessions

Receiving

A shipment arrives. You scan or paste in a list, Dalea creates items in the Staged state, and you place them into containers in one batch.

Consumption

You're running an experiment that uses many items at once. The session check-out and quantity-decrement happens together; nothing slips into a half-consumed limbo.

Transfer

Items move between containers (e.g. you reorganised freezer L-204 and now everything is in box B-12 instead of B-11). One audit event, dozens of placements.

Receiving session — a realistic example

Sigma delivers 10 vials of an anti-IFN-γ capture antibody, lot 24-119.

1. Open Inventory → Sessions → New receiving session

   Pick the item type (antibody aliquot) and add the lot number once at session level — every item in the session inherits it. Add the purchase order or invoice number for traceability.

2. Add the items

   Two ways:

   • Scan — if the supplier ships labels with barcodes, scan each one. Dalea creates an item with auto-generated SKU.
   • Paste a CSV — useful for bulk shipments. Columns: quantity, unit, expiration_date.

   The session pane shows a running list; reorder, edit, or remove rows before committing.

3. Pick a destination

   All items go to the same starting container by default (e.g. cryobox B-12 in freezer L-204). Override per-item if you're spreading the shipment across boxes. Dalea checks for position collisions on numeric- grid container types and warns before you commit.

4. Print labels

   Optional. Dalea generates Code-128 or GS1-DataMatrix labels for every item in one click. If your workspace has a configured label printer, they print directly; otherwise you get a PDF.

5. Add audit reason and commit

   "Sigma shipment 2026-04-26, PO #1234, anti-IFN-γ capture mAb 1 mg/mL, lot 24-119." Click commit. All 10 items land in the Staged state, all referencing lot 24-119, all in box B-12.

Total elapsed time: 1–2 minutes. Without a session this would be 10 separate item-creation events with the same metadata typed 10 times.

Consumption session — running an experiment

You're prepping the IFN-γ ELISA. You'll consume aliquots of the capture mAb, the detection biotin-mAb, the streptavidin-HRP, and the TMB substrate.

1. Inventory → Sessions → New consumption session

   Pick "for an experiment" and link the session to the protocol document or result batch (one or more — sessions can fan out).

2. Scan or pick the items going onto the bench

   For each item, either scan its label or click pick from the freezer view. Dalea pre-fills the quantity to consume from the item type's typical-use setting; override per row.

3. Commit

   Each item's quantity decrements. If a quantity reaches zero, the item transitions to Consumed. Items with low-stock thresholds may fire alerts (see low stock).

Now every result row in the linked batch can be queried by the lots used. "Show me all results that used antibody lot 24-119" returns the right rows in one click — invaluable when your assay drifts and you need to trace the suspect reagent.

Transfer session — reorganising a freezer

Less glamorous but the same shape. Pick the items (or a whole container of items, e.g. "everything in box B-11"), pick the destination (box B-12), confirm positions, commit. The audit log shows one event with N item moves and your optional reason ("freezer reorganisation, B-11 was full").

Low-stock alerts

Item types declare a low-stock threshold (a count or a total quantity). When a consumption session pushes a type below threshold, Dalea:

• Posts a notification to the watchers configured on the item type.
• Optionally sends an email summary to a "core facility" group address.
• Surfaces the type in the workspace home as "needs reordering".

The threshold lives on the type, not the item, so it spans across lots and locations.

Tips

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