Every item and every storage location in Labsistant belongs to somebody. That ownership decides who can use it, and it is the reason your shared inventory does not turn into a free-for-all.
There are three kinds of ownership, and they work the same way for items and for locations. An item can also have a manager, which sits on top of its ownership and is covered below.
The three kinds
| Ownership | Belongs to | Who can use it |
|---|---|---|
| Personal | One person | Only that person |
| Group | One group | Members of that group |
| Lab (shared) | The whole lab | Everyone in the lab |
You choose this when you add an item, in the Ownership field, and when you create a location, in the Location Type field.
The manager
Ownership says who an item belongs to. A manager is the one person to ask before anyone takes from it. An item has at most one manager, and none is required.
- Set a manager on the item names one. Change manager swaps or clears them. Every change is in the Audit Log, and when the PI steps in over somebody else's manager the dialog also asks for an optional reason, which goes into the record.
- A managed item cannot be used without the manager's approval, whoever owns it. That includes the members of the group that owns it, and the PI in the normal course of things. The manager takes from it freely. Moving it to another location needs no approval, because moving is not taking.
- Who can appoint one follows the ownership. On a personal item it is the owner, and anyone else is refused with "Only the owner can appoint a manager for a personal item". On a group item, a member of the owning group or the PI appoints. On shared lab stock, only the PI appoints. Once a manager is in place, the current manager or the PI changes or clears them, and on a personal item the owner can too.
- If a manager has left or cannot be reached, the PI can change the manager, or use Reassign this item to move it and set a new owner in one step. Both are overrides, recorded in the item's history with the PI's name on them.
Setting a manager is how a group tightens from "any of us can hand it out" to "only one of us hands it out". Clearing the manager loosens it back.
The rule in one line
An item is out of reach for one of three reasons: it is someone else's personal item, it belongs to a group you are not in, or it has a manager who is not you. Everything else is yours to use.
"Use" means edit it, consume it, pull from it, derive from it, or move it. Anything that changes the item. When an item has a manager, the actions that would take from it are not offered to you. In their place the item says Managed by and the manager's name, then "Ask them for it."
See it, do not take it
This is the part that surprises people, and it is deliberate.
You can always see that a colleague's personal item exists. Its name, its quantity, and its expiry are all visible to the whole lab. That is the point of a shared inventory: you should be able to find out that the lab has some of what you need, even if the bottle is not yours.
What you cannot do is take it, or see where it is kept. For another person's personal item, and for a group's item when you are outside the group:
- The actions that would change it are not offered to you.
- The storage location is hidden, and shows as Private location instead. Where somebody keeps their own stock is their business, and a group's shelf is the group's business.
Your own items are never hidden from you. Neither are the items of a group you are in, or shared lab stock, whether or not they have a manager. Two exceptions apply. The PI sees every location in the lab, because the PI is accountable for all of it. And someone whose request for the item has been approved sees where it is from the approval until they pull from it or the approval expires, so they can go and collect what they were promised.
Asking for something that is not yours
When you find an item you cannot take, you are not stuck. Open it and use Request item.
- Open the item from the Inventory page.
- Choose Request item. The dialog names who the request goes to.
- Enter the Quantity you need, or leave it blank.
- Optionally add a Note.
- Click Send request.
The request goes to the item's manager if it has one. Otherwise it goes to the owner, or to every member of the owning group, any one of whom can answer it. They can approve it, deny it, or, if they own it, hand it over to you. An approval is good for one pull and expires unused after 14 days. This is the intended path: ask the person, rather than quietly helping yourself. How the other side answers, and what an approval lets you do, is in Requests: ask for an item, answer a request.
Groups
Groups are sub-teams inside your lab, for when something should be shared with some people but not everyone. A project team, a sub-lab, a bench.
- Manage them from Groups in the sidebar.
- A PI assigns members to groups, either when inviting someone or later by editing the user.
- Group-owned items and locations are usable by every member of that group and by nobody else.
Groups need the Team plan or higher. If Groups is missing from your sidebar, that is why.
Filtering by ownership
Both the Inventory page and the Storage page have the same scope tabs: All, Lab, Group, and Personal. Use them to answer "what does the lab have" separately from "what is mine".
The Storage page also splits its list into Lab Locations, Group Locations, and Personal Locations sections.
Public and private locations
Lab-owned locations carry one more setting on top of ownership: Public visibility, which makes the location visible to all lab members. It appears on the create form only when the Location Type is Lab. A location's detail page shows it as either Public, meaning visible to all lab members, or Private, meaning limited access.
Ownership decides who can put things in a location and manage it. Visibility decides who can see that it exists at all.
Private locations need the Team plan or higher.
Changing who owns something
Use Transfer Ownership on the item.
- Open the item and choose Transfer Ownership.
- Pick where it is going: My Inventory, a Group, Shared (Lab-wide), or Hand off to a member.
- If you are handing off to a member, choose the recipient. You can hand off part of the quantity by entering an amount, or leave it blank for all of it.
- Click Transfer Ownership.
Every transfer is recorded in the Audit Log. Who can read that record follows the ownership at the time of the transfer: handing a personal item to the lab produces an entry the whole lab can see, while the item's earlier personal history stays between the previous owner and the PI. A new owner starts with the item's shared history, not the previous owner's private one.
Who sees an item's history
The Audit Log and the activity feeds follow the same ownership idea as the items themselves. Each entry is visible to the people the event concerns:
| Activity about | Who sees it |
|---|---|
| Shared lab items and locations | Everyone in the lab |
| A group's items, locations and membership | That group's members, and the PI |
| Someone's personal items and private locations | That person, and the PI |
| Lab management: invites, role changes, removals, settings | The PI. The one exception is accepting an invite, which the whole lab sees |
Two things are always true on top of that table:
- You always see activity you performed yourself, whoever the item belongs to. Leaving a group never erases your own past actions from your view.
- The PI sees everything. The Audit Log is the lab's accountability record, and it would not be one if parts of it were hidden from the person responsible for the lab.
The usage and cost reports follow the same rule: your charts are built from the activity you can see, and the PI's figures are complete. If a colleague's total looks different from yours, that is the reason, not a bug.
A practical suggestion
Default to Shared Lab Stock for anything the lab bought communally, and reserve Personal for things that genuinely are one person's: a sample you are responsible for, an aliquot you prepared for your own run. An inventory where everything is personal is one where nobody can find anything.
Ownership applies to storage as well as to items, so Create a storage location covers the same choice for a shelf or a freezer, and Invite your team covers who is in the lab to share with in the first place. Personal locations need a paid plan, which the plan comparison sets out.