Lab Manager

Keep track of equipment, organise school lab rooms and request what you need for a practical. This guide takes you from your first inventory item to an approved booking.

1. Open your lab

Sign in to your Workspace and choose Lab Manager in the sidebar.

• Individual Teacher plan: use a private inventory and prepare equipment plans for assignments.
• School plan: teachers share one inventory, with separate Rooms and Requests tabs.
• Students: see the resource summary on their assigned work. They cannot browse the inventory or manage bookings.

School teachers can add and edit inventory and rooms. School admins and appointed lab technicians approve requests and delete rooms or inventory items. See school setup for time zones and technician roles.

2. Add inventory

1. In Inventory, choose Add item and enter an Item name.
2. Add a Capacity if useful, such as 250 mL for a beaker. Add notes or a link to an instruction manual if you have one.
3. Enter Tags, separated by commas. Use the colour square beside a tag to choose its colour.
4. Enter where the stock is kept: Storage room and Storage area, such as a cupboard or shelf.
5. Enter the Quantity and, if needed, Units. Set the condition and optional purchase date. Choose Add more locations for stock kept elsewhere.
6. Choose Add item to save.

Each storage row has its own units. You can record 20 g in a teaching lab and 5 kg in a store. Plot45 keeps these quantities separate and does not convert between them.

Add a photo to an item

1. Open the item from the inventory table and choose Add photo.
2. Choose a JPEG, PNG or WebP image of up to 20 MB. Plot45 makes a smaller copy for the item.
3. Use Replace photo to choose a different picture. Use the trash button and confirm to delete the photo.

A small photo icon beside an inventory item's name shows that it has a saved photo. Photos are separate from AI import and are not sent to OpenAI. People with access to the lab can see its item photos. Deleting a photo does not remove the item or change its quantities.

Import an existing inventory

Choose Import inventory, then choose AI import to read an existing CSV, TSV, Excel, Word or PDF stock document. Choose Import from template for bulk additions using Plot45's Excel or CSV columns. Template imports do not use AI credits. Both routes let you review proposed items and their source before confirming additions. Follow the inventory import guide for preparation, long documents, selection and safe retries.

3. Find and update stock

Search by item name, tag or item ID. Use the tag, storage room and storage area filters to narrow the list. Select a column heading to sort it. Clear filters removes the search and all three filters, returns to the first page and keeps your chosen sort.

1. Open an item to inspect its details, then choose Edit.
2. Update its details or storage rows. Use a row's trash button to remove that storage entry.
3. Choose Save changes. Choose Cancel to leave without saving the edit.

Keep each row's condition accurate. Stock marked Broken or Needs repair is excluded from bookable quantities. If stock units are already used by a reservation, close the reservation before changing those units.

Delete an inventory item

A school admin or lab technician can open an item and choose its trash button. A private teacher can delete their own items. Check the item name in the confirmation, then choose Delete item. Cancel or Escape leaves it unchanged.

Deleting removes the item, its stock and its photo from the inventory. Past booking records keep their details. Pending or Approved bookings that have not ended block deletion. The confirmation lists these bookings. Private teachers must first remove the item from any current assignment equipment plan.

Stock edits must also leave enough usable equipment for Pending and Approved bookings. Removing surplus stock or moving it between storage locations is allowed. Reducing stock below what is held, or marking too much as Broken or Needs repair, is refused.

4. Manage school rooms

In a school lab, open the Rooms tab.

1. Choose Add room.
2. Enter the room name and location. Choose a colour from the palette to identify the room in booking lists.
3. Save the room. Use its Edit button when its details change.

Choose a room name to open its calendar. Select a day to see exact booking times in the school time zone. Hollow markers show Pending holds; filled markers show Approved bookings. Use the month control, Previous month, Next month or Today to move through the calendar. Choose Add request from a day to start a request for that room.

A room booked for teaching is separate from the place equipment is stored. You can request a practical in one room using equipment from another.

A storage label matching exactly one current room is linked automatically, ignoring case and surrounding spaces. Adding a room also connects existing matching stock. Renaming a linked room updates its active stock labels. Its colour and name refresh in an open inventory when you return to the tab or within a minute. An open edit is preserved until you close it. Ambiguous room names remain unlinked.

Delete a room

A school admin or lab technician can use the room's trash button and confirm deletion. Any stock row linked to that room must first be moved or removed, even if its quantity is zero. Upcoming or ongoing Pending and Approved bookings must also be moved or closed. The dialogue lists dependencies that prevent deletion. Earlier booking records keep the original room name.

Renaming a room or item updates its name in future Pending and Approved bookings. Names stay fixed once a booking starts or closes. Renaming keeps the booking's time, quantities, units and approval. A booking editor opened before a rename must be reopened before saving.

5. Request a room and equipment

1. Open Requests and choose Add request.
2. Enter a Practical title. Choose a Requested room, or enter another location if appropriate.
3. Optionally add a class label and the number of students.
4. Set the start and end times. Both use the school's time zone, even when you travel. A new request cannot start in the past.
5. Use Find equipment to select items, their saved units and the quantities you need.
6. Choose Send request.

6. Approve or change requests

A school admin or lab technician reviews Pending requests and chooses Approve or Decline. Availability is checked when a request is saved and again on approval. A conflicting request is refused without changing the existing bookings.

Pending and Approved requests hold equipment for their interval. These holds do not permanently subtract stock from the inventory.

• Withdraw: a teacher can withdraw their own Pending request.
• Cancel booking: closes an Approved request and releases its reservation.
• Return to pending: an admin or technician returns the request for reconsideration while keeping its room and equipment held. Approving again runs fresh availability checks.

Teachers manage their own requests; admins and technicians can manage school requests. Changing an approved request's resources requires confirmation and returns it to Pending. A closed request cannot be reopened; create a new request instead.

7. Plan resources in an assignment

1. Create or edit an assignment. Choose a saved room in Location, or type another teaching location.
2. Find equipment and enter each quantity in its saved units.
3. For a school booking, enter start and end times. Add a class label and headcount if useful.
4. Save the draft or publish the assignment as usual.

Saving a draft can create a Pending request visible to school colleagues. Your private teaching instructions stay inside the assignment. Publishing gives the selected students their brief and resource summary; it does not approve the booking.

Editing instructions alone keeps an existing approval. Changing approved resources requires confirmation and returns the request to Pending. Individual teachers can prepare equipment plans without booking a managed school room or entering a booking interval.

When selecting equipment, the quantity cannot exceed what is available during the requested interval in the chosen unit. Changing the start or end time refreshes availability. A failed edit leaves the original booking unchanged. Broken stock and stock needing repair are excluded. Different units are kept separate. Other Pending and Approved requests reduce availability only while their times overlap.

8. Review or erase booking history

Open a room and choose History to review its past and closed bookings by month. A school admin or lab technician can also open an inventory item and choose Booking history. Its Bookings view includes reservations in the selected month; History shows past and closed records. Each page contains at most 20 records. Back to item returns to the equipment details.

Upcoming shows Pending and Approved bookings that have not ended. Choose History for past and closed records, or All bookings for both. Date and status filters narrow the results; Previous and Next move between pages.

Past bookings keep their recorded status. An elapsed Approved booking is not automatically marked as completed, and records are not automatically erased.

Past and closed records are read-only. To erase one, use its trash button and confirm. Teachers can erase their own eligible records; admins and technicians can erase eligible school records.

9. Set up school access

Time zone and lab technicians

A school admin must open School in the workspace sidebar and save the school's time zone before the first booking. Other school members can read the setting there. In Lab technicians, an admin can assign or remove the technician role for school teachers. A school can have more than one technician.

Your private lab when joining or leaving a school

Joining a school archives your existing private lab. Its items are not copied into the shared inventory. The private archive is read-only and visible only to its owner with the required individual access.

To leave a school, ask its admin to remove your membership. An admin must hand the school to another teacher first.

After leaving a school, a teacher with an eligible individual plan must confirm Reactivate private lab before using it again.

If the school plan ends

The shared lab locks even if a teacher has their own paid Teacher plan. Ask a school admin to renew the school plan. Expiry does not automatically remove teachers from the school. Download your work before your plan ends.

10. Practical drafts with AI

In Assignments, choose Generate a practical to prepare a supervised investigation using common equipment or current inventory. Review its method, equipment and rubric before saving a private draft. Follow the practical drafting guide for safety checks, limits and publication.