A 33-tab spreadsheet, retired

A clinical research firm tracked every lab kit in a spreadsheet one person held together. I replaced it with a live inventory app the whole team uses.

For: A clinical research firm
Built: A live inventory app
Business value: No missed patient visits from a missing or expired kit

Shown as "Meridian" with names and quantities changed.

The problem

What wasn't working

Clinical trials run on lab kits: each study has its own, each kit expires, and running out means a patient visit can't happen.

This firm tracked all of it in a 33-tab spreadsheet that one departing employee held together. Nobody else could say what was on hand, what was about to expire, or what needed ordering.

What I built

The short version

A live dashboard: what's on hand, on order, expiring and overdue, by study
Check in, order and check out from a phone, right at the shelf
Expiration alerts before a kit goes bad, not after
Data checks that flag their own problems, like a count that doesn't add up

How it works

Start to finish

Step 1

The shelf and the app agree

Kits get checked in when they arrive and checked out when they're used, from a phone, in a few taps.

Step 2

The dashboard does the counting

On hand, on order, expiring soon and overdue, for every study, with the last week's change next to each number.

Step 3

Problems surface themselves

A to-do list collects what needs a person: kits to reorder, kits about to expire, counts that look wrong.

Step 4

The whole team, not one person

Each person signs in with their own email link, so the knowledge lives in the system, not in one person's head.

What was hard

The parts that took thinking

Moving years of history without losing a kit

Every record came over from the old system and was reconciled to the unit, with duplicate lines merged on the way, before anyone was asked to trust the new one.

Building it with the team, not for them

Every request from the team was written down and traced to what got built, then reviewed in rounds until it matched how they actually work.

It had to work on a phone

Kits get counted at the shelf, not at a desk, so checking in and checking out had to work on a phone.

The payoff

What it does for the business

No more one-person risk

What's on hand lives in the system, not in one employee's head, so a departure doesn't become a crisis.

Fewer wasted kits

Expiration alerts arrive before a kit goes bad, so it gets used instead of thrown out.

Visits happen on schedule

Reorders are flagged before a study runs out, so a patient visit never waits on a missing kit.

For a business like yours

Where this fits

Any business that tracks physical stuff in a spreadsheet only one person understands:

Parts and supplies for a service company
Rental equipment that goes out and comes back
Anything with an expiration date or a reorder point

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