For Principal Investigators

Your PhD student submits
in three months. What happens to their samples?

Unlike post-docs, PhD students leave with almost no formal handover process. Three to five years of sample work disappears into ambiguity. Vial Tracker Free gives you a structured handover before they walk out.

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ZeroLost knowledge
"The student submitted and was gone within a week. We found three years of samples with labels only she understood."
— The situation Vial Tracker Free prevents
The problem

PhD students leave with even less handover structure than post-docs

Post-docs at least have institutional awareness of handover obligations. PhD students are often at the end of an exhausting multi-year programme, focused entirely on thesis submission, and rarely think about what happens to the samples they leave behind.

The result is worse than a post-doc departure: years of painstakingly prepared samples, often representing a student's entire PhD, sitting unlabelled or cryptically noted in a box that their replacement cannot interpret.

The student feels no malice — they're simply done. And they're gone before anyone realises what knowledge has left with them. Vial Tracker Free gives both the student and the lab a structured way to close out before submission.

What leaves with your student
Years of sample work becomes unusable without documented labels
No formal handover process means no institutional pressure to document
Next student wastes months repeating work that was never transferred
PhD student often unreachable once thesis is submitted
What you get

Built for the real-world lab

Pre-submission handover
Build the handover record during the final months of the PhD — not as an afterthought. Every sample gets a description, location, and context the next researcher can use.
Signed and dated inventory
The handover is formally signed off by the student and the PI before departure — creating a moment of accountability and closure.
Institutional knowledge retained
Three to five years of sample curation stays in the lab permanently, in a form the next researcher can immediately use.
Low friction for students
It's Excel. Students already use it. Asking them to maintain a structured inventory is a much easier conversation than asking them to learn new software in their final year.
How it works

Up and running in an afternoon

1
Download the file
No installation, no account. Share it with the student as part of their final-year checklist.
2
Student logs samples during final months
Built into the thesis completion timeline, not added at the last minute.
3
PI signs off before submission
Formal handover is part of the thesis completion process. Both parties have a clear record.
Also on this site

Other challenges Vial Tracker Free solves for PIs

Post-Doc Departure
Keep your lab's institutional memory intact when a researcher moves on.
Biosafety & Audit Compliance
Build an audit-ready sample inventory so the next inspection is never a scramble.
Freezer Failure & Recovery
Know exactly what was lost — and prove it to your institution — when a freezer fails.
Grant Resource Documentation
Answer reviewers' questions about your lab's biological resources with a single export.
Material Transfer Agreements
Track which samples are shared, with whom, and under which MTA — automatically.
Publication Traceability
Trace every published result back to the exact vial it came from, on demand.

Three to five years of work
deserves a proper handover

Download Vial Tracker Free today. Build the PhD student handover into your completion timeline — before the thesis goes in and the student goes home.

Download Vial Tracker Free — it's free
Works in Excel
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Works alongside any LIMS
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