Quick Start

This guide walks a lab administrator through the initial setup of Lab Belay. Follow these steps in order to get your organization fully configured.

1. Create your organization

When you first sign in, you'll be prompted to create an organization. This is the top-level container for everything in Lab Belay — your users, locations, labs, chemicals, and equipment all belong to one organization.

2. Add your locations

Go to Locations in the sidebar and create at least one location. A location represents a physical building or facility. Fill in the address and contact information.

You can add multiple locations if your organization operates across several sites.

3. Create your labs

Inside each location, create the labs that exist there. Go to Labs and click New Lab. Assign it to a location and give it a name.

Labs are where chemicals and equipment are tracked. Each lab automatically calculates an aggregate safety rating based on the chemicals present.

4. Set up benches

Within each lab, you can create benches (workstations). Benches let you organize resources at a finer level — useful when a single lab has distinct work areas with different chemical or equipment sets.

Go to Benches and create benches, assigning each to its parent lab.

5. Add your chemicals

Go to Chemicals and start adding your inventory. You can:

• Search the global catalog — Lab Belay maintains a master chemical database with pre-populated SDS data. Search by name or CAS number to find your chemical and add it to your inventory.
• Bulk import via CSV — Have a spreadsheet? Use Beaker AI to auto-parse and import your chemical list.
• Add manually — Enter chemical details by hand for anything not found in the catalog.

Assign each chemical to a lab or bench and add any site-specific notes.

6. Add your equipment

Go to Equipment and add your instruments and tools. Similar to chemicals, you can search the global equipment catalog or add items manually. Assign equipment to a specific bench or lab.

7. Invite your team

Go to Settings → User Management and invite team members by email. Assign appropriate roles:

• Admin — full access to settings, user management, and all data
• Standard user — can view and add data, but cannot modify organization settings

8. Create recurring tasks

If your lab has scheduled maintenance or compliance activities (e.g., equipment calibration, fume hood checks, monthly chemical audits), set them up under Tasks → Recurring Tasks. Lab Belay will generate individual task instances on the correct schedule and notify assignees.

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You're ready to go. Use ⌘K at any time to search the documentation, or open Beaker AI to ask questions about using Lab Belay.