A thousand sealed vials, from the dock to the freezer.

Open the cartons on a bench, not in the freezer room, and work through them in a fixed order: outer carton, inner packing, then the vials. Look at each carton for crushing, punctures and water marks. Check that the inner packing is still in place and, where cold packs travelled with the material, whether they are still cold. Do this on the day the shipment lands, while a fault is still plainly a transit fault.

Then look at the vials themselves. The crimp seal, the aluminium collar pressed over the stopper, should be tight, unbent and flush with the glass. The cake should sit as one dry disc on the vial floor. A cake that has shrunk, collapsed, slid up the wall or turned glassy has met moisture or heat and is not a vial to shelve; at small fills of a short peptide a thin film or scatter is the normal appearance, and the product page says what to expect for that line. Photograph every carton, the packing and any vial that looks wrong before you open the rest of the shipment, and file the photographs under the order reference.

Each vial carries a lot number. A shipment of a thousand vials may come from one lot or from several, and the certificate you asked for through COA requests is written for a lot, never for an order. Before a single vial goes into the freezer, list every lot number in the shipment, count the vials under each, and set that list beside the certificates you hold. A lot on your dock with no certificate on file is a request to send to the desk that day, not something to chase next quarter.

The count matters as much as the number. If the order was sixty kits and two lots arrived, the list should say how many kits of each and which cartons held them, so that a question about a vial months later can be answered without unpacking a freezer. How to read a certificate covers what to check on the document itself. This guide covers getting the vial and the document into the same record.

The general guidance for a sealed lyophilized vial is −20 °C, in the dark, and dry. A laboratory freezer with a steady temperature is the right place; a frost-free domestic unit that warms itself on a defrost timer is not. Keep vials in their cartons or in closed boxes so that the glass is protected from light and the labels stay legible. Vials stand upright with nothing resting on them, and each box is marked outside with compound, fill weight and lot.

Refrigerated storage at 2–8 °C is acceptable for short periods: a few days between the dock and the freezer, or the week's working stock held near the bench. Brief excursions in transit, when a parcel spends part of a day at ambient temperature on a truck, are expected, and the lyophilized form is what makes them tolerable. What the sealed vial does not tolerate well is repeated warming and cooling over weeks, and the way to avoid that is to keep working stock apart from the reserve.

Moisture is the other hazard. The stopper and crimp keep atmospheric moisture out of the headspace for as long as they are intact, and moisture reaching a dry cake is the most common reason a cake collapses on the shelf. So the freezer stays dry, condensation is not allowed to form on cold glass, and a cold carton is left closed until it has reached room temperature before anyone opens it in a humid room. Light does slower harm, and a closed box handles it.

Draw stock first in, first out, and by lot rather than by where a carton happens to sit. Label each shelf position with the lot number and the date received. When a lot is opened for use, that lot is drawn down before the next is started, so at any moment the freezer holds at most one part-used lot per compound and fill weight.

The reason is the certificate. It describes one lot, so any question about the material begins with which lot it was and which vials of that lot remain. Rotation by lot also shows you, in vials, when a compound is running down, which is the moment to raise the next order and read the ship date the written quote states for that line, rather than discovering an empty shelf on a Friday.

A storage log for a wholesale inventory is a spreadsheet with one row per lot. The fixed fields are: compound and fill weight; lot number; vials received and the date; carton count; the order reference and quote number; the certificate reference and the date it arrived; freezer and shelf position; the arrival inspection result and who carried it out; and where the arrival photographs are filed. Fill those in on the day of receipt, while the cartons are still on the bench.

Below the fixed fields runs the movement record: each withdrawal with its date, the vials taken, the vials remaining and the initials of the person who took them. Beside it sits the freezer temperature record, a chart trace or a daily minimum and maximum reading, and a line for any excursion with the date, the highest temperature reached, how long it lasted and what was done with the vials afterwards.

A collapsed cake, a loose or missing crimp, cracked glass, a wet carton, a lot number that does not match the paperwork, or a count that does not match the order: set the vials concerned aside, unopened, and contact the desk the same day with the order reference, the lot number, the number of vials affected and the photographs. The desk resolves the report against the carrier and against its own records. Shipping and returns states what can and cannot be returned, and that nothing is returned without written authorization.

Do not discard the vials, do not use them, and do not ship them back on your own initiative. Keep them in the same storage as the rest of the lot until the desk says otherwise, so their condition does not change while the report is open. A report from the day of arrival is easy to tie to transit; one from weeks later is much harder to place.