Hello. I am a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh. In the past, we've primarily relied on physical binders to help us keep track of where our samples are inventoried. We have a huge inventory of thousands of samples from previous studies that are inventoried this way. We have two studies whose sample labels have barcodes on them, but right now all we have is Excel and unfortunately, the data the barcodes and scanners generate isn't particularly useful for inventorying purposes. We are researching systems that would allow us to create barcodes that include information like sample ID, timepoint, date, sample collected and others that we could then scan into the software once the samples are aliquotted from their blood tubes. The main goal is to have this set up before we start our next study, but if possible we'd also like to incorporate our existing inventories into the system we use so everything is all in one place (luckily, we maintain digitized copies of the physical binders too). I've been researching software for a while, but most of the ones I've found are prohibitively expensive. Are there any free software out there that is easy to set up that anyone has experience with?