How a LIMS calculates delivery dates: working days, closed days and rush orders

A client asks when the report will be ready. The honest answer depends on when the sample arrived, whether that was before the cutoff, which turnaround was ordered, and whether a public holiday sits in between. Done by hand, that answer is a mental calculation that different people do differently.

What kinds of turnaround times does a lab offer?

• A fixed deadline: a number of working days plus a cutoff time. A sample received before the cutoff on a given day qualifies for the stated turnaround, and one received after it counts from the next working day. The name is generated from the setup, for example "2 working days, deadline 13:00".
• An express walk-in service counted in hours, for example "Express: 2 hours", where the deadline is hand-in time plus the hours
• A same-day walk-in service with no duration of its own: the deadline is the closing time of the drop point on the day the samples arrive

Walk-in services are linked to the lab's drop points, so a drop point only offers the services it can actually deliver. A walk-in turnaround is priced as a rush surcharge on top of the base analysis price, not as a price of its own.

Which days count as working days?

The lab decides. It sets which weekdays it works, and it registers the dates it is closed: public holidays, shutdown days, anything that is not a normal working day. A closed day is a whole date, registered once per lab, and it is skipped when working days are counted. The same calendar governs the extra day added for a forwarded sample and which hand-over dates are offered at a lab drop point.

What happens when the calendar changes?

The expected dates follow. Registering a closed day changes the expected date on open orders immediately, with nothing to recalculate by hand and no reload, because the date is computed from the rules each time it is shown. A date that has passed no longer affects anything, so last year's holidays do not clutter this year's calculations.

Who sees the date?

Both sides. The lab sees it on the order and in the lists described below, and the client sees the expected answer date in the customer app, calculated by the same function. When the lab and the client read the same number, the status call is easier to avoid.

How does the lab see what is urgent?

The dashboard every employee lands on is built from widgets, and two of them rank work by deadline: Most Urgent Deliveries and Most Urgent Analyses, soonest first, with overdue items at the top. A Daily Overview shows what is due today. Each person can choose and order their own widgets, and the same widgets can run on a password-protected full-screen display on a TV in reception or the lab, opened with a link and no login.

This is the other half of the Monday avalanche: once deadlines are calculated from real data, the list of what must go out first is already sorted when the week starts.

Turnaround times are one part of the flow from intake to invoice. The Commercial LIMS service page shows how the pieces connect.

Related: how a lab registers a received sample and how a lab with several sites forwards samples.