Configure Storage Locations And Par Levels

Before the blood bank can store a single unit safely, it needs to know what it is storing things in. A red-cell fridge, a plasma freezer and a platelet agitator each hold blood at a different temperature, and Veona has to know which is which so it can place units correctly, watch the right cold-chain band, and warn the bench when stock runs low or nears its date. That knowledge is your storage locations — the foundational reference data you set up once and maintain as your fridges change.

Two terms to anchor the page. FEFO stands for first-expiry, first-out — the rule that the unit which expires soonest is offered for issue first, so blood is used before it ages out rather than left to expire. A par level is the minimum stock you want to keep for a given component and blood group; when you hold fewer than your par, that line is flagged below par so you can top it up before it runs dry.

Who / when: the Blood Bank Officer who owns the bench’s configuration, when standing up a new blood bank or whenever the equipment list changes — a new fridge arrives, a freezer is retired, a temperature band is corrected. Editing settings needs the manage configuration permission; it is deliberately a narrow, admin-level capability, not something every bench user can change.

We will follow Chidi, a blood bank officer setting up storage for a newly equipped blood bank.

Add your storage locations

1. Blood Bank Officer — open Blood Bank → Settings (the “Blood Bank Settings” screen, “Storage locations and tenant reference data”). The “Storage Locations” panel lists everything already configured. On a fresh setup it reads “No storage locations yet. Add a fridge, freezer or agitator.” Press “Add Storage Location” at the top right.

2. Blood Bank Officer — the “Add Storage Location” dialog opens. Give it a “Name” that the bench will recognise — “Blood Fridge 1”, “Plasma Freezer A” — so units placed there read clearly on every screen.

3. Blood Bank Officer — choose the “Kind”: Fridge (red cells, whole blood), Freezer (plasma, cryoprecipitate) or Platelet Agitator (platelets, kept gently moving at room temperature). The kind tells the system what sort of cold-chain device this is.

4. Blood Bank Officer — set the temperature band the device should hold: “Target Min (°C)” and “Target Max (°C)”. A red-cell fridge typically sits around 2–6 °C, a plasma freezer well below zero, a platelet agitator near room temperature. This band is the cold-chain expectation for everything stored here.

Note

The temperature band is the reference the cold chain is judged against. Recording it on the location — rather than leaving it implicit — is what lets the blood bank reason about whether a unit has been held correctly, and is the right band for each device class.

5. Blood Bank Officer — leave “Active” ticked for a location in service, and press “Save”. The new fridge appears in the “Storage Locations” panel with its kind, its temperature band, a live unit count and an Active pill. Chidi repeats this for each fridge, freezer and agitator the new bank runs.

Tip

Set your storage locations up first, before you start receiving donations. Inventory is placed into these locations and FEFO is scoped within them, so a unit cannot be stored tidily until the place to store it exists. The location list is the entry point for the whole inventory surface.

Other ways this goes

Editing or deactivating a location

1. Blood Bank Officer — on Blood Bank → Settings, press “Edit” on any location in the “Storage Locations” panel.
2. Blood Bank Officer — the “Edit Storage Location” dialog opens pre-filled. Correct the “Name”, “Kind” or temperature band as needed, and “Save”.
3. Blood Bank Officer — to retire a fridge from service without erasing its history, untick “Active” and save. It shows as Inactive and steps out of everyday use, while the record — and its past placements — stays intact for traceability. Deactivating is the right move for decommissioned equipment; the history is never deleted.

Par levels and below-par tracking on the dashboard

1. Blood Bank Officer — par levels are the minimum stock you want per component and blood group, held as your tenant reference data alongside storage configuration.
2. Blood Bank Officer — open Blood Bank → Dashboard. The “Below Par” readout counts how many group-and-component lines have dropped under their par, and the “Inventory By Group And Component” matrix shows a “Par” figure on each line — flagged in red when that line is below par. This is where stock pressure surfaces at a glance, so you know to collect or request a transfer before a group runs dry.

The manage-configuration permission

Changing storage locations and reference data is gated behind the blood-bank manage configuration permission — a deliberately narrow, admin-level capability. A bench user who can place, crossmatch or issue units does not automatically get to redefine the fridges or the par levels; that is reserved for the officer who owns the bank’s setup. If the “Add Storage Location” or “Edit” action is not available to you, you hold a bench role rather than the configuration role — by design, so the foundational data cannot drift under everyday use.

Expiry warnings and low-stock notices reaching the bench

1. Blood Bank Officer — your configuration is what the operational alerts run against. Veona periodically scans the inventory and fans out two content-free notices to the blood-bank bench (a bell notification and an email): an expiry warning for units nearing their date, summarised per component and blood group, and a low-stock-by-group notice for any line that has fallen below its par.
2. Blood Bank Officer — these notices carry no patient or unit detail on the wire — only the component, the group, and a count or date — so the bench is prompted to act without any protected health information leaving the system. Good storage and par configuration is what makes those alerts accurate; weak configuration makes them silent.

What happens next

With your fridges, freezers and agitators defined, their temperature bands set and your par levels in place, the rest of the blood bank has the ground it stands on. Units can be placed into real locations, FEFO offers the soonest-to-expire unit first, the dashboard shows live stock and below-par pressure, and the bench is warned automatically as blood nears expiry or a group runs short. Keep this reference data current as your equipment changes, and every downstream screen stays accurate — because all of it reads from here.

Follow the trail

• Related: Manage Inventory, Storage And Expiry · Move Units Between Network Facilities