Batch documentation
Certificates of analysis
A safety data sheet describes a substance. A certificate of analysis describes one batch of it — the drum in front of you, on the date it was tested. Confusing the two is the most common documentation error we see.
What a certificate has to carry
A CoA is only as good as its traceability. Ours are built so that every line can be followed back to a method and a date:
- Batch or lot identity that matches the physical marking on the container — not a generic product code.
- Test date and manufacture date kept separate. A certificate that gives only one of them cannot support a retest interval.
- Specification versus result, side by side, so a reviewer sees the limit and the measured value in the same row instead of hunting for the spec elsewhere.
- Method per parameter — the analytical technique named for each determination, because “purity 99.5%” means different things by titration and by chromatography.
- Explicit pass or fail per line, and an overall disposition that cannot be reached by averaging.
- Retest or expiry date, with the basis it rests on stated rather than assumed.
Where certificates go wrong
The batch that never changes
The same certificate reissued for shipment after shipment with a new date typed over the old one. It reads as documentation and functions as decoration — and a single traceability question exposes it.
Results without methods
A column of numbers and no indication of how any of them were obtained. Nothing in it is verifiable, so nothing in it is evidence.
Specification copied from the catalogue
Marketing purity pasted into the spec column. When the measured value later sits just under it, the certificate contradicts itself and the batch has to be rejected on paper alone.
No identifiable signatory
An unsigned certificate answers the question “what was measured” but not “who is accountable for it”. For a regulated customer the second question is the one that matters.
How we work with your data
We do not run a laboratory and we do not invent analytical results. The measurements are yours — from your QC, your contract lab, or your supplier. What we do is turn them into a document that holds up when somebody reads it critically: correct structure, consistent units, specification and method stated per parameter, identity aligned with the safety data sheet for the same substance.
That alignment is the part most often missed. When the CoA and the SDS for one material disagree on the CAS number, the substance name, or the supplier entity, a reviewer stops trusting both documents — even though each looked fine on its own.
Frequently the real problem
One substance, two documents, one story
If you order a safety data sheet and a certificate of analysis for the same material, we reconcile them against each other before either is issued. Identity, hazard statements and supplier details come out consistent, because they were checked as a pair rather than produced in isolation.
What to send us
- 1
Your raw results in whatever form they exist — a lab report, a spreadsheet, a scan. We do not need them tidy.
- 2
The specification the batch is meant to meet, and who set it: your own standard, a pharmacopoeia, or the customer’s.
- 3
The batch marking exactly as it appears on the container, so the paper and the drum can never drift apart.
If a result in your data falls outside the specification, we will tell you before issuing anything. We do not produce certificates that quietly pass a batch which the numbers fail.