ANAB Accredited Lab Software — an ISO/IEC 17025 Quality Management System
ANAB accredits testing laboratories to ISO/IEC 17025. This is a quality management system built around that standard, in which the checks run inside the workflow instead of living on a reminder list — and in which the built-in report layout prints ANAB wording, down to the ILAC MRA statement.
The problem is not knowing the standard. It is holding to it every day.
Most quality managers of an accredited laboratory can recite the clauses. What goes wrong between assessments is smaller and duller than that: an instrument used a week past its calibration due date, a method assigned to an analyst whose competence record covers something else, a report number skipped when a job was canceled, a superseded procedure still in a binder on the bench, an internal audit assigned to the person who ran the work being audited.
None of these are failures of knowledge. They are failures of attention, at the moment the work happens — and by the time the assessment finds them, the record is already written. NeoLab QMS moves what it can to that moment. Some conditions refuse the action and say why: an unqualified analyst assigned to an accredited test, an auditor named for an area they work in, an author placed in the approval route of their own record. Others are recorded as warnings that travel with the response and into the audit trail, so the problem is on the record the day it happens rather than at the next assessment. The page below says which is which for each control, because the difference matters when you are the one signing the report.
ISO/IEC 17025 clauses and how they are handled
ANAB accredits to ISO/IEC 17025:2017, so the table below is written against the standard's own clause numbers. Each row is a control that exists in the software today, and where a control warns rather than refuses, the row says so.
| ISO/IEC 17025:2017 | How NeoLab QMS handles it |
|---|---|
| 6.2 Personnel | Competence profiles, qualifications with scope, competence evaluation and monitoring, training plans and attendance. Assigning an accredited test to someone holding no current qualification for that test item is refused. When a test record is sealed for approval, an author with no current qualification is flagged as a warning and the warning is written to the audit trail; a technical manager sealing a record inside the discipline they are responsible for is refused outright. |
| 6.4 Equipment 6.5 Metrological traceability | Equipment records carry registration, in-service status, next calibration date, calibration history, latest calibration result and the attached calibration certificate file. All six are evaluated together, and equipment failing any of them is shown as not traceable in the equipment register and on the traceability dashboard. Reference-material certificates are held the same way. This evaluation reports status; it does not by itself stop a record from being written. |
| 6.6 Externally provided products and services | Requisition, quotation comparison, approval, purchase order, receipt inspection, expense claim and supplier evaluation as one flow. Purchases affecting traceability or resources route through a dedicated approval line, and receipt inspection posts into the equipment, reagent, reference-material and calibration registers. |
| 7.1 Review of requests, tenders and contracts | Contract review records tied to the request, covering customer requirements, accredited scope and agreement on the decision rule. A missing contract review is raised as a warning on assignment rather than stopping it. |
| 7.2 Selection, verification and validation of methods | Method master with validation records, accredited-scope links and method-to-item links. A capability gate records method selection, method validation status, accredited scope, equipment and analyst qualification for each test item, and runs when the case is created or on demand. A missing method validation record is recorded as a warning. A case the gate has marked blocked cannot be started for testing until the blocking reason is cleared. |
| 7.3 Sampling 7.4 Handling of items | Sampling plans and sampling records, plus a chain-of-custody trail recording each transfer in sequence with the parties, time and purpose. Seals are signed. |
| 7.5 Technical records | Electronic notebooks in which amendments keep both the previous and the new value, and revision history and approved snapshots are retained. |
| 7.6 Evaluation of measurement uncertainty | GUM budgets: combined standard uncertainty from the component sum, expanded uncertainty at a stated coverage factor, Welch-Satterthwaite effective degrees of freedom where component degrees of freedom are given, and per-component contribution. |
| 7.7 Ensuring the validity of results | QC rules for range, recovery, duplicate relative percent difference and limit of quantitation; control charts; proficiency-testing programs and results; inter-analyst comparison by t-test and ANOVA. |
| 7.8 Reporting of results | Report generation with the accreditation body's terminology on the built-in report layout, out-of-scope results marked with an asterisk, decision rules recorded as either simple acceptance or a guard band derived from the expanded uncertainty, an issuance register, reissue sequence and reason, and QR-based authenticity verification. |
| 7.11 Control of data and information management | Validation records for the information system itself, held per component — uncertainty engine, conformity engine, formula engine, numbering engine, report generation, electronic approval, audit trail, backup and restore. |
| 8.3 Control of documents | Document tree with revision history, a lifecycle from review through print verification, approval, distribution and withdrawal, and per-document access rights. Viewing or printing a withdrawn document overlays an obsolete banner and watermark without altering the source file. |
| 8.4 Control of records | SHA-256 hash-chained audit trail; registers exportable in full rather than a truncated page; audit trail, sealed records, approval evidence, signatures and seals, and calibration and reference-material certificates carry no delete action in the application — they are voided or made obsolete, and both actions are recorded. |
| 8.8 Internal audits | When an internal audit record is saved, naming an auditor who performs testing in the area being audited is refused, with clause 8.8.2 quoted in the message. Where the auditor's testing role carries no declared discipline, the assignment raises a warning instead of passing silently. |
| 8.9 Management reviews | A management review register with readiness checks over plan and agenda, minutes and report, and follow-up actions. |
Reports that print ANAB wording, not a translation of someone else's
Set the accreditation body to ANAB in company settings and the built-in report layout prints its labels in ANAB wording. What follows is the wording that layout actually prints, quoted as it appears.
The title is Test Report. The numbered rows read 1. Client, 2. Description of item/material/sample tested, 3. Test period, 4. Test location, 5. Test method. The client block asks for Organization, Address and Qty; the test location is either Permanent laboratory or On-site testing.
The results table heads its columns Test parameter · Result · Unit · Specification · Measurement uncertainty (approx. 95% confidence, k=2) · Test method · Decision. Below the table sit the limitation statement — "These test results relate only to the sample and sample name provided by the client." — and, where any result falls outside the accredited scope, the asterisk note: "* Results marked with an asterisk fall outside the accredited scope of this laboratory."
The signature block is Approval · Prepared by · Technical Manager · (signature). The head-of-laboratory line is Laboratory Director. The accreditation line reads ANAB Accredited, and the layout carries this statement:
"The results reported herein fall within the accredited scope of this laboratory. ANAB is a signatory to the ILAC Mutual Recognition Arrangement (MRA)."
The spelling is American and stays that way — the UKAS setting, by contrast, prints Organisation and Laboratory Manager on the same layout.
Two limits are worth stating plainly, because they decide whether this fits your laboratory today. First, the wording above belongs to the built-in report layout: a laboratory that issues onto its own scanned report form, or straight from the record notebook, gets that document's own labels instead. Second, the setting changes labels rather than document language — the annex page that lists the underlying technical records, the conformity-statement block used when a decision rule is applied, the Decision values in the results table, and the archived PDF that is signed and packaged are all still produced in Korean. If your reports have to be end-to-end English from day one, ask us before you buy rather than after.
Seven accreditation bodies are available as a per-company setting, so a laboratory holding more than one accreditation, or working with a partner accredited elsewhere, is not forced onto a second system. Selecting ANAB also switches the scope and test-field taxonomy to ANAB's own list of sixteen testing fields, and the field register, the test-item master, the record notebook and the form builder all follow it — that part is a change of data, not of wording.
Key features
1. Numbering that cannot quietly skip
Report and reception numbers are issued from a controlled sequence. A canceled job is voided with a recorded reason rather than removed, and a sequence start cannot be lowered to reuse a number. The issuance register keeps every issue and reissue, with the reissue sequence, the original report number and the reason printed on the reissued report itself.
2. Records that can be corrected but not erased
The audit trail is a SHA-256 hash chain: each entry carries the hash of the previous entry, so a removed or edited entry breaks the chain. Amendments to technical records keep the before and after values. Audit trail, numbering history, registers, sealed test records, approval evidence, signatures and seals, calibration and reference-material certificates, and information-system validation records have no delete action in the application — only void or obsolete, and both are recorded. Two platform-administrator paths are worth naming rather than hiding. Resetting a company's operational data requires a typed confirmation, writes a full recoverable snapshot before it runs, aborts if the snapshot fails, and is itself written to the audit trail. Deleting a company permanently also requires a typed confirmation and is written to the audit trail, but it takes no snapshot.
3. Checks that refuse, and checks that warn — the difference is deliberate
Some conditions refuse the action outright and say why. Assigning a test to an inactive account, to an assessor account, or to the person already named technical manager on that item is refused; so is assigning an accredited test to someone holding no current qualification for that test item, and so is choosing a record form that is not a deployed revision. Naming an auditor for an area that person performs testing in is refused when the audit record is saved, with clause 8.8.2 quoted in the message. An author cannot appear anywhere in the approval route of their own test record or internal approval document, and the approver resolver excludes them from every step.
Other conditions are recorded as warnings that travel with the response and into the audit trail rather than stopping the work: a method with no validation record, an author with no current qualification at the moment a record is sealed, an outstanding contract review at assignment. A case the capability gate has marked blocked cannot be started for testing until the blocking reason is cleared. Form revision approval applies the same author-approver separation but lets a single administrator proceed by recording a written exception reason, which is stored with the transition. We would rather tell you which control is which than call all of them enforcement.
4. Uncertainty, quality control and comparison in the same place as the data
Uncertainty budgets are built from the same processed data the report draws on, so the expanded uncertainty printed on the report is the one that was calculated, not one re-keyed from a spreadsheet. Control charts, proficiency-testing results and inter-analyst comparisons sit beside them.
One platform rather than five tools
Document control, resources, testing, reporting and approval are parts of the same system here, which is why the calibration certificate behind a result and the approval that released it are one click apart. The document-control side is described in more detail under ISO 17025 document management software , the approval and signature side under electronic signatures and approvals, and the overall cloud model under laboratory QMS SaaS.
Frequently asked questions
Does the software issue test reports in ANAB terminology?
On the built-in report layout, yes. Selecting ANAB as the accreditation body sets the report title, the numbered heading rows, the client block, the results-table headers, the signature block and the reissue labels to the ANAB wording. The accreditation line reads "ANAB Accredited", the head-of-laboratory line reads "Laboratory Director", and the layout carries the statement: "The results reported herein fall within the accredited scope of this laboratory. ANAB is a signatory to the ILAC Mutual Recognition Arrangement (MRA)."
Two limits apply. A laboratory that issues onto its own scanned report form, or straight from the record notebook, gets that document's own labels instead. And the setting changes labels rather than document language, so the annex page, the conformity-statement block, the Decision values in the results table and the archived signed PDF are still produced in Korean.
We work with a partner laboratory accredited elsewhere. Can one system serve both?
The accreditation body is a per-company setting, and seven bodies are available: ANAB, UKAS, KOLAS, DAkkS, COFRAC, ACCREDIA and JAB. Changing the setting changes the built-in report layout's labels, the head-of-laboratory title and the ILAC MRA statement together.
Can a record be deleted after it has been issued?
Not in day-to-day use. Audit trail, numbering history, reception and issuance registers, sealed test records, approval evidence, signatures and seals, calibration and reference-material certificates, and information-system validation records have no delete action in the application: they are voided or made obsolete instead, and both actions are recorded. The audit trail itself is a SHA-256 hash chain in which each entry carries the hash of the previous one. Two platform-administrator paths are worth naming rather than hiding. Resetting a company's operational data requires a typed confirmation, writes a full recoverable snapshot before it runs, aborts if the snapshot fails, and is itself written to the audit trail. Deleting a company permanently also requires a typed confirmation and is written to the audit trail, but it takes no snapshot.
Can I try it before buying?
Yes. There is a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. Plans and what separates them are listed in the pricing section of the home page. Billing is in Korean won (KRW).