What custody means
Custody answers one question: who has the specimen right now, and how do we know?StatVault does not just take the plan's word for it. It collects evidence as the order moves and keeps that evidence with the order. That evidence is the chain of custody. If a lab asks "where was my sample at 2:15?", the chain of custody is the answer.
What counts as evidence
Evidence comes from the driver's phone and from the driver app. The main kinds are:- NFC scan. Many customer sites have an NFC box, which is a lockbox with a tag on it. The driver taps the tag with the phone. This proves the driver was at that box at that moment. On screens you will see this as NFC verified or NFC scan.
- POD (proof of delivery). When the driver delivers, the app records who received the order. You may also see POD Comments and a POD photo.
- GPS. The driver's phone reports its position. StatVault uses it to show where the driver was. When the signal is missing or old you will see No GPS or Stale GPS.
- Geofence event. Each building has an invisible circle around it. StatVault records when a driver's phone enters or leaves that circle.
- Pass-off. When one driver hands the specimen to another driver, a dispatcher records a pass-off custody event so the chain does not break. The order then sits in the second driver's unconfirmed list until they confirm it. Both drivers' confirmations stay on the order's record, and the pickup time stays the first driver's.
Proof the company requires
Beyond what a driver chooses to capture, a company can require proof, and it does so as a rule with a scope, never a blanket. A rule names a pickup photo, a delivery photo or a signature at delivery; for an order type, a customer account, a site, a single door or dock at a site, one specimen box or every registered specimen box; always, at the last pickup of the day at the box, on the driver's first visit to the site, or for STAT orders only. Rules add and never subtract, and a dispatcher can add more on one order from the order view. Required holds the driver's phone at that step; Ask shows the familiar "needs photo / info" popup once and never blocks. The server itself never refuses a completion over proof: a dispatcher can always close an order from the board, and the Done list then shows what is missing in red. An admin can excuse one driver for a few days, a broken camera say: his phone stops holding him and the Done list marks his misses excused. The rules live under Admin: Organizations, Proof rules, and the account page, the site page (the site and each of its doors) and a box's popup each show and set the rules that reach them.The box-clear case is the one most labs want: one photo per box per day, taken at the last pickup there, showing the box empty. StatVault decides which pickup is the last, per registered box, across every driver, when the driver's list is built; a pickup added later with a later time takes the requirement over, and the earlier photo stays on record. It reads back as Boxes cleared on the Command Center's Custody tab, each box beside its photo, and above the Dispatch Board's Done list. A photo only proves a photo was taken: a dispatcher looks at it there and presses Not clear when a sample is still in the bin, which puts the box back among the misses and sends the driver the photo with a message to return, or Clear to record the check. The verdict is written to the order's custody trail; it is a person's call, never StatVault's.
Planned versus what actually happened
StatVault keeps two things separate on purpose.- What was planned (sometimes called declared): the driver on the order, the Ready and Due times, the addresses.
- What actually happened (sometimes called observed): the scans, the POD, the GPS trail, the geofence events.
Where to look
- Order detail, Pay & Custody tab. Shows who has custody now, the Custody timeline for that order, and the Pass-off custody button.
- Command Center, Custody tab. The day's proof ledger: a bar of proven versus unproven completed stops, drivers ranked worst first, the "Needs review" and "Completed without proof" lists, Boxes cleared (each registered specimen box with a pickup that day: photographed clear at its last pickup, not yet, or picked up with no photo), the live proof feed and the raw scan stream.
- Command Center, order trace. Type an order number in the Custody tab's search box and the trace lists every custody event plus what is missing, such as "No proof the driver was at the origin (no NFC scan)".
- Incidents. When something goes wrong you can open an incident of type Chain of Custody.
StatVault never decides custody for you
StatVault records evidence and points out gaps. It does not guess who has the specimen. If the evidence is missing, the screen says so, and a person has to find out and record what happened. Do not treat a missing scan as "probably fine".Things that confuse people
- A confirmed order is not proof of pickup. Confirmed means the driver accepted the job. Picked up means the driver has the specimen.
- An NFC scan proves presence at a box, not that the right specimen was taken. Pieces still matter.
- A custody gap is not always a problem, but it always needs a look.
- Proof now survives a bad signal. A photo or e-signature is written to the driver's own phone before any attempt to send it, and the app keeps trying until the server confirms it holds that exact capture. So "the photo hasn't come through" usually means not yet, not lost - it counts as outstanding custody evidence on the driver's end-of-day gate until it lands.
- There is one way proof is still genuinely lost: the phone could not store the capture at all, which in practice means it has run out of space. The driver is told at that moment and asked to take it again, and the failure is reported to us separately - so if you see one, treat that evidence as gone rather than late. It deliberately does not hold the driver's log-out open, because nothing they can do on the phone will rescue it, and a gate nobody can satisfy only teaches people to override it.
- A driver's tap can be refused even though the driver did everything right. Order status moves from two directions - the driver's phone and CXT's feed - and CXT's echo of an earlier milestone can land in the seconds between a pickup and a delivery, putting the order back a step so the delivery is refused. StatVault now holds the driver's progress against that particular echo, but when a tap is refused the app keeps it as a HELD entry rather than retrying it, because replaying an out-of-date tap could apply the wrong thing to an order that has since moved on. See The Driver App for what the driver sees and what the "Held action on #..." chat line means.
- The NFC box at a site and the SmartBox are different things. See SmartBox versus NFC box.