Sepal

Configure your garden

Set your organization's details and timezone, the format of accession and material codes, and the backup schedule.

The settings under Organization apply to the whole garden, and only an admin can open them. To reach them, select Settings at the bottom of the sidebar. Editors and readers see only the Account group there, which Manage your account describes. This page describes General, Codes, and Backups. Manage users and roles describes Users.

Set your organization’s details

  1. Under Organization, select General.
  2. Fill in the fields you need. All of them are optional.
  3. Select Save changes.

The page has four sections:

  • Organization Identity holds Long name, Short name, and Abbreviation.
  • Contact Information holds Email, Phone, and Website.
  • Address holds Street address, City, Postal code, and Country.
  • Regional Settings holds Timezone.

The short name appears in the browser tab and in the subject line of invitation emails. When the short name is empty, Sepal uses the long name.

Set the timezone

Sepal shows every date and time in the garden’s timezone, and uses it to decide what today’s date is. Today’s date matters in two places: a date received or accessioned cannot be later than today, and date tokens in a code template take today’s values.

  1. Under Organization, select General.
  2. Under Regional Settings, choose a Timezone. Type part of a city name to narrow the list.
  3. Select Save changes.

Set the code format

A code template sets the code that Sepal suggests on the create form for accessions and for material. It does not change the codes of records you have already saved.

  1. Under Organization, select Codes.
  2. Under Accessions, enter a Template. The Next line below the field shows the code the next accession would get.
  3. Under Material, enter a Template. The For example line shows a full material code built from it.
  4. Select Save changes.

A new garden starts with {year}.{seq:0000} for accessions and {seq} for material. To stop suggesting a code, clear the template.

Tokens

A template is literal text with tokens in braces. It needs exactly one sequence token, either {seq} or {letter}.

TokenBecomes
{year}The four-digit year, such as 2026
{year2}The two-digit year, such as 26
{month}The two-digit month, such as 09
{day}The two-digit day of the month, such as 24
{seq}The next number, such as 1
{seq:0000}The next number padded with zeros to the number of zeros written, such as 0001
{letter}The next letter, counting A to Z and then AA, AB, and so on

A number that outgrows its padding keeps all its digits, so {seq:0000} counts from 9999 to 10000.

Sepal finds the next number by reading the codes already saved. It takes the highest number among the codes that fit the template with today’s date values, and adds one. It does not fill gaps, so after 2026.0001 and 2026.0003 the next code is 2026.0004. With {year} in the template, the sequence starts again at one when the year changes.

Material is numbered within its accession, so the sequence starts again at one for every accession.

Reject codes that do not fit

Select Reject a code that does not fit under a template to enforce it. The box is available only when the template beside it is filled in.

With enforcement on, Sepal refuses to create a record whose code does not fit the template, and shows a code that does. When someone edits an existing record, Sepal warns them instead, and they can select Save it anyway. That way codes that predate the template can still be kept.

Set the material code separator

A material’s full code is its accession’s code, the separator, and the material’s own code. With the separator ., material 1 of accession 2026.0001 reads as 2026.0001.1.

  1. Under Material, enter a Separator. A new garden starts with .. Leave the field empty for no separator.
  2. Select Save changes.

Sepal builds the full code each time it shows one, so a new separator applies at once to every material, including the ones already saved. The full code appears wherever Sepal names a material, such as the Material list and the activity history.

With no separator, a material code that starts with a digit runs into an accession code that ends with one, and the page warns you. For example, 2026.0001 and 1 read as 2026.00011. A letter sequence avoids that. With {letter} as the material template and no separator, the first material of 2026.0001 reads as 2026.0001A.

Schedule backups

A backup is a ZIP file that holds a copy of the database. It does not include media files, which are stored separately and have to be backed up on their own.

  1. Under Organization, select Backups.
  2. Under Backup Schedule, set Frequency to Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. Choose Disabled to stop scheduled backups.
  3. Select Save changes.

The page then shows the time of the next backup, and the time of the last one once a backup has run.

Download a backup

Under Recent Backups, each backup is listed with its Filename, Size, and Created time. Select Download to save a copy.

On a garden hosted by Sepal, backups are scheduled for you. The Backups page shows only the list of backups to download.

On a self-hosted instance, Sepal writes backups to the directory named by BACKUP_PATH and keeps them until you delete them. Self-hosting describes the setting.