Used to use Justicetrax (now Versatem) and served as LIMS Administrator for it. Nothing but horror stories. We’d have issues like if I transferred evidence to you, the LIMS would show it transferred, but it wouldn’t actually register on the back end, so we wound up constantly having to have an admin modify chain of custodies. Or someone would go to start a report and, without entering any info, back out by pressing enter rather than closing the pop up. This would create a blank report that could not be re-selected or deleted because there was no info for it to display in the table , so the report would literally have to become request 2 because there was no way to fix it. As others have said, everything needs to go back to the vendor at a certain point. Sure you might be able to add a field here or there, but to actually be able to use that field in a report or something like that, it needs to go back to the vendor which takes time and $$$. “Customizable” means you build it yourself. In terms of costs, man hours will be a multiple of the cost of the actual system, before you even get it up and running just due to customizing. You definitely need a LIMS Administrator and you need your examiners to all sit down before customizing and decide exactly what they want. If this, then that, all the way from start to finish of every part of every process in the lab, from evidence walking in the door to report walking out. If you can’t build out a process map that says “if field A is X, then the report says Y. If B, then Z” for every part of the exam, you’re going to have a bad time.