When adding a new sample or new entry, you can easily click on a link and create lose all entered data.
Have the pages display a warning that data could be lost when a user navigates away from the samples and entries form pages without saving.
I'd prefer to allow autosaving of data and letting the user resume editing later, but I'm worried that will conflict with adding data validations that we're going to start on soon. Popping up the warning will be good enough for now.