If your business handles food, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, or any product with a shelf life, lot tracking and expiry date management are not optional. They are the backbone of product safety, regulatory compliance, and customer trust. Yet many small and mid-sized warehouses still manage this information in spreadsheets, or worse, not at all.
Lot numbers and expiry dates work together. A lot number identifies a specific batch of product - everything manufactured at the same time, from the same ingredients, under the same conditions. The expiry date tells you when that batch is no longer safe or effective to sell. Together, they give you traceability from supplier to customer and the ability to act fast when something goes wrong.
Why Lot Tracking Matters
The most obvious reason is recalls. When a supplier notifies you that a specific batch of product is contaminated, mislabelled, or defective, you need to answer three questions immediately: how much of that batch do you still have in stock, where is it, and who already received it?
Without lot tracking, you cannot answer any of those questions accurately. You would have to recall every unit of that product across every customer, regardless of whether their batch was affected. That is expensive, disruptive, and damages customer confidence far more than a targeted, precise recall.
Beyond recalls, lot tracking gives you quality control data. If customers report issues with a product, lot numbers let you identify whether the complaints cluster around a specific batch. That narrows the investigation from "something is wrong with this product" to "something was wrong with this particular production run," which is far more actionable.
FEFO: First Expired, First Out
Most warehouse operations follow FIFO - first in, first out. When you have products with expiry dates, you need FEFO - first expired, first out. The difference is subtle but important.
Imagine you receive two shipments of the same product a week apart. The second shipment was manufactured earlier and has a closer expiry date than the first. Under FIFO, you would ship the first delivery first because it arrived first. Under FEFO, you ship the second delivery first because it expires sooner.
FEFO requires that every lot in your warehouse has its expiry date recorded at the point of receiving. When your team picks orders, they pick the lot with the nearest expiry date, not the lot that has been sitting on the shelf longest. This minimizes waste from expired stock and ensures customers always receive product with the maximum remaining shelf life.
Setting Up Lot Tracking in Your Warehouse
Implementing lot tracking does not require a massive system overhaul. Start with these fundamentals:
Capture lot information at goods in. When a shipment arrives, record the lot number (usually printed on the case or individual units), the expiry date, the quantity, and the supplier. This is the foundation of every lot record. If you skip this step, everything downstream breaks.
Store lots separately. Two lots of the same product should not be mixed in the same bin or shelf location. Physically separating lots ensures that when your team picks from a specific location, they are picking the correct lot. Label each location with the lot number and expiry date so pickers can verify at a glance.
Record lot numbers on outbound orders. When you ship an order, record which lot or lots were used to fulfil it. This creates the traceability chain you need for recalls and customer queries. If a customer calls about a product issue, you can look up their order, find the lot number, and check whether other customers received stock from the same batch.
Managing Expiry Dates Proactively
Tracking expiry dates is only useful if you act on the information. Reactive expiry management - discovering expired stock during a stock take - means you have already lost money. Proactive management means you never reach that point.
- Set expiry alerts. Configure warnings at 90, 60, and 30 days before expiry. The 90-day alert is your signal to prioritize selling that stock. The 60-day alert triggers promotional pricing or bundling. The 30-day alert is your last chance before the product becomes unsellable.
- Define a minimum remaining shelf life policy. Many B2B customers require products to have a minimum percentage of shelf life remaining at delivery - often 50% or 75%. If a lot drops below your minimum threshold, flag it immediately so your sales team knows which customers can and cannot receive it.
- Quarantine expired stock. Expired products should be physically separated from sellable inventory. Create a dedicated quarantine zone and move expired stock there promptly. This prevents accidental picks and makes disposal or return processing straightforward.
Compliance Requirements
If you are in food, pharmaceuticals, or cosmetics, lot tracking is not just good practice - it is a legal requirement in most jurisdictions. Regulations like the EU General Food Law, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, and various GMP standards all require batch-level traceability.
Auditors will ask you to demonstrate that you can trace any product from receipt to dispatch. They will pick a random lot number and ask you to show its complete history: when it arrived, who supplied it, where it was stored, who received it, and how much remains. If you cannot produce this information quickly, you have a compliance problem.
The good news is that if your lot tracking processes are solid, audits become straightforward. You are simply showing the auditor what you already know about your inventory.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
The biggest mistake is inconsistency. Lot tracking only works when every receipt, every pick, and every adjustment is recorded. If your team sometimes skips the lot number because they are busy, your data becomes unreliable and your traceability chain breaks.
The second mistake is treating lot tracking as purely an administrative task. It is an operational discipline. Your warehouse layout, your picking process, and your receiving procedures all need to support it. If pickers have to search through mixed lots to find the right expiry date, they will eventually grab whatever is closest.
The third mistake is relying on paper. Paper logs get lost, damaged, and misread. They cannot alert you to approaching expiry dates or generate recall reports on demand. If you are serious about lot tracking, you need a system that records lot information digitally and makes it searchable.
Getting Started
If you are not tracking lots and expiry dates today, start with your highest-risk products - anything perishable, anything regulated, anything where a quality issue could harm a customer. Get the process right for those products first, then expand to the rest of your catalogue.
The right warehouse management system makes lot tracking almost invisible to your team. Storq, for example, is built for small and mid-sized warehouses that need batch-level traceability without the complexity of enterprise software. The goal is always the same: know exactly what you have, when it expires, and where it went.