Lots, batches and expiry
You’ll need: Inventory items with lot tracking, Lot types, Lot reports — if you cannot see these, the module may be switched off for your business or outside your permissions. An administrator can change either.
For anything perishable, traceable or recallable, the quantity is not enough. You need to know which batch.
What a lot is
A lot is a batch identity shared by several units. Not one identity per unit — that is serial tracking — but a group that arrived together, was made together, or shares an expiry.
Turn it on by setting an item’s tracking method to lot tracked. From then on, movements of that item carry the lot they concern.
The fields that make it work
Shelf life days on the item sets how long a batch lasts, so an expiry can be derived when a batch is created rather than typed each time.
Lot type describes the kind of batch identity, and can be set on the item or inherited from its category.
Lot allocation strategy decides which batch leaves first: FEFO, FIFO or manual. For anything with an expiry date, FEFO is the answer — first expired, first out.
The distinction between FEFO and FIFO is not academic. A delivery that arrives later can have a shorter remaining life than one already in the store. FIFO would ship the older, longer-lived batch and leave the short-dated one to expire; FEFO ships the one that will turn first.
Production creates new lots
When a production run turns inputs into outputs, the output is a new batch. A transaction can record the output’s lot reference, its expiry and its origin.
Origin is the field that makes traceability real: it links what came out to what went in. A recall on an input batch becomes a question you can answer — which outputs used it, and where did they go — rather than a warehouse-wide guess.
Lot reports
Lot reports are how you interrogate all this. You can filter by inventory item, by lot reference, by expiry before a date, by business location and by origin.
Two of those are the ones you will use most:
Expiry before is your weekly discipline. Run it for a month ahead and you are looking at what must be sold, moved or discounted while it still has value.
Origin is the recall path. When a supplier tells you a batch was bad, this is the question that finds every finished item made from it.
The habit
Lot tracking earns nothing if it is only entered at receipt. Its value appears when somebody asks a question months later — which is precisely when it is too late to start recording properly.
Try it
On staging.feeprime.com, create a lot-tracked item with a short shelf life, receive two batches with different expiries, then ship some and see which batch FEFO chose. Then run a lot report for expiry before next month.