For owners of small food, drinks, supplement and cosmetics brands with their own warehouse.
It usually starts with an email from a supplier. One of their deliveries has a problem, and they're recalling it. The email gives a code and asks you to stop selling those products and tell your customers.
Then comes the question nobody in a small warehouse wants to hear: which of your customers received products from that delivery?
If the answer involves going through invoices, delivery notes and somebody's memory, this article is for you.
The number that tells deliveries apart
Every time your supplier makes a run of a product, that run gets its own code, printed on the box or the label. Two pallets of the same jam, the same shampoo or the same protein powder can look identical, but if they were made on different days, their codes are different.
That code is how a supplier, a retailer or a food safety inspector tells one delivery apart from another. In the trade it's called a batch number (also called lot number).
The date that decides what goes out first
Most of these products also carry a date: best before, use by, or an expiry date. In a busy warehouse, it's easy for the newest delivery to end up at the front of the shelf. The older stock behind it quietly runs out of date, and one day it goes in the bin.
The fix sounds simple: whatever expires first, goes out first. Doing that by eye works with ten products. With two hundred products, three suppliers and a part-time team, it doesn't. In warehouse language this rule is called FEFO: first expired, first out.
What goes wrong without it
Small brands rarely lose money on one big mistake. They lose it on small, repeating ones:
- Stock that expires on the shelf, because nobody saw the date in time.
- Customers who receive products with a short date, while fresher stock sat behind it.
- Hours of searching when a supplier recalls a batch, followed by a recall that's wider than it needed to be, because you can't tell who got what.
- Problems with retailers, who increasingly want to know which batch and which date is on every pallet before your delivery arrives.
None of these show up as one line in your accounts. Together they cost a lot.
Where this bites hardest depends on your product. See how it plays out in Food & Beverages and in Cosmetics / Personal Care.
Why a spreadsheet can't keep up
A spreadsheet can store batch numbers and dates. The problem is that it only knows what someone typed in, and in a warehouse the truth changes all day: a pallet is moved, a box is opened, an order is packed from the nearest shelf instead of the right one.
To know which batch went to which customer, that information has to be captured at the moment it happens: when goods arrive, when they're picked, and when they're packed. That's not something people can keep up with by hand on top of their real work.
How it works with a warehouse system
With a warehouse system and a scanner, the routine becomes part of the work instead of extra admin:
- When a delivery arrives, you scan it once and record its batch number and date. Many labels already carry both in the barcode, so one scan is enough.
- When an order is picked, the system sends the picker to the stock that expires first. Nobody has to check dates by eye.
- When the order is packed, the scan records which batch went into which parcel.
- When a supplier recalls a batch, you search for the batch number and see straight away which customers received it, how many units, and when.
- When a retailer asks for details per pallet, they're already there, because every carton was scanned as it was packed.
The result: less waste, fresher products for your customers, and a recall that takes minutes instead of days.
Do you need this yet?
Three quick questions:
- Do you sell anything with a date on it? Then you already have the expiry problem, whether you see it or not.
- Could you name, today, every customer who received one specific delivery from your supplier? If not, a recall would hurt.
- Do you supply, or want to supply, retailers or wholesalers? Then they'll ask for batch details sooner or later.
If you answered yes to one of them, tracking batch numbers and dates is worth setting up now, while your volumes are still small and the habit is easy to build.
Talk it through
BizBloqs tracks batch numbers and expiry dates for companies where recalls are serious business, including pharma and food. The same tools work just as well for a small brand with one warehouse and one person packing orders.
Want to see how it would work in your warehouse? Book a 15-minute call, and we'll look at your products, your suppliers and your orders together.
