For businesses handling products with limited shelf life or those requiring strict traceability—such as food, cosmetics, or pharmaceuticals—efficient inventory management is key. ShipHero's Lots and Expiration Tracking features provide the tools to manage these types of products. This system helps you track specific batches from receipt to delivery, enabling seamless product recalls and preventing expired items from reaching your customers.
This article will guide you through enabling and effectively utilizing ShipHero's Lot and Expiration Tracking, helping you maintain product quality and reduce waste.
Understanding Lots and Expirations
If you are interested in using Lots and Expirations in ShipHero, please contact support@shiphero.com to enable this feature for your account.
NOTE For 3PLs: Lots and Expirations must be enabled and settings configured at the at the child account level. Please provide the support team with the client account ID, found on the 3PL Customer page, when requesting the feature be enabled for your clients.
Understanding Lots and Expirations
- Lots (or Lot Numbers): A lot number is a unique identifier assigned to a specific batch of products. This is incredibly useful for tracking products from manufacturing to the customer, enabling targeted recalls, quality control, and better inventory management. Think of it as a batch ID for your inventory.
- Expirations (or Expiration Dates): Directly linked to lot numbers, expiration dates specify when a product is no longer safe or effective to use. ShipHero allows you to track these dates and implement "First Expired, First Out" (FEFO) and other picking strategies, to minimize waste and ensure product freshness.
Lots and Expiration Account Settings
To configure your lot tracking settings go to the My Account > Settings > Lot Tracking page.
Mandatory Settings:
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Lot Tracking Priority
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- FEFO (First Expired First Out): Prioritizes inventory with the earliest expiration date, ideal for perishables.
- FIFO (First In First Out): Prioritizes inventory based on its receipt date, suitable for items like electronics.
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- Picking Disabled Period- the number of days before a product's expiration date to disable the ability to pick in the warehouse. This prevents expired products from being shipped.
- Email address- to send automated email reminders for expiring lots
Optional settings:
- Verify Lot when picking- Require the picker to confirm the lot during the picking flows
- Exclude expired lots from the quantity sent to the sles channel- with this enabled the available quantity pushed to your store will exclude expired lots or those within the picking disabled timeframe. Only non-expired, sellable products will be considered available.
Enable Lot Tracking on Products
Because there may be a mix of products in your establishment that do or do not need lot tracking the account setting does not enable the Needs Lot Tracking product setting by default. You will need to enable the setting Needs Lot Tracking setting for each SKU after the account setting is enabled.
NOTE: Do not enable the lot tracking for Kit SKUs as lots need to be managed at the component level. Enabling lot tracking on Kit SKUs prevents inventory from being pushed to stores.
The Needs Lot Tracking setting can be enabled mutliple ways for products.
- For a single SKU enable it using the pencil icon on Product Details page.
- For multiple SKUs use the Bulk Edit option in the Inventory > Product page.
- The Needs Lot Tracking setting is not available via CSV Bulk Edit upload.