Ninety days before it expires, somebody should already know

At receiving: write the date down

Anything you sell with a use-by date (supplements, coffee, skincare, snacks, pet food) runs on a clock that starts the day it arrives. The countdown below uses ninety, sixty and thirty days because round numbers are easy to remember. Your marks will differ by product. What matters is that each one has an owner and an action.

The first mark is the dock. When a pallet comes in, the lot number and expiry date go into your system before the stock becomes pickable. Not later, not "when we get a minute," and not only on a sticker on the carton.

This is where most expiry trouble starts. If the date isn't recorded at receiving, every later step depends on someone walking the shelves and reading labels. An expiry date nobody recorded at receiving is a write-off you've already scheduled.

Two details make this easier. Put the date on the bin label, not just the system, so pickers can see it. And if one inbound shipment contains more than one lot, receive them as separate lots, even when it's slower. Mixed lots in one location are how the newer stock ships first.

It's also the moment to check what the supplier sent you. If you agreed that stock arrives with a minimum amount of life left, receiving is where you find out whether it did. A pallet that turns up with four months left when you expected twelve should be flagged that day, while it's still a conversation with the supplier rather than your problem.

Every day: pick the earliest date first

Most warehouses default to first in, first out. For dated stock that's not quite right. The rule you want is first expired, first out: pick the units with the earliest expiry, regardless of which arrived first. Usually those are the same. When a supplier ships older stock in a later delivery, they aren't.

If your warehouse system can direct picks by expiry date, turn it on. If it can't, set up locations so that only one lot is pickable at a time, and the next lot waits in reserve. That's a manual rule, but it's one the floor can follow.

Returns need the same treatment. A returned unit goes back into stock with its own expiry date, not into whatever bin it came from.

If your product pages show a best-before date, or promise a minimum shelf life, make sure that promise comes from the lot that will actually ship. A page that says "best before next autumn" while the picker grabs a lot that expires in spring is a refund waiting to happen.

Ninety days out: check who can still take it

This is the first decision point. Pull a list of every lot with ninety days or less remaining, grouped by product.

Some buyers won't accept short-dated stock. Wholesale customers and retail partners often write a minimum remaining shelf life into their terms, and some marketplaces have their own rules for dated products. Check yours. If an order for one of those channels would ship a unit under the line, the system should stop it and choose a fresher lot, or flag it for a person.

Ninety days is also when your buyer or merchandiser should see the list. A pallet with three months left is still an asset. They can slow down the next purchase order, move it to the channel with the shortest shelf-life rule, or plan a promotion.

Keep an eye on repeats. If the same product lands on the ninety-day list every quarter, the countdown isn't the problem. You're buying more than you sell in its shelf life, and the fix is a smaller reorder quantity.

Sixty days out: move it on purpose

At sixty days, the question changes from "where can this go" to "how do we sell it before it can't be sold."

The usual moves are bundles, multi-buy offers, a sample in other orders, or a clearly labeled short-date discount. Be honest in the listing: say the date. Customers who buy short-dated coffee at a discount and receive what they expected are fine. Customers who discover it on arrival aren't.

Keep the offer linked to the lot. If a "short date" listing ships from a fresh lot by mistake, you've given away margin for nothing, and the old stock is still sitting there. The listing should only pull from the short-dated location.

Bundles have their own rule: a bundle expires when its earliest component does. If a gift set pairs a fresh candle with a tea that has six weeks left, the set has six weeks left, and the listing and the countdown should both know it.

Thirty days out, and the last week

At thirty days, decide what happens to whatever is left. Donation, liquidation, staff sale or write-off: each has different paperwork and a different owner, and finance usually wants to know before the month closes rather than after. Make the decision now, while there's still time to carry it out. Donation in particular takes lead time: the recipient has to agree to take the goods, collect them and confirm what they can accept. A call in the last week is usually too late.

In the last week, pull the remaining units out of pickable stock entirely. Move them to a quarantine location so nobody can pick them for a regular order by accident. Record the quantity, the lot and what happened to it.

If something expires on the shelf anyway, treat it as a small post-mortem, not a shrug. Which mark was missed, and why? Usually it's the first one: the date was never recorded at receiving.

Put this into practice

Pick your five best-selling dated products. For each, can you see today, without walking the warehouse, how many units you hold in each lot and when each lot expires? If you can't, start at the dock: lot and expiry captured at receiving, on the bin label and in the system.

Then put the ninety, sixty and thirty-day lists on a recurring calendar with a name next to each.

We build fulfillment operations that keep the warehouse, the storefront and the people buying stock working from the same dates. If your expiry dates live on stickers, talk to us.

Related work: Paddle8.