If your business maintains expiring inventory, tracking expiration dates is one of the most important things you can do to ensure your customers remain safe and that your bottom line is protected from inventory shrinkage. In this article, we’ll walk you through tracking expiration dates and provide an expiry date tracker spreadsheet.
What is an expiry date?
An expiry date, also known as an expiration date, marks precisely when an item expires. Expiration dates are found on all sorts of items, from medications to processed foods to cleaning agents. You’ll also find them on things like batteries.
In some instances, expiration dates may be “BEST BY” dates. In other instances, expiration dates are not suggestions but are enforced by law.
Since the finality of expiration dates varies across industries and individual items, check with manufacturers and other trusted partners to ensure you’re making the right decisions about your inventory.
Why does tracking expiry dates matter?
Once again, the chief reason to track expiry dates is safety. If an item is no longer safe to use or consume, it’s absolutely essential that it not be provided to customers or used in any process that may cause harm.
Beyond safety, though, there are various reasons why expiration dates are so important. One of the most obvious is profitability. After all, if your business stocks too much inventory that expires before it can even be used, that shrinkage will put a massive dent in your business’s margins.
In addition, you’ll have to account for all the wasted labor and carrying costs associated with maintaining inventory that expires before it can be used or sold.
This easy, comprehensive guide will help you:
Free Ebook: The Complete Guide to Barcoding Your Inventory
How to track expiry dates
There are various ways to track expiry dates. The two most common are inventory management software or a spreadsheet that’s typically used in conjunction with a manually updated calendar. Here’s some information about your options.
Selecting an inventory management system with expiry date reminders
Utilizing inventory management software that automatically reminds you when inventory is set to expire is considered the gold standard for properly tracking inventory. After all, it’s easy to enter expiry date information once an item is checked in to the inventory database via barcode or QR code. At that point, you can set a customized reminder to alert you as that expiration date approaches. With solutions like Sortly, you can decide precisely when those warnings occur, to whom they are sent, and how.
Create a spreadsheet to track expiry dates
Another option is to create your own spreadsheet—or use our template, which is provided at the end of this guide—to manually track the expiration dates of the inventory your business currently has on hand. Remember that unless you plan to check this spreadsheet daily, you must create a calendar with alerts about upcoming expiration dates.
Another option would be to pick a cadence, such as weekly, in which all items that expire in the following month are identified and handled on a case-by-case basis. This may be a viable solution if you only stock a few dozen items at your business. That said, automating this process can save significant time and money for companies with dynamic inventory needs and items that come and go quickly.
Use FIFO to support either strategy
Regardless of which system you implement to keep track of expiration dates, implementing a FIFO strategy is widely considered a best practice that should not be skipped. Short for “First in, First out,” FIFO requires that items that expire sooner are utilized first, thereby reducing the risk of inventory spoilage.
In practice, this means that when a shelf is stocked, the items that will expire first are the “easiest to reach,” whereas stock that expires later is kept at the back of the shelf or even out of reach.
Implement safety audits no matter what
Another thing to consider is your inventory audit strategy. For healthcare providers and restaurants, for example, utilizing expired inventory could have significant repercussions. Businesses such as these should perform regular audits to ensure that all inventory is safe to use and that the processes in place to protect against expiration are being adhered to.
Audits are still recommended for businesses with lower risk, although they need not be performed as frequently.
Whatever your audit cadence, ensure that the process for these audits, along with all other systems in place to keep expired inventory safe, is well documented in your standard operating procedure (SOP). When audits reveal vulnerabilities in that process, update the SOP swiftly and retrain as needed.
Expiry date tracker Excel template
If you’re not ready to use inventory management software to automate how you track expiry dates, using a spreadsheet alongside a manually managed calendar is the next best bet to help get you started. We’ve created then expiry date tracker for Excel. Feel free to download this tracker and customize it to meet your business’s needs.
If and when you’re ready to start using inventory management software, you can bulk upload this data.
Download: Expiry Date Tracker Excel Template
About Sortly
Sortly is an inventory management solution that helps you track, manage, and organize your inventory from any device, in any location. We’re an easy-to-use inventory software that’s perfect for large or small businesses. Sortly builds inventory tracking seamlessly into your workday so you can save time and money, satisfy your customers, and help your business succeed.
With Sortly, you can track inventory, supplies, parts, tools, assets like equipment and machinery, and anything else that matters to your business. It comes equipped with smart features like barcoding & QR coding, low stock alerts, customizable folders, data-rich reporting, and much more. Best of all, you can update inventory right from your smartphone, whether you’re on the job, in the warehouse, or on the go.
Whether you’re just getting started with inventory management or you’re an expert looking for a more efficient solution, we can transform how your company manages inventory—so you can focus on building your business. That’s why over 15,000 businesses globally trust us as their inventory management solution.
Start your two-week free trial of Sortly today.
