Expiration date tracking for small business: a simple system

Capture the date at receiving, not later

The only reliable moment to record an expiration date is when the box is open in front of you. Add three columns to your receiving process: expiration date, lot code, and location. If you're entering products into a spreadsheet or POS anyway, this adds seconds per line and saves hours later.

Standardize the format the day you start. Mixed formats — 03/04/25 meaning March 4 in one row and April 3 in another — quietly break every report you build afterward. Pick ISO (YYYY-MM-DD) and stick to it.

Use three thresholds, not one

A single “expiring soon” flag is either too early to act on or too late to matter. Three tiers give each stage a different action:

• 90 days — planning. Stop reordering, adjust the next purchase order, plan a promotion.
• 60 days — action. Discount, bundle, move to a higher-traffic location, or offer to a wholesale buyer.
• 30 days — urgency. Deep markdown, donate if the category allows it, or schedule disposal.
• Expired — pull immediately, log it as waste, and note the cause.

Make the list impossible to ignore

Color coding works because it survives a busy morning: red for expired and inside your shortest threshold, amber for the middle tier, yellow for the earliest warning, green for everything fine. Sort by days remaining ascending so the most urgent line is always the first one on screen. Anyone covering a shift should be able to read it without training.

Rotate stock so the system stays honest

First-expired, first-out beats first-in, first-out: a case received later can easily have an earlier date. Shelve by expiration, not by delivery order, and physically face the earliest date forward. Your report tells you what's at risk; the shelf is what decides which unit a customer actually picks up.

Review weekly, review the causes monthly

A five-minute weekly look at the amber and red lists is enough to keep waste low. Once a month, look at what actually expired and ask why: over-ordering, slow category, bad placement, or a supplier shipping short-dated stock. That last one is a conversation worth having — short-dated deliveries are a cost you're absorbing quietly.

Where this connects to recalls

It's the same catalog. Once you're tracking SKU, lot, quantity and location well enough to manage expiration dates, you already have the data needed to check that inventory against official recalls. One clean catalog, two problems solved.