Knowing every lot’s expiry date is useless if you only look at those dates once a quarter, at the stock count, when it is already too late to act. Expiry tracking is not a report you run — it is a live, dated worklist that tells you what to move this week before it becomes a write-off next week. In Fast WMS that worklist is the Lot Expiry Dashboard, and this guide covers how to set it up and use it.
Expiry tracking is the operational half of FEFO: FEFO decides the order stock is picked, while the dashboard decides what a human needs to chase before FEFO alone can clear it in time. For the feature page, see the Lot Expiry Dashboard; for the picking side, see FIFO & FEFO picking.
1. The lot model that makes it possible
Expiry tracking works because Fast WMS tracks stock at pallet granularity, not just as a quantity per item. Each physical pallet is one lot — a uniquely numbered License Plate carrying its item and quantity, an external batch/LPN number, a production date, an expiry date and a status. Because expiry lives on the pallet, the system can always tell you not just how much of an item you hold, but exactly which pallets they are and how much life each has left.
2. Capture dates at receipt
The one setup step that matters most is capturing accurate production and expiry dates at goods receipt, when each pallet is created. Get this right and everything downstream — FEFO ordering, the dashboard bands, alerts — is reliable. Get it wrong and the whole system is only as trustworthy as its worst date. For dated goods, make expiry a required field at receipt.
3. Reading the expiry time bands
The dashboard takes every available pallet and sorts it into expiry-window bands, turning a spreadsheet of dates into a prioritised list. A representative set of bands runs from already-expired through to comfortably in-date:
| # | Time band | What it means & the action |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Already expired | Excluded from picking; flag for write-off or return |
| 2 | Expires today | Critical — dispatch now or lose it |
| 3 | This week | Top of the action list — push or expedite |
| 4 | This month | Prioritise, discount or transfer to a faster channel |
| 5 | Next month | Watch as it moves toward nearer bands |
| 6 | This quarter | Routine handling; feeds shelf-life planning |
| 7 | Six months | Comfortable life; no action |
| 8 | This year | Long-dated stock |
| 9 | Beyond a year | Longest-life stock, tracked for completeness |
The exact bands are configurable to your shelf lives — a dairy operation may compress the near bands to days, a chemical operation may stretch them to years — but the principle is the same: the store sees a dated worklist, not a date dump.
4. Alerts and escalation
The dashboard is the pull view; alerts are the push. Configure near-expiry alerts so the right people are told before a date passes, not after. Escalation by band means a lot moving into “this week” can trigger a notification to the person who can actually act — sell it, transfer it, or discount it — turning a would-be loss into a managed decision.
5. Push near-expiry lots to the pick list
The most valuable move is expediting: taking a near-expiry lot off the dashboard and getting it prioritised for dispatch. Because FEFO already orders picks by nearest expiry, near-expiry stock is naturally picked first wherever there is demand — but the dashboard lets you go further and actively push a specific lot into fulfilment or a transfer before its band tips into write-off territory. This is the loop that closes: dashboard surfaces it, FEFO and the pick list move it.
6. Hold, block and write-off
Not every near-expiry lot should ship. If a batch is under investigation or already past date, flag it as hold or damage — this removes it from picking eligibility without moving the quantity or editing the balance, so it is cleanly ring-fenced. Genuinely expired stock is excluded from picking automatically and appears in the expired band for a documented write-off, keeping book stock honest.
See what to move this week, before it becomes a write-off next week.
Fast WMS dates every pallet, buckets available lots into expiry time bands, alerts before dates pass, and works hand-in-hand with FEFO picking to move near-expiry stock first. Configurable to your shelf lives, cloud or on-premise.
Frequently asked questions
See the Lot Expiry Dashboard on your own stock
A 30-minute demo with your items and shelf lives — time bands, alerts and expediting near-expiry lots, live on screen.