Optimizing Ecommerce Inventory with Lot Control and Tracking
For brands producing sensitive products like groceries, supplements, nutraceuticals, and beauty products, quick fulfillment isn’t just a customer want, but a regulatory requirement. These deliveries are only made possible with inventory management and lot control capabilities that ensure product quality, freshness, and timely shipping. Here’s how it works!
Working with Ecommerce Inventory Lot Control
Whatever kind of product your customers crave, you can reliably store, package, and deliver it with an inventory management system. There’s more to it than keeping a lid on your operations: ecommerce brands can track every lot and batch with a process known as lot control, which includes different tracking methods to better understand product quality.
Lot Tracking Options
Ecommerce product is touched by multiple people before it arrives at your customer’s door, and for every change of hands there’s increased risk. Lot tracking adds a layer of protection at every step, so you can respond, no matter what.
Tracking is often dictated by product type or its storage requirements.
Track product by:
- expiration date
- production date
- manufacturer’s date
- warehouse arrival date
Seems simple enough, but imagine how things could get out of control without it. As your ecommerce business grows, there’ll be more products to manage, additional SKUs and channels, requiring more storage to meet increased demand.
What Kinds of Products Require Lot Control?
Many of the consumer goods we rely on for health, sustenance, and quality of life come with product sensitivities. Our medications, vitamins and supplements, food and beverages, cosmetics, and certain electronics we can’t live without, come with regulations.
Lot control and tracking give ecommerce retailers accessible data and reporting to manage products and ensure quality and safety, from fulfillment through delivery.
Why It Matters in Ecommerce
Consumers purchasing many of the same foods and prescriptions bought in-store will find the same Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations apply when they buy them online.
Lot control and tracking is essential when there’s a product recall. An IMS with tracking has automated search functionality, programmed for lot or batch code, so you can identify where the damaged product sits and pull it from warehouse aisles and shelves, or during transit.
For fulfillment disruptions caused by weather-related events, lot tracking helps ecommerce retailers know what product is delayed and where to find lot replacements stored at other locations, minimizing downtime.
This kind of visibility helps brands maintain productivity and make the necessary adjustments to honor their commitment to consumers. Lot tracking gives online retailers the answers they need, in the moment they need them.
Lot Tracking Supports Risk Management
Many of the products we rely on have an end date or require following specific storage and transit guidelines. More than recommendations, they are government regulations meant to protect people through careful, safe, and responsible consumption.
For ecommerce retailers with healthcare, food and beverage, and other sensitive product offerings, ensuring supply chains operate under these practices is essential to keeping warehouse and fulfillment workers and consumers from harm. Lot tracking is one of many mechanisms keeping compliance, people, and products together.
If there is a problem with a lot or batch, tracking enables the quick search-and-locate needed to stop the flow of those goods and creates a record of the orders and companies involved, minimizing risks and downtime. Ecommerce retailers are part of a larger supply chain and what affects one company could affect all.
And because ecommerce businesses have heavy online presence, a bad product experience can bring a slew of damage to your brand. And you know what they say about putting it out on the internet—rants and poor reviews live forever. Plus, if the event comes back to haunt you in private lawsuits or government investigations, lot tracking gives you the gift of documentation.
Inventory Control Has a Value
Not all products are stored and fulfilled the same way. While your ecommerce business may prefer inventory situated by sequential lot numbers or expiration dates, others prefer stock stored by its value, known as inventory valuation.
The process of inventory valuation involves accounting, a way to estimate the value of unsold inventory, useful when you need to calculate your business finances. How you arrive at those numbers depends on the valuation method used.
First in First Out (FIFO)
Food and beverages with purchase dates and expiration dates, or products that rely on consumer trends like mobile phones or apparel, use FIFO to ensure the oldest goods move first to meet real-time demand.
First Expired First Out (FEFO)
Retailers may want to prioritize certain product sales to stay clear of risks to their business and the customers and consumers they serve. For example, medications and produce need to move quickly off the floor to minimize product loss and adhere to health and safety regulations.
Last in First Out (LIFO)
For goods most recently produced or purchased, and not subject to heavy regulation or expiration dates, businesses can take advantage of the tax savings LIFO provides because it creates COGS (a higher cost of goods), reducing their taxable income.
Intelligent Warehousing, Smarter Fulfillment
Lot control and tracking are part of a larger storage, fulfillment and distribution strategy. Smart systems and technology integration, specific to the needs of ecommerce and omnichannel retailers, gives you more than cost savings and operational efficiencies—it provides peace of mind.
When you need to locate your product, and track its supply chain journey, there are benefits in working with a 3PL provider that has the tools to give you answers in real-time, so you can make adjustments, and keep product inflows and outflows on schedule. Naturally, you want to be able to handle it all. But when you work collaboratively with a logistics partner, more doors open for your business creating scalability.
ShippingTree Levels Up Lot Control and Tracking
Looking for streamlined and simplified lot control?
With ShippingTree’s intuitive fulfillment platform, merchants can manage inventory by FIFO, LIFO, sequential lot number, or expiry date. Plus, these settings can be adjusted to the SKU level to allow for maximum flexibility.
Additionally, ShippingTree offers robust inventory reporting that contains lot control attributes used during the fulfillment process, in the event of product recalls where brands need to know which lots were used for specific orders.
Not only this, but our system integrations support EDI for B2B orders, ERPs, subscription payment platforms, return services, shopping cart platforms, and marketplaces.
There’s a growing need for brands to have an omnichannel presence. But retailers and resellers benefit from going beyond Amazon Marketplace, eBay, Walmart Marketplace, Shopify, or a company website. Imagine what you could do with a single system of truth, where product visibility is at your fingertips and shared with your strategic partners through end-delivery.
Reach out to one of our experts today to learn more about how ShippingTree streamlines fulfillment.
