Feature
Expiry date tracking for Shopify inventory
Shopify tracks how many units you have. It does not track when they go bad. LotTrack adds an expiration date to every batch you receive, warns you before stock ages out, and makes sure the oldest safe units ship first.
Why Shopify cannot track expiry dates on its own
Shopify inventory is a single number per variant per location. Two hundred units of a face serum are two hundred identical units as far as the platform is concerned, whether they were bottled last week or fourteen months ago.
For anything perishable that model breaks down. You need to know which units expire in March and which expire in November, you need to be warned before the March stock becomes unsellable, and when a customer asks which batch they received you need an answer.
The common workarounds all leak. Splitting each batch into its own variant multiplies your SKU count and confuses your storefront. Encoding dates in SKU names does not give you alerts. A spreadsheet beside Shopify goes stale the moment someone forgets to update it after a fulfillment.
How expiry tracking works in LotTrack
When stock arrives you record it as a lot against the Shopify variant and location it belongs to. A lot carries a lot number, the quantity received, an optional manufacture date, an expiration date, a supplier reference, and a QC status.
From that point the expiry date travels with the stock. It appears on the lots dashboard, it drives allocation during fulfillment, it feeds the alerting engine, and it is written into the audit trail whenever the lot changes hands.
- Expiration and manufacture dates on every lot, per variant and per location
- A configurable warning window — the default is 30 days before expiry
- Expiry alerts delivered in-app, by email, and via Telegram
- FEFO allocation so soonest-expiring stock is consumed first
- QC hold and quarantine to pull a questionable batch out of circulation
- CSV import so existing batch data comes across in one upload
Alerts before stock becomes a write-off
A nightly sweep checks every active lot against your warning window and raises a notification for anything approaching its expiration date. The point is lead time: thirty days notice is enough to discount a batch, bundle it, or route it to a channel that will move it. Thirty days after the fact all you can do is dispose of it.
Low-stock alerts run on the same engine, so a single notification feed covers both ends of the problem — stock that is about to expire and stock that is about to run out.
You choose the channels. In-app notifications keep a record inside the Shopify admin, email reaches whoever owns purchasing, and the Telegram integration puts warnings where a small operations team already talks.
Only track what actually expires
Most stores sell a mix. A supplement brand may have thirty perishable SKUs and two hundred pieces of merchandise, accessories, and packaging that have no expiry date at all.
LotTrack defaults to selective tracking: you nominate the products that require lots and the app stays completely silent about everything else. No warnings on t-shirts, no phantom compliance gaps, and no pressure to invent lot numbers for products that do not need them.
Try it on your own inventory
Install from the Shopify App Store — 14-day free trial on every plan.
Frequently asked questions
Can Shopify track expiration dates natively?
No. Shopify inventory is a single quantity per variant per location and has no field for expiration or manufacture dates. Tracking expiry requires an app such as LotTrack, which stores dates on individual lots layered over your existing Shopify inventory.
How far in advance does LotTrack warn me about expiring stock?
The expiry warning window is configurable per store and defaults to 30 days. Any active lot reaching that window raises a notification through the channels you have enabled — in-app, email, or Telegram.
Does expiry tracking work across multiple locations?
Yes. Lots are recorded per variant and per Shopify location, so the same batch split across a warehouse and a retail store is tracked separately with its own quantity. The number of locations you can hold lots in depends on your plan.
Can I import expiry dates for stock I already hold?
Yes. LotTrack includes a CSV import for lots, so you can bring existing batch numbers, manufacture dates, expiration dates, and supplier references across in a single upload rather than entering them by hand.