Ship the one that expires first,
not the one that arrived first.

BinLogic is a warehouse management system for brands and retailers that run their own fulfillment. What follows is how lot-controlled stock behaves on a floor: where the date has to be captured, what has to constrain the pick before the date gets a vote, and what the record has to be able to answer a year later.

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What a GS1 label can carry

Batch or lot number Expiration date Best before date Sell by date Production date Packaging date Serial number Product identifier

The problem

Capturing the date is the easy half. Making the pick obey it is the other one.

Nobody can say which lot went out

A supplier calls about one batch, and the question is which customers got it. The lot was captured at goods-in and then dropped at the pick, so the record can tell you precisely what arrived and almost nothing about what left. Everything after that is people walking the floor.

We shipped the one that arrived first

FIFO is the habit, and most days it agrees with the date. Then a delivery turns up carrying a shorter date than the stock already on the rack, the rule quietly picks the wrong pallet, and the short-dated cases keep getting passed over until somebody finds them at a count.

It was in date when it left here

The customer rejected it anyway. A receiver holding you to a minimum remaining shelf life is not checking whether the date has passed; they are checking how much of it is left. That figure was knowable when the order was allocated, and nothing in the pick was looking at it.

How it works

Capture the date, constrain the pick, keep the lot attached.

Capture the date where it is readable

Sometimes that is a scan: a GS1-128 or DataMatrix symbol on the case or pallet can carry the batch and the date alongside the product identifier. Often it is not, because the supplier applied neither and the code is human-readable, or is a production date you have to turn into an expiry. Any of those can work. Deciding at the pick face cannot.

Let the date narrow the choice, not make it

First-expired-first-out belongs at the end of an allocation rather than the start. Lots on hold or awaiting release come out first, then whatever the order itself demands — a minimum remaining shelf life, one lot to a pallet, a market restriction — and the date decides between what survives. Run as a plain sort, it will cheerfully allocate the lot QA has not released.

Keep the lot attached on the way out

A lot number that survives receiving but not picking answers half a question. The record worth having runs both directions: which lots are in this shipment, and which shipments contained this lot. Where stock is repacked or relabelled, the parent lot has to reach the child, or the chain breaks at the one step you built it for.

The shape of it

A date is a fact about a lot, not a note on a pallet.

BinLogic is built mobile-first: floor work such as receiving, putaway, picking and cycle counts runs on a handheld device. A date captured at the door is a date nobody has to transcribe from a pallet card later, and the transcription step is where the lot code usually stops travelling with the stock.

What the label carries

Batch or lot number Expiration date Best before date Sell by date + whatever the category demands

Date captured at the door · Allocation constrained by it

Handheld on the floor

One lot record

System of record

Questions

What teams ask before they put dates in charge of the pick.

Is first-expired-first-out just first-in-first-out with extra steps?

No, and treating it as a sort is where implementations come unstuck. FIFO orders by when stock arrived. FEFO orders by the date attribute on the lot, which is often derived from a production date plus a shelf-life value rather than read off the unit. The two agree until they do not: a short-dated delivery, different shelf lives across lots of one product, returns put back to stock, or a lot re-dated after QA. And FEFO has to sit behind lot status and the order's own constraints, or it will confidently allocate stock you are not allowed to ship.

Which date should we actually be tracking?

All of the ones your products carry, with a record of which kind each one is. GS1 gives best before, sell by and expiration three separate application identifiers, so a mixed range will span more than one and an allocation rule has to know which it is reading. They do not mean the same thing. USDA FSIS, which covers meat, poultry and egg products, describes "Best if Used By/Before" as indicating "when a product will be of best flavor or quality. It is not a purchase or safety date", and "Sell-By" as telling "the store how long to display the product for sale". Use-By is the exception it names: "not a safety date except for when used on infant formula".

Where does the FDA traceability rule stand right now?

Read FDA's own page rather than the summaries of it, because it carries two sentences that pull against each other: "The original compliance date for all persons subject to the recordkeeping requirements of the Food Traceability Rule was Tuesday, January 20, 2026" and, elsewhere on the same page, "The compliance date is January 20, 2026." The sequence is not in dispute. FDA proposed extending the date by 30 months, to 20 July 2028. Congress then directed FDA not to enforce the rule before that date, and FDA says it intends to comply. So enforcement is barred for now while the rulemaking that would move the date is still pending. That is a reason to use the time, not a reason to stand the programme down — and it is a question for your counsel rather than for a software vendor's website. Checked September 2026.

What does the rule actually ask a warehouse to be able to do?

Produce the records, quickly. For foods on FDA's Food Traceability List, receiving, shipping and transformation are among the Critical Tracking Events the rule names, each carrying Key Data Elements, and the rule expects those to reach FDA "within 24 hours or within some reasonable time to which the FDA has agreed". That clock is what turns traceability from a filing problem into a systems problem. A lot history spread across three spreadsheets, a pallet card and a supplier's inbox does technically exist, and will not be produced inside a day.

We are not food. Does any of this apply to us?

The traceability rule does not, unless what you handle is on FDA's Food Traceability List or contains one of those foods still in the form the list names. Lot control is much wider than that rule, and wider than dating: packaging components, cosmetics and electronics often need lot traceability for recall while carrying no expiry at all. One caution on pharmaceuticals. 21 CFR 211.137 requires that a drug product "shall bear an expiration date determined by appropriate stability testing", but that is the manufacturer's obligation under good manufacturing practice, not the warehouse's, and the distribution-side rules for prescription drugs are a separate regime this page does not cover.

Labelling tools

binlogic.io hosts free tools: a freight identifier validator (freightID) and an SSCC-18 label generator.

Ship the one that expires first, not the one that arrived first.