Skip to content
Tweak Your Biz home.
MENUMENU
  • Home
  • Categories
    • Reviews
    • Business
    • Finance
    • Technology
    • Growth
    • Sales
    • Marketing
    • Management
  • Who We Are

Stock Traceability: Friend or Foe?

By Stephanie Davies Published March 13, 2014 Updated December 1, 2022

You may not feel that Stock Traceability applies to your business, but sectors such as the Pharmaceutical and Food industries depend on it, and other organisations are now adopting traceability as best practice.  So whether it is by law or process, Stock Traceability is becoming more the norm.

Making sure that you have 100% traceability leads to an effective supply chain or warehouse management solution, with minimum effort placed on your staff. Businesses with a requirement for a dynamic supply chain need to be in the position where if a stock item is ‘recalled’ that they can correctly identify the delivery point.

How would your company benefit from the correct implementation of stock traceability procedures?

Control Sell and Use by dates, at the point of Goods Receiving

  • Batch Tracking incorporates the management of dates – these can be sell and use by dates or a combination of both.  You can set controls on your system to enforce the business rules on what dates are acceptable.
  • All stock movements must be recorded with these dates along with identification or batch numbers.
  • Stock fulfillment can be based on Use, Sell, FIFO (oldest first), and / or other attributes.
  • The operation can control duplicate batch numbers when receiving goods into the warehouse if this is a requirement.

Correct allocation of stock to orders

  • Stock can be allocated through order entry or at dispatch level.    This will be dependent on the business processes implemented.  But the batch allocated to the order, can be amended at various stages.
  • You can restrict the warehouse picker, to pick from one batch, opposed to multiple batches, as some customers may not accept multiple batch references.  This will be of importance in the food industry with very tight expiration dates.

Management of recalls

Implementing points 1 and 2 will allow easy ‘recall’ of any product through the system.  A manufacturer has to ensure when they issue a recall to the supplier, they can pinpoint in their records all relevant data where the batch was delivered to.

Cost methodology

Systems provide multiple costing methods such as Standard, FIFO, or Average but if you have batch tracking in place, you also have the option to use Actual Costing.  This will give you accurate posting to the financial systems when reconciling your Stock Valuation back to the Stock Balance Sheet.

Serial tracking

  • Serial Tracking is a higher level of traceability and normally only used for large valuable items such as white or electrical goods.
  • A single serial number is assigned to one stock item quantity.

Bill of Material (BOM)

A company that distributes a product from one source to another, needs to track the batch number and other details, but a manufacture has a further complex issue in that they must record raw material batch details, and generate an internal batch number for the finished product.  This is the number that goes into the supply chain that distributors follow.  This process needs to be efficient and accurate.

If you would like to know more about Stock Traceability or how to improve your relationship with your supply chain, please leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you ASAP!

Images: ”Worker Using Tablet Computer In Distribution Warehouse / Shutterstock.com“

__________________________________________________________________________________

Connect with Tweak Your Biz:

                     

Would you like to write for Tweak Your Biz?

Tweak Your Biz is an international, business advice community and online publication. Today it is read by over 140,000 business people each month (unique visitors, Google Analytics, December, 2013). See our review of 2013 for more information. 

An outstanding title can increase tweets, Facebook Likes, and visitor traffic by 50% or more. Generate great titles for your articles and blog posts with the Tweak Your Biz Title Generator.

Want to get your business featured on Tweak Your Biz? Check out #TYBspotlight.

Posted in Technology

Enjoy the article? Share it:

  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on X
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Email

Stephanie Davies

Stephanie Davies is Founder and Managing Director at Brook Software Solutions who provide customised Supply Chain Management solutions to small and medium sized companies throughout Ireland and the UK.

Visit author twitter pageContact author via email

View all posts by Stephanie Davies

Signup for the newsletter

Sign For Our Newsletter To Get Actionable Business Advice

* indicates required
Contents
Control Sell and Use by dates, at the point of Goods Receiving
Correct allocation of stock to orders
Management of recalls
Cost methodology
Serial tracking
Bill of Material (BOM)
Connect with Tweak Your Biz:

Related Articles

Business
Technology

Beyond the Hype: Former AT&T and Synchronoss CEO Glenn Lurie on What the $4 Billion GenAI Telecom Market Really Means for 2025

Jessica Jones August 15, 2025
Technology

QR Codes on Clothing: Gimmick or Genius?

Jarred Wrangler August 15, 2025
Business
Technology

How AI Mockup Generators Provide First-Mover Advantage

James Harding August 14, 2025

Footer

Tweak Your Biz
Visit us on Facebook Visit us on X Visit us on LinkedIn

Privacy Settings

Company

  • Contact
  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Statement
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Sitemap

Signup for the newsletter

Sign For Our Newsletter To Get Actionable Business Advice

* indicates required

Copyright © 2025. All rights reserved. Tweak Your Biz.

Disclaimer: If you click on some of the links throughout our website and decide to make a purchase, Tweak Your Biz may receive compensation. These are products that we have used ourselves and recommend wholeheartedly. Please note that this site is for entertainment purposes only and is not intended to provide financial advice. You can read our complete disclosure statement regarding affiliates in our privacy policy. Cookie Policy.

Tweak Your Biz
Sign For Our Newsletter To Get Actionable Business Advice
[email protected]