Expiry dates, batches and traceability: selling food, cosmetics or pharmacy products online without losing money

Selling food, supplements, cosmetics or pharmacy products online has a difficulty the rest of retail does not know: the product has a date. That brings legal obligations (what to disclose, how to trace each batch, how to recall one) and a constant financial problem: waste. Well organised, both are solved with the same system.

Use-by and best-before are not the same

For cosmetics the logic is similar: those that last 30 months or less carry a date of minimum durability; those that last longer carry the open jar symbol with the months of use after opening (for example, “12M”).

What you have to disclose when selling online

Regulation (EU) 1169/2011 on food information establishes that, in distance selling:

• Before the purchase, on the product page, all mandatory information must be available (name, ingredients, highlighted allergens, net quantity, storage conditions, operator details, nutrition information…) except the durability date, which logically depends on the batch shipped.
• On delivery, the product must carry all mandatory information, date included.

Batches and traceability

Regulation (EC) 178/2002 requires food business operators to be able to identify whom they received each product from and whom they supplied it to: “one step back and one step forward”. In practice, for an online store this means:

1. Recording the batch, date and supplier on each goods receipt.
2. Recording on each order which batch was shipped.
3. Being able to answer within minutes the question: “which customers received batch X?”

That is the question you will be asked during a product alert or recall. If the answer is “we would have to go through the delivery notes one by one”, you have a serious problem: reaction time matters, and notifying all customers “just in case” is expensive and damages trust.

FEFO: first to expire, first out

For dated products the classic “first in, first out” (FIFO) does not work. The right approach is FEFO (first expired, first out): the batch with the nearest date is shipped first, even if it arrived later. For it to work:

• Each batch must have its location and date recorded.
• The order picking sheet must indicate which batch to take, not just which product.
• It is advisable to set a guaranteed minimum shelf life for the customer (for example, “we always ship with at least three months before the date”) and not ship batches below it.

Waste: money thrown away silently

Waste does not appear on any invoice. One day someone simply finds an expired box and throws it away. To control it:

• Record every write-off with its cause: expiry, breakage, unsellable return, receiving error.
• Anticipate: compare each batch's date with its sales rate. If a batch of 200 units expires in 60 days and you sell 2 a day, you know today that you will have about 80 left over.
• Act in time: a promotion, a pack with another product, sale as near best-before with a clear discount, or donation. Doing it with 60 days to spare is very different from doing it with 5.
• Adjust purchasing: if a product often generates waste, the problem lies in how much you buy, not in how much you sell.

Checklist

• Product pages show in text the ingredients, highlighted allergens and nutrition information (or whatever applies to the type of product).
• Each goods receipt records batch, date and supplier.
• Each order records the batch shipped.
• You can list within minutes the customers who received a batch.
• The warehouse picks by FEFO and respects a minimum shelf life.
• There is a waste log and a periodic review of what is going to expire.
• If you sell products past their best-before date, this is shown visibly on the product page and in the cart.

In PrestaShop

PrestaShop does not handle batches or expiry dates out of the box: stock is a number per product. To comply with traceability and control waste you need to add the batch and date to receipts and orders, picking by date and an alert for what will not sell in time. And for the product page, nutrition, allergen or regulatory information per product and per combination, in text and not only in the photo.

This article is for information only. Each sector (food, food supplements, cosmetics, medical devices) has specific regulations: check them with your adviser or your trade association.