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For merchants selling food, drinks, supplements or cosmetics and beauty products, the best-before date is a silent clock in the warehouse. Once a batch expires, the goods are no longer sellable and the purchase price is gone entirely, plus the storage costs for every month it sat there beforehand. The bitter part: the loss was almost always avoidable. With enough lead time, expiring inventory isn't a write-off but a discount campaign, a bundle, or a gift with every order.
The lot tracking report from byrdAI gives you exactly that lead time. It came about at the direct request of customers: when we asked merchants what they'd most like to pull from their byrd data, one of the first answers was "which products are about to expire, so I can run a campaign."
The problem: you only see the expiry date once it's too late
The clock runs invisibly.
Batch data sits in the system, but almost no one checks 40 batches across three warehouses every day. Expiring goods usually only stand out at stocktake, and by then they're already worthless.
FEFO doesn't happen on its own in your head.
In the warehouse, byrd picks by FEFO (first-expired-first-out). But the business side of FEFO, aiming promotions and campaigns at the oldest batch in time, needs visibility that a WMS alone doesn't provide.
Multiple warehouses, multiple truths.
The same product might have 6 months of shelf life left in Germany but only 5 weeks in France. Without visibility per warehouse and batch, you're planning around a reality you can't see.
How to build the lot expiration report with byrdAI
Once you're connected, all it takes in Claude or ChatGPT is:
"Show me all batches expiring in the next 60 days."
.byrdAI returns every affected batch with product, lot number, warehouse, expiry date, remaining shelf life, and unit count. With the ready-made dashboard prompt from thebyrdAI page, that turns into a live dashboard with a selectable horizon (30, 60, 90, 180 days), traffic-light colors by urgency, and a view of where the most at-risk units are sitting.
In our sample catalog, around 2,300 units sit in batches expiring in less than 30 days. So it's not just a statistic, it's a to-do list with a deadline.
The decisions you draw from it
Under 30 days: sell it down, give it away, or dispose of it.
Anything that won't turn over normally within four weeks belongs in a promotion: a discount in the shop, a free add-on to relevant orders, a bundle with a bestseller. Whatever that still can't save should be written off deliberately, rather than keep costing you storage space. The report also shows batches that have already expired: all they do now is block space.
30 to 90 days: the campaign zone.
Here you have enough time for planned promotions at normal margins: newsletters, promotional pricing, marketplace deals. Act in this window and you'll rarely have to panic under 30 days.
Think per warehouse.
If the at-risk goods are concentrated in one location, a targeted sell-down in that market pays off before you move stock across Europe.
From report to routine: shelf life management on autopilot
The monthly shelf life digest.
"On the first of each month, send me all batches with less than 90 days of shelf life left, grouped by warehouse, as a short summary in Slack." From now on your team plans promotions with lead time instead of under pressure.
The campaign trigger.
"When a batch drops below 60 days of shelf life, draft me a promotion proposal right away: affected products, unit count, tied-up stock value, and a copy draft for the newsletter." The warning becomes a half-finished campaign.
The write-off list for accounting.
Already-expired batches as a clean table with unit count and warehouse, once per quarter, automatically. Unloved busywork that no one has to do by hand anymore.
Combined with your stock.
"Which of the expiring batches belong to products that already have newer batches in the warehouse?" That's exactly where the pressure to sell down is highest, because the old batch is blocking the new one.
Lead time instead of write-offs
As a byrd customer, you connect byrdAI to Claude or ChatGPT in about 5 minutes and copy the lot tracking prompt from our byrdAI page or below this section. Not a byrd customer yet? byrdAI is only available with byrd fulfillment, as the first European 3PL with an MCP server. Talk to us.
Example prompt for the lot tracking report (adjust it however you like).
Frequently asked questions about lot expiration management with byrdAI
Which products is the report relevant for?
Anything with batch tracking and a best-before date: food, drinks, supplements, cosmetics, pet food. byrd supports batch-tracked storage including FEFO picking, among others in food and beverage fulfillment, beauty and health fulfillment, and pet supplies fulfillment.
What does FEFO mean?
First-expired-first-out: the batch with the shortest best-before date leaves the warehouse first. byrd picks batch-tracked products by this principle.
Do I also see goods that have already expired?
Yes. Expired batches appear in the report, with negative remaining shelf life. They're the first candidates for write-off or disposal.
What does byrdAI cost?
During the beta, byrdAI is included in your account free of charge for byrd customers