How to control expired goods?

If your retail outlet regularly writes off expired goods, it means you are incurring losses. Monitoring the shelf life of products is necessary in any store, but it is especially important in a grocery store, where there are almost always perishable items in the assortment. 

Let's understand what the shelf life of a product is, how to determine it, and how to keep track of goods with a limited shelf life?

What is the shelf life?

The shelf life of a product is the period during which the product retains its consumer properties and is suitable for its intended use. After the expiration date, the product may become unsafe for health or lose its properties. 

How to decipher the expiration date? The shelf life is usually indicated on the product packaging and can be expressed in different ways, such as a specific date (e.g., "until 01.01.2025") or a period from the date of manufacture (e.g., the remaining shelf life of medicines may be 24 months from the date of manufacture).

Why is it important to monitor the shelf life of products?

Products with a shelf life require special attention from the seller. Such products should not be lost in the warehouse, nor can they be "forgotten". You need to properly ship from the warehouse: you cannot just take the one that is easiest to reach on the shelf. You need to consider both the batch and the expiration date of the product. 

Expired goods can cause irreparable damage to the store. They cannot be sold even at a discounted price; they must be completely destroyed. This leads to company losses, extra costs for purchasing products, and fines. Moreover, it can result in customer loss, as expired goods on the shelves deter buyers. 

If a customer notices an expired product on display, they have the right to file a complaint with the State Consumer Protection Service. The store may be inspected, violations recorded, and fined. If a customer gets poisoned by expired products, the store owner faces criminal liability.

Why track expiration dates in the warehouse and store

To avoid losses and damage to the store's reputation, you need to always know which products with what manufacturing/expiration dates are stored in the warehouse. 

Expired products appear in the store due to unoptimized purchases or sales. For example, if you order more products from the supplier than you can sell. Reasons may also include inaccuracies in accounting or employee errors — they place fresher products from new batches on the shelves, while unsold leftovers from previous deliveries continue to take up space in the warehouse.

Many stores struggle with expiration control and cannot establish an effective scheme for monitoring products with expiration dates. The control scheme revolves around two business processes.

Receipt of goods in the warehouse

Careful acceptance of goods is important for both large and small stores. It should be carried out not only quantitatively but also qualitatively. The employee receiving the goods should not allow expired products or products nearing the end of their shelf life to enter the trading floor. 

It is important to properly place the received goods in the warehouse considering their expiration dates. Use the "first expires, first out" principle, which means that products with the closest expiration dates should be placed in a visible spot and shipped first. 

Product display in the trading floor

The seller working on the product display should perform the following actions:

• Rotate products on the shelves. The new batch of products should be placed behind what is already on the shelf. Since customers know this rule and look for fresher products on the back rows, the seller should regularly change the product positions, in order of decreasing expiration dates.

• Check expiration dates before display. Before placing new products on the shelf, check the expiration dates of the remaining items. 

• Remove products before their expiration date. At the end of the working day, inspect the products and remove all items that will expire the next day. This rule mainly applies to food products.

• Maintain proper storage conditions. For product groups whose shelf life varies depending on storage conditions, ensure consistent storage conditions throughout the entire shelf life. For example, butter has several storage modes and corresponding shelf lives. 

How to keep track of products with expiration dates 

Moreover, accounting programs can significantly simplify the process of receiving goods and controlling their further movement through the points to the consumer. 

Advantages of using a retail accounting program

There are several reasons why you should implement an accounting program in your store:

• Optimizing purchase costs. The accounting program shows the stock of products in the warehouse. Based on analytics and sales statistics, it becomes clear when to reorder products and when to wait.

• Increasing customer loyalty. Customers will remember your store positively if there are no expired products, recommend it to friends and acquaintances, and return for more purchases.

• Automatic warehouse stock calculation. To control warehouse stock, Torgsoft has a useful option "Automatic warehouse stock calculation". This feature helps speed up the receiving of new product batches in the warehouse. This will avoid unnecessary costs for purchasing products, storing them in warehouse spaces, and their spoilage in case of untimely movement and placement on store shelves. 

This option helps the entrepreneur determine how much product is needed in the warehouse, plan purchases and warehouse processes more accurately, so as not to buy extra or create an artificial shortage of products. This guarantees customer satisfaction because the necessary products will always be available in the store.

You can embed any algorithm into the accounting program that processes and provides information in the desired form, reminds, suggests, and generates reports. However, providing information for the program is a human task. Therefore, technically tracking products with expiration dates is a time-consuming process that still requires manual entry of such products into the program and is rarely applied in practice. 

Rules for accounting for products with expiration dates

Each store develops its algorithm for controlling and accounting for products with limited shelf life. These tips will help you significantly simplify this process: 

1. Assign responsible persons for checking specific product groups in the store.

2. Always remind sellers about the rules for receiving and displaying products.

3. Conduct explanatory work with staff about the benefits and importance of their work with the product: how the store's image will improve, and customer complaints will decrease.

4. Handle violations by sellers wisely — severe fines for occasional rare mistakes do not add enthusiasm to the work of the staff. 

So, to avoid having to massively dispose of products, sell them before they expire. Plan purchases correctly, confirm deliveries with the "appropriate" dates, follow proper organization of products in the warehouse, and display them on the shelves.