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Inventory Lots, Bottles, & Expiration Dates
Inventory Lots, Bottles, & Expiration Dates

Learn how tracking inventory lots, bottles, and expiration dates simplifies your inventory tracking with automations.

Updated over 3 months ago

How does tracking lots and expiration dates in Shepherd work for you across the app? Here are the different ways in which this feature will help you most accurately and efficiently track your inventory in different parts of the app.

Automations with inventory tracking will occur in the following locations of the app:

  1. Purchase Orders

  2. Transactions

  3. Counts

  4. SOAP (Tx Administration)

  5. Prescriptions

  6. Reporting

Active lots will be automatically archived in the following scenario:

  • If the inventory item has multiple active lots, Shepherd will automatically archive the affected lot when a transaction (automatic or manual transaction, including administration, adjustments, dispensing medications etc.) would reduce a lot's quantity from a positive value to zero.

The archiving of lots will require a user's manual action in the following scenarios:

  • If the lot is the last active one for the inventory item

  • When a transaction would result in negative quantity for the lot.

Purchase Orders

You'll be creating your inventory item lots when receiving inventory on a purchase order. This is a very important step to ensure accuracy of your inventory items and inventory reporting.

As we know, multiple lots or bottles may be ordered on a single purchase order. When receiving an inventory item, you're prompted to enter the actual quantity you've received and the expiration date for that portion of the shipment. You can do this as many times as is necessary to account for each different lot/bottle expiration date in that item's shipment.

Adding lot through Purchase Order example:

  1. I ordered 5 bottles of Amoxicillin - 250 mg/Tablet.

  2. In the shipment, I received all 5 bottles of 500 tablets each - the full quantity ordered

  3. Two bottles are from one lot, and three bottles are from another lot, both with separate expiration dates.

  4. When receiving the item in the purchase order, I create 2 lots to account for both expiration dates.

  5. When I select the Receive button, I'm presented with a modal that prompts me to enter the lot and expiration date details

  6. I enter 2 in the actual quantity field, and 06/05/2025 in the expiration date field for the 2 bottles in the shipment that shared a lot number and expiration date (with your inventory, populate any additional fields you'd like to track in inventory)

  7. I would then select + Add New Lot

  8. I would enter the 3 bottles with their corresponding shared lot number and expiration date under Lot #2

  9. Then click Receive

In this scenario, you've created 2 lots with their corresponding quantities and expiration dates to the Amoxicillin - 250 mg/Tablet inventory item and added the full quantity to the QOH, Total Cost, and Value calculations.

Click here to read more about purchase orders and receiving inventory.

Transactions

The transactions tab combines automatic and manual edits to your inventory based on various types of usage to display a history of these actions and their impact on the inventory. When your clinic is tracking inventory by lots and expiration dates, it is important that changes to an inventory item are linked to a lot, and then for all active lots' changes to be combined for the most accurate high-level overview of an inventory item, and inventory as a whole.

Some transactions are logged automatically based on other functions in the app.

When creating a manual transaction, once you select an inventory item, you're prompted to choose the lot from which or to which the adjustment is being made. This covers all manual transactions types including adjustments, manual customer returns, waste, etc.. If there is only one active lot associated with the item you select, it will be selected by default in the Select Lot dropdown.

Counts

Inventory counts are used to audit your inventory and correct any mistakes. When tracking inventory on a lot level, just like transactions, it's important that each lot maintains an accurate inventory count. This ensures your cost and value calculations are accurate.

Here are a few nuances of the counts feature relating to tracking lots and expiration dates:

  1. Any individual Inventory Item can be present on only one open count at a time.

  2. Counting inventory happens on a lot level; you can update the count for an inventory item in a single lot or update the count for all active lots associated with the item at once if required.

    1. Please note: you're finalizing counts by the inventory item, not by the lot, so update what is necessary before finalizing because you'll need to open a new count to make changes.

  3. You can finalize by item or select multiple or all items to finalize the count. This gives you the flexibility to take your time with your count without needing to re-count items to ensure accuracy.

  4. If necessary, you can add a new lot during your count. Be cautious - for the most accurate reporting, lots should be created by receiving inventory on purchase orders, tracking accurate cost and value calculations.

  5. These actions are all tracked on the transactions tab

This is what you'll see before you enter the count. Use the finalize button in the upper right corner to finalize a single item.

This is what an inventory item looks like on your count when the count for that item has been finalized.

SOAP

For the accuracy of your inventory cost and value calculations, it's important that the proper lot is logged for administration of a product linked to an inventory item.

If more than one lot exists for inventory items linked to your vaccinations and controlled drugs, you'll be prompted to select from which lot you're administering on the Tx Plan. If only one active lot is present on the item, it will be selected by default.

When administering a non-controlled or vaccination product linked to an inventory item, Shepherd will automatically pull from the lot with the oldest expiration date, following best practices for actual use of inventory and saving your staff time when selecting.

Prescriptions

When creating a new Rx, either from the Rx tab of the SOAP or from the patient profile for a controlled drug, you'll be prompted to select the lot from which you're dispensing the medication after you save.

This is important for the accuracy of not only your inventory counts, costs, and values, but also your controlled drug report.

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