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Perishability & Expiry Alerts

For perishable products, ReRoute AI can track when the stock you received will expire -- not just how much of it you have -- so you get a warning before it goes bad, and your on-hand quantities don't silently overstate what is actually still good.

note

This is a property-level capability that ReRoute AI enables per tenant. If you have not seen expiry warnings yet, it may not be turned on for your property -- ask your account team to enable it.

How a product gets a shelf life​

When a product is added to your catalog, ReRoute AI's AI classification automatically estimates a shelf-life category for it (for example, "dairy, fresh" or "produce, leafy") based on the product itself. Non-perishable products (paper goods, canned goods, etc.) are left without a shelf life and are never tracked for expiry.

You don't set this manually -- it happens as part of adding the product, whether you added it by search, scan, or AI recipe import.

Tracking each delivery as a dated lot​

Every time you receive stock (an IN movement), ReRoute AI records that batch with its own received date and, if the product has a shelf life, a computed expiry date. Receiving the same product on different days creates separate dated lots, even though they show up as one combined quantity in your regular Inventory view.

When you use up stock, ReRoute AI assumes your oldest-dated lot is consumed first (first-expired, first-out) to estimate which lots are still on hand and how close they are to expiring. This is an estimate based on your receiving history -- the platform does not require staff to scan or select a specific lot when recording day-to-day usage.

Expiry warnings​

Before a lot's estimated expiry date, ReRoute AI raises an expiring soon warning (by default, within 3 days of expiry). Today, this surfaces as an attention item in your AI Daily Briefing -- for example, a call-out that a batch of a specific product is expiring soon at a location -- so you can move, use, or discount it before it's wasted.

Automatic write-off when stock expires​

If a lot is not used before its estimated expiry date, ReRoute AI automatically records the loss for you: it posts an OUT movement with the reason Waste -- Expired, and your on-hand quantity for that product is reduced accordingly. You don't need to record this manually -- you'll see it appear in your movement history with that reason code. See Movement Reason Codes Explained for how these reasons work, and Track Waste & Variance for how expired write-offs feed your waste reporting.

What this does not do (yet)​

  • There is no dedicated "expiring items" list screen today -- expiry information currently surfaces through the Daily Briefing and through Waste -- Expired entries in your movement history, not a standalone lot-tracking page.
  • The platform does not require staff to pick a specific physical lot when recording a sale or manual OUT movement -- lot tracking runs in the background to estimate expiry, it does not change how you record day-to-day usage.