Super Stockist Inventory Management: Batch Visibility

The claim that turns up months after dispatch

A distributor calls about a claim. Two cartons of biscuits, or a few cases of a juice SKU, have expired in their godown, and they want credit. You check your books. The stock left your premises a while back, the invoice was paid, and as far as your ledger goes, that story ended at dispatch.

Except it didn't. The batch has been sitting one level down the whole time, getting older, and nobody upstream could see it. That's the super stockist's expiry problem in a sentence: your risk lives in someone else's godown, and it only shows up when it comes back as a claim.

This post covers a method for seeing that risk earlier. You won't get perfect visibility, but you'll know which batches went where and how old they are.

How a batch disappears between two godowns

Walk through what actually happens. The company's truck unloads at your godown. You've got several batches of the same SKU on the racks, some fresh and some older. An order comes in from a distributor, the loader picks whatever's nearest the door, and the invoice says "SKU, quantity, rate". The batch number doesn't appear anywhere.

Now that distributor has the stock. They sell some to retailers, park the rest behind newer arrivals, and run their own schemes. You've got no window into any of it. When the batch hits its expiry window, the distributor raises a claim, and you can't answer basic questions:

• Was this batch actually from you, or from another source?
• When did you dispatch it, and how much life did it have left then?
• Did this distributor get older batches than the others?

Without batch numbers on the dispatch, you're arguing from memory. And claims that go back to the company need batch-level proof too, so if you can't prove it, the loss stays with you. The mechanics of that pass-back are covered in why distributor claims get rejected.

Super stockist vs distributor: where the risk sits

The difference matters for how you track stock. A distributor sells to retailers and can, with effort, get some read on secondary sales. The secondary sales tracking post covers that layer. A super stockist sits one step higher, buying from the company and supplying a set of distributors across a region.

So your customers are businesses with their own godowns, their own rotation habits and their own slow seasons. Two things follow:

• Your stock moves in bigger lots and less often, so a single bad dispatch can park a large quantity of one batch in one place.
• Your expiry exposure lags. Stock that looks healthy at dispatch can turn into a claim well after the sale, and it lands in a different month's books.

Your own godown discipline still matters, and multi-godown stock tracking covers it. But the thing a super stockist actually needs is a record of which batch went to which distributor, and when.

Dispatch by batch, every time

This is the foundation, and it's boring on purpose. Every dispatch line carries the batch number and the expiry date. Not "biscuits, 50 cases" but "biscuits, batch X, expiry Y, 50 cases".

A few rules make it stick:

• Pick by expiry, not by convenience. The oldest batch with saleable life goes out first. If the loader can't tell which is oldest, the racking is the problem, so fix that first.
• Write the batch on the challan and the invoice. If it isn't on the paper the distributor signs, it'll be disputed later.
• Record remaining life at dispatch. Note how long the batch had left when it left your godown. That's the number that settles arguments.
• Don't split one batch across too many distributors without noting it. A batch spread thinly across your network is hard to trace back when there's a recall or a claim.

Picture a super stockist supplying a handful of distributors across two districts. Once every dispatch carries a batch number, the stock register stops being a list of quantities. It becomes a map of where each batch went.

The monthly batch-age report per distributor

Once dispatches carry batch numbers, you can build the report that does the real work. Once a month, for each distributor, list every batch you've sent them recently with:

• SKU and batch number
• Dispatch date
• Expiry date
• Remaining shelf life as of today
• Quantity dispatched

Sort by remaining life, shortest first. Then flag anything that crosses your comfort line, which depends on the category. Short-life dairy and bakery need a much tighter line than packaged staples.

Worked example: say you send Distributor A a batch of a snack SKU with a nine-month shelf life, and it left your godown with six months remaining. Three months later your report shows that batch at three months left. You don't know how much of it the distributor has sold, but you do know the clock. If their usual reorder rhythm suggests they've only moved a slice of it, that's a batch to ask about now, not after expiry.

The report doesn't tell you what's on the distributor's shelf. It tells you what could still be there and how close it is to trouble. That's enough to start a conversation.

The conversation before a batch goes stale

This is the step that saves the money, and it's a phone call, not a system. When a batch on the report crosses your line, call the distributor and ask three things:

• How much of batch X do you still have?
• Is it moving, or is it parked behind newer stock?
• Do you need help shifting it, such as a scheme push, a transfer to another distributor who moves faster, or a return while there's still time?

Done early, every option is still open. You can move stock from a slow distributor to a faster one. You can line up a company scheme on that SKU. You can return it upstream while it's still within the company's return window. Done late, the only option left is a claim, and claims are where money leaks.

There's a relationship benefit as well. A super stockist who calls before trouble starts looks like a partner. One who only hears about expiry when the claim arrives ends up looking like the person who sent old stock.

If you want a structured way to log what comes back anyway, the distributor expiry claim register gives you a format that ties each claim to its batch and dispatch date.

Running this on paper or in a spreadsheet

You can do all of this without software. A dispatch register with batch and expiry columns, and a spreadsheet that pulls those lines into a per-distributor view each month, will get you most of the way. The expiry-tracking spreadsheet template is a reasonable starting point.

Where it gets hard:

• Data entry at dispatch. Typing batch numbers by hand on a busy loading morning is where errors creep in, and one wrong batch breaks the trail.
• Monthly discipline. Building the batch-age report takes time, and it's the first thing to slip when the month gets busy.
• Linking claims back. Matching a claim against the original dispatch means searching old registers. It's doable but slow.

If your network is small and your SKU count is manageable, a disciplined spreadsheet works. As distributors and batches multiply, the manual steps start to cost more than they save. The FMCG inventory management guide covers the wider set of habits this fits into.

Where software fits

Software can't see inside your distributors' godowns. Be wary of any pitch that says it can. What it can do is keep a clean record of what you dispatched, by batch, to whom and when, and turn that into the batch-age view without the monthly spreadsheet grind.

ShelfLifePro serves FMCG distribution, and for a super stockist it works from your own dispatch records rather than your distributors' stock. If you want to see whether batch-wise dispatch and age tracking fit your workflow, there's a 14-day free trial, no credit card required. Start at shelflifepro.in/fmcg.