Lot and Serial Tracking Overview

GoldFinch Lot and Serial Tracking helps organizations trace inventory from receipt or production through storage, movement, fulfillment, and shipment. It provides visibility into where tracked products came from, where they are currently located, and which customers or transactions received them.

These capabilities are especially valuable for food and beverage companies, manufacturers, distributors, and other organizations that require product traceability, expiration management, quality control, or recall readiness.

Lot Tracking

Lot tracking groups inventory produced, purchased, or received under a common lot number. A lot may represent a production batch, supplier shipment, harvest, expiration group, or another meaningful inventory collection.

Depending on the organization’s processes, lot records can include information such as:

• Lot number
• Item
• Supplier or production source
• Manufacturing date
• Expiration date
• Warehouse and bin location
• Quantity on hand
• Related receipts, movements, production activity, and shipments

Business benefit: Lot tracking helps organizations trace groups of products efficiently without managing each individual unit separately.

Serial Number Tracking

Serial tracking assigns a unique identifier to an individual inventory unit. It is commonly used for equipment, machinery, electronics, replacement parts, and other products that require unit-level identification.

Serial-number information stays connected to relevant inventory movements and business transactions.

Business benefit: Serial tracking provides individual-unit traceability and can support warranty inquiries, service history, ownership records, and product investigations.

End-to-End Traceability

GoldFinch can maintain lot or serial information as inventory moves through applicable operational processes, including:

• Purchasing and receiving
• Warehouse put-away
• Bin-to-bin movements
• Warehouse transfers
• Manufacturing consumption
• Production output
• Sales fulfillment
• Customer shipments
• Inventory adjustments and counts

Business benefit: Connected transaction history helps users understand the origin, movement, current location, and disposition of tracked inventory.

Warehouse and Bin Visibility

Tracked inventory can be associated with specific warehouses and bins, helping users identify where each lot or serialized item is stored.

Users can review inventory by item, location, lot, serial number, and other relevant criteria.

Business benefit: Location-level visibility helps warehouse teams find inventory more quickly and reduces the risk of selecting the wrong product or lot.

Expiration-Date Management

For lot-controlled items, GoldFinch can maintain manufacturing and expiration information. This allows organizations to identify inventory approaching expiration and use expiration information in operational planning.

Depending on the configured process, expiration information may support:

• Inventory review
• Product rotation
• Picking priorities
• Short-dated inventory analysis
• Spoilage reduction
• Customer or regulatory requirements

Business benefit: Better expiration visibility helps reduce waste and supports more consistent product-rotation practices.

Manufacturing Traceability

Manufacturers can track the lots or serial numbers of components consumed during production and the finished goods produced from those materials.

This provides a traceable connection between incoming materials, production activity, and completed products.

Business benefit: Manufacturing traceability helps organizations investigate quality issues, identify affected finished goods, and respond more effectively to supplier or production concerns.

Customer and Shipment Traceability

Lot and serial information can remain connected with outbound fulfillment and shipment activity. Authorized users can determine which transactions or customers received particular tracked products.

Business benefit: Customer-level traceability can improve response time when handling recalls, quality concerns, warranty questions, or product inquiries.

Recall Readiness

When a potential recall or quality issue occurs, organizations may need to answer questions such as:

• Where did the affected inventory originate?
• Which warehouses or bins still contain it?
• Was it used in manufacturing?
• Which finished products were affected?
• Which customers received the product?
• How much inventory remains available?

GoldFinch’s connected inventory records help authorized users research these questions using information maintained within Salesforce.

Business benefit: Faster access to traceability information can support more focused investigations and more efficient recall-response processes.

GoldFinch provides inventory traceability tools, but each organization remains responsible for designing, testing, and following the recall, regulatory, and quality-control procedures applicable to its business.

Reporting and Analysis

Salesforce reports and GoldFinch inventory data can help authorized users analyze:

• Inventory by lot or serial number
• Inventory by warehouse and bin
• Manufacturing and expiration dates
• Lot quantities and availability
• Lot and serial transaction history
• Incoming and outgoing traceability
• Inventory approaching expiration
• Customer shipments involving tracked products

Business benefit: Reporting gives operations, quality, customer service, and management teams access to a shared view of traceability information.

Key Business Benefits

GoldFinch Lot and Serial Tracking helps organizations:

• Improve inventory traceability
• Identify the current location of tracked inventory
• Connect incoming materials with production and shipments
• Support expiration-date management
• Strengthen quality-control investigations
• Improve recall readiness
• Respond more effectively to customer inquiries
• Maintain a traceable history of inventory activity
• Reduce reliance on separate spreadsheets and databases
• Manage traceability information within Salesforce

Learn More

The specific use of lot or serial tracking depends on an organization’s products, warehouse design, manufacturing processes, and business requirements.

Authorized GoldFinch customers can access detailed configuration instructions, transaction procedures, field definitions, and troubleshooting resources. Sign in to GoldFinch Clientcare or contact GoldFinch Support for assistance.