Adding the ability to track all these types of inventory is on our wishlist, but unfortunately it’s not yet available. In the meantime, there are two ways you can choose to do this in inFlow On-Premise:

Using Sublocations

If you’re not already using sublocations in inFlow, you could try using them to keep track of these numbers. This isn’t exactly what it’s designed for, but it’s worked well for a number of people. This same trick will work for lot numbers, batch numbers, expiry dates, and so on. We recommend you enter expiry dates in a yyyymmdd format so that they can be sorted properly.

To activate sublocations:

1. Go to Main Menu > Options > Settings.
2. Under Track inventory by, click on Locations broken down into sublocations.

To purchase/receive your products:

1. Open your purchase order.
2. Click the Receive tab and split your items out line by line. 
3. You can then enter the expiry date/ lot number/ etc into the sublocation column for each unit.

This will allow you to stock each item to a separate sublocation.

To sell/ship the items:

1. Open your sales order.
2. Click the Fulfill tab (or Pick tab if you have shipping turned on) and select your items from the correct sublocation.

To track movement of a specific lot number/batch number:

1. View the Movement History by going to Main Menu > Inventory > Movement History.
2. In Sublocation, type in the lot number that you want to look up.
3. Click Refresh.

From the Movement History screen, you can also double-click on the row to bring up any related orders. This will let you quickly look up who that particular item was sold to (as an example).

Setting up individual product records

If you are already using inFlow sublocations to track actual sublocations, the above workaround will not work for you. What you may try is setting up an individual item record for each lot number/batch number (an example name would be LOTNUMBER-ITEMNAME).

To create your product:

1. Go to Main Menu > Inventory > New Product.
2. Enter all the relevant details for your product and be sure to use the lot number as the item code.
3. Save your product record.

TIP: You may try setting up a category named after the model number of your product so you can make searching on sales orders easier on yourself later. Have a look at the article on How to categorize products for more info.

To create another lot number of the same product:

1. Open the product record for an item that has the same lot number as the item you’d like to create.
2. Click the Copy button at the top, this will replicate the record and simply ask you to enter a new item code.
3. Enter the lot number and click Save.

You can also set these items up ahead of time (let’s say your vendor sends you a list of these numbers) by importing the information into the system. Simply match the lot number column to the Item Name/Code field in inFlow and be sure to include any relevant details such as product name or model category in separate columns within that spreadsheet. For more information on importing data please see our article on how to import data into inFlow.