App to Track Expiration Dates for a Small Business

An app that tracks expiration dates for a business has to do three things a phone reminder can't: keep a date for each delivery (not one per product, because two cases of cream on the shelf rarely share a date), send the oldest out first, and warn you in time to do something, which means knowing how fast each item actually gets used. Home pantry apps do the reminder. Business options range from a free spreadsheet to inventory software; the ones below start between $0 and $149 a month, depending on whether you need lots.

The short version

• Track dates per delivery (a lot), not per product. One product, three deliveries, three dates.
• Use the soonest date first, every time. That's FEFO, and the app should do the choosing.
• A warning that says "12 quarts expire Friday" is half an answer. The useful one says how many will still be there on Friday at the rate you use them.
• Put the app where the stock is: a phone in the walk-in beats a laptop in the office.
• If a spreadsheet works for you today, keep it. The inventory list with expiration dates is a good one.
• If you'd rather the app did that arithmetic too, TaroStack forecasts what will expire unsold, not only the date. More below.

Why a list of dates isn't enough

Here's a small kitchen and its heavy cream, on Saturday, September 26. It uses about 2 quarts a day and has two lots on the shelf:

A list sorted by date shows lot A at the top, expiring Tuesday. That looks like the problem, and it isn't: at 2 quarts a day, the 8 quarts of lot A are used up exactly on the 29th (the 26th, 27th, 28th and 29th).

Lot B is the problem, and the list can't see it. It starts on the 30th, and by the end of October 2 the kitchen has used 6 of its 12 quarts. The other 6 expire. At $3.25 a quart, that's $19.50 of cream down the drain, from a lot that looked fine on every list.

What to do about it is ordinary: use cream in a special on Thursday, or order 6 quarts instead of 12 next time. The hard part is seeing it on Saturday instead of on October 3. An app that only stores dates can't; it needs the dates, the quantities and the rate, together. That's the difference between an expiry list and an expiry forecast.

What to look for in an app

1. A date per lot. When you receive two deliveries of the same thing, the app should keep them apart.
2. It picks the oldest for you. When you use or sell some, the app takes it from the lot that expires first unless you say otherwise.
3. Warnings you'll actually see: in the app and by email, early enough to act.
4. Quantity at the rate you use it, not just the date. That's the forecast above.
5. A phone that works in the walk-in, with a barcode scanner or the camera, and without a signal.
6. What went to whom, if you sell wholesale. If a supplier recalls a lot, you'll want to know which customers got what you made from it. That's lot tracking, and expiry dates are half of it.

The options, and what they cost

From each company's pricing page on September 26, 2026.

A few details worth knowing. Sortly's plan table lists date-based alerts from its Ultra plan up, and describes them for maintenance and repair schedules; with no lot tracking on the list, each delivery with its own date would be its own item (Sortly). Zoho Inventory's help pages say batches "are automatically sorted in the order of first expiring batch to the last" when you select them, so you still choose, from a sorted list (Zoho). The Shopify apps track batches of what you sell, which is useful if you resell; they don't track the cream you cook with.

My opinion: if you're one person with a dozen dated items, a spreadsheet you look at every Monday is the best app there is. The moment a second person is receiving deliveries, or you're making things from dated ingredients, you want the app to do the picking and the warning.

Where this stops working

Any app stops working the day a delivery goes on the shelf without being entered. The date only exists in the app if someone put it there, so make receiving part of the delivery, not something for later. And no warning helps if it arrives by email to an inbox nobody reads: send it to the person who can use the cream in Thursday's special.

About us: TaroStack is for businesses that make or stock things in batches, and it isn't a household pantry app. It connects to Shopify and Square only, and our Square connection is built and set up, but no customer has connected a till yet.

How TaroStack does it

A date on a lot is the easy part. The question that saves money is the one from the cream example: at two quarts a day, how much of lot B will still be sitting there on October 2? TaroStack answers it for every lot, every day, without you working it out. Each delivery is received as a lot with its use-by, best-before or production date, your code or the supplier's. When stock is used in a batch, picked or shipped, the lot that expires first goes first, so lot A is finished before anyone opens lot B. And the expiring-stock forecast looks at how fast each item really leaves each site and shows what will expire unsold and what it will cost: the six quarts and the $19.50, on Saturday, while there's still time to bake them into something.

You don't have to go looking for it either. Alerts for lots about to expire come to the app and to your email, one per problem or one summary a day, and expired or held stock stops counting as available. Receiving and counting work on a phone in the walk-in, with no signal, using the camera or a scanner.

Lots and expiry are on every plan, starting with Starter at $49 a month, and the first 30 days are free. If you've kept a spreadsheet of dates, it imports. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

What's the best way to track expiration dates?

Write the date on everything when it arrives, keep one row (or one lot) per delivery, and use the soonest date first. Then look ahead once a week at what won't be used in time. For a bakery version with the weekly check, see how to keep track of expiring ingredients in a bakery.

Can Excel track expiration dates?

Yes. Put the date in a column, add a "days left" column with =C2-TODAY(), and use conditional formatting to color anything under seven days. It won't forecast usage or pick the lot for you, but it'll show you the week at a glance.

Do grocery stores track expiration dates?

Stores rotate stock so the oldest date sits at the front, and check dates on a schedule, pulling what's past. It's the same principle as this article, and a small business can run it with a spreadsheet or an app.