Small manufacturers and distributors in food, beverage, pharmaceutical and medical device industries can now trace any batch from receipt to customer, at a fraction of the cost of an enterprise ERP.

TORONTO, Aug. 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- inFlow Inventory has launched lot number and expiry date tracking, giving small and midsize manufacturers and distributors full batch-level traceability across purchasing, production, sales and shipping.

This feature release follows two years of development and a year of testing with food manufacturers, pharmaceutical distributors and medical device companies. inFlow now offers lot number tracking -- a traditionally high-end or enterprise-grade feature -- to small businesses that needed it but may not have been able to afford it.

Many small food producers still track lot numbers manually on spreadsheets. They take note of the lots as they're received and cross-reference them by hand if a recall occurs. This manual process is time consuming and doesn't scale quickly.

The alternative has been an enterprise resource planning system (ERP), which typically assumes a paid implementation measured in months and a budget in the tens of thousands of dollars. When faced with high ERP costs, most small manufacturers and distributors stick to their existing spreadsheets or paper systems.

"Traceability shouldn't be a luxury feature," said Louis Leung, co-founder and CEO at inFlow Inventory. "The businesses we built this for are not trying to be sophisticated. They are trying to answer one question fast when something goes wrong. For a long time, the only tools that could answer it were priced for companies a hundred times their size."

What it does

Traces a batch from receipt to customer. Every lot carries a full movement history: when it arrived, what it was used to build, where it was stored and who bought it. A recall becomes a report to run rather than an investigation to launch.

Prevents expiring stock from becoming a write-off. Set a shelf life once, and inFlow calculates expiry dates for every incoming batch. A Lot Expiry report sorts stock by Expired, Near expiry, or Past sell-by date, surfacing at-risk inventory while there is still time to sell it.

Ships the oldest stock first, automatically. inFlow tells staff which batch to pick, prioritizing by sell-by date, then expiry date, then manufacture date. First-expired-first-out is built into the software.

Enhanced GS1 barcode support. inFlow reads GS1 QR codes, GS1-128 barcodes and GS1 DataMatrix, capturing lot and expiry details in one scan. It also generates and prints GS1 Digital Link QR codes for a company's own labels.

Tracks lots and serial numbers together. A single product can carry both a batch code and a unique identifier per unit, a combination rare outside enterprise systems.

Works on the warehouse floor. Lot tracking runs in inFlow Inventory for Web, inFlow Manufacturing and inFlow Mobile, so batches can be scanned during receiving, picking and put-away.

And so much more. Teams can also generate batch codes in a standardized format, rename lot fields to match their own vocabulary, add custom fields at the batch level, and import or export lot data in bulk.

Who it's for

inFlow lot tracking is built for food and beverage producers, contract manufacturers and commissary kitchens, pharmaceutical distributors and pharmacies, medical device companies, supplement and cosmetics brands, and specialty chemical businesses. These companies share a common profile: genuine traceability obligations, real shelf-life exposure, and no ERP budget or IT department.

Availability and pricing

Lot number and expiry date tracking is available on all current plans, and is included at no additional cost on Mid-Size plans and above. Businesses new to inFlow can start a free trial with lot tracking included. Setup guides are available in the inFlow Learning Center.

About inFlow Inventory

inFlow Inventory is cloud-based inventory management software built for small and mid-size businesses. With more than 20 million products tracked in inFlow worldwide, it helps teams manage inventory, sales orders, purchase orders, and B2B wholesale from a single platform, with integrations for Xero, QuickBooks Online, Shopify, WooCommerce, and 95+ other tools. inFlow is proudly Canadian, founded in Toronto in 2007. For more information, visit inflowinventory.com

CONTACT: Maya Garvey -- maya.garvey@inflowinventory.com

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