Navigating Expiry and Batch Tracking: Essential Tips for Pet and Vitamin Vendors

Your truck is packed, labelled, and ready to roll. Then someone spots two pallets too close to expiry to meet Amazon’s shelf-life rules. Suddenly, your team is relabelling, swapping stock, and scrambling to update the ASN before the truck leaves.

For pet and vitamin vendors, expiry and batch tracking often feels like the detail that derails everything. But it doesn’t have to. With the right systems, it becomes a strength that reduces waste, cuts chargebacks, and gives you more control.

What Amazon Wants and Why It Matters

Amazon expects exact batch and expiry details for every perishable product. If your SKUs are marked as perishable in the catalogue, it is your responsibility to provide that information on every line you ship.

And it’s not just Amazon. Regulations like FSMA 204 require end-to-end traceability, making accurate batch and expiry records essential for recalls and compliance audits.

Most vendors already capture this data in their ERP. The real challenge is getting it to Amazon without spending hours keying it manually.

Why EDI 856 Changes the Game

The smarter way is to send batch and expiry information through the EDI 856 Dispatch Advice (ASN).

What is EDI 856?

EDI 856, also called the Advance Ship Notice (ASN), is the electronic document Amazon Vendors must send to confirm exactly what’s in a shipment before it arrives. It carries carton counts, pallet breakdowns, item details, and batch or expiry data. In Amazon Vendor Central, using EDI 856 is the difference between manual errors and smooth, compliant shipments. It cuts chargebacks, speeds up receiving, and lets you push past the 2,000-carton limit with one accurate message.

Instead of manual entry, the EDI message automatically includes:

• Batch or lot number
• Expiry date
• Manufacture date
• Best before date
  

When this is built into your dispatch flow, the right data is transmitted every time, no matter how many lines or batches are on the shipment. It is faster, more accurate, and scales with your business.

Capture Once, Use Everywhere

To make this work, you need to capture expiry and batch data early and keep it flowing through your systems.

• On receipt or production: Log batch and expiry details as goods are produced or received. That way, they are visible across the lifecycle.
  
• On outbound: Scan expiry and batch data during dispatch. A GS1-128 barcode can hold GTIN, batch, and expiry in one simple linear code, or you can use a 2D data matrix for compact encoding. Scanning removes human error.
  
• Integration: The scan data feeds into your ERP and flows into the EDI 856 message, so Amazon receives exactly what you shipped.
  
  

An example GS1-128 Linear (1D) barcode that captures the GTIN (09506000134352), Batch (AB1234) and expiry (250930)

 This can also be represented in a 2D Data matrix:
 

Why Spreadsheets Hold You Back

Many vendors lean on spreadsheets as a safety net. But once you’re managing hundreds or thousands of cartons, they create more problems than they solve. A single mistyped digit and your ASN no longer matches reality.

By linking your ERP, warehouse, and Vendor Central, updates happen automatically. Dashboards and alerts give your team visibility without endless manual checking.

From Compliance to Advantage

Batch and expiry tracking isn’t just a box-ticking exercise. When you can see which products are nearing expiry or selling faster than forecast, you can plan promotions, adjust production schedules, and manage stock proactively instead of reactively.

In other words, it stops being admin and starts being business intelligence.

Quick Wins

• Capture batch and expiry at production or goods-in.
• Make sure your packaging and scanners can read GS1-128 or 2D codes.
• Use EDI 856 to send expiry and batch data to Amazon automatically.
  
  

The Bottom Line

Batch and expiry tracking will never be glamorous. But when the data is accurate, the batches traceable, and the shipments compliant, the stress disappears.

With the right systems in place, you replace 2am spreadsheet fixes and last-minute relabelling scrambles with smooth shipments, fewer chargebacks, and confidence that Amazon has exactly what it needs.