What a recall asks of you
A recall notice names a product and one or more batches, and asks you to stop selling them and get them back. Within hours you will be asked three things: how much of the batch you still hold, where it is, and which customers bought it and how many. Your supplier, your customers and sometimes a regulator will expect the same answers.
If you can answer by lot, you pull a few pallets and call a short list of customers. If you cannot, you pull the whole item from every shelf and van and call everyone who ever bought it, which costs far more and takes days.
TipTreat a recall as a question about records first and about stock second; the shelf only tells you what is left.
Decide which items carry a lot
Lot tracking adds work at the dock, so choose the items that need it. Track by lot anything that expires, anything a supplier makes in batches that could prove faulty, and anything a customer or an authority may ask you to trace. Track by serial number the few high-value items you sell one at a time.
Make the decision before the first receipt. Once stock has moved, most systems will not let you switch an item to lot tracking, and the stock already sold has no lot to trace.
- Food, drinks and anything with a printed expiry date
- Cosmetics, cleaning products and chemicals
- Medical and baby products
- Items your suppliers have recalled before
- High-value single units, tracked by serial number instead
Write the lot exactly as the supplier prints it
A recall notice quotes the supplier’s own lot code, so that is the one to record, character for character. A lot typed as 2410A on one receipt and 2410-A on the next becomes two lots, and the trace splits in half. Agree one rule for prefixes, dashes and leading zeros, and keep to it.
Keep the supplier’s delivery note with the receipt. It links the lot to the purchase order and the date, and it is what the supplier will ask you to quote when you claim credit for the recalled goods.
TipPhotograph the carton label of every new lot at receipt and keep the photo with the delivery note, so a typing error can be checked later.
Record the lot on every movement out
Knowing which lots came in is half of the trace. The other half is knowing which lot left on each sale, transfer, van load and return. If the system chooses lots by expiry, it still records which lot it took, and that is enough. The gaps come from movements made outside the normal flow.
- Adjustments typed without a lot
- Stock moved between bins by hand and never recorded
- Returns put back on the shelf without their lot
- Samples and free goods handed out with no document
- Van stock sold on paper when the phone was flat
TipIf a movement cannot carry a lot number, it should not carry a lot-tracked item either.
Run a recall drill before you need one
Pick a lot that arrived about a month ago and trace it as if the notice had come in this morning, and time it. The drill shows which reports you need, who knows how to run them, and where the records break.
- Choose one lot received about a month ago
- Find how much of it is on hand, by warehouse, bin and van
- List every customer who received it, with quantities
- Add up what is on hand, sold and moved out
- Compare the total with what was received
- Note every carton you cannot account for, and why
The first day after the notice
On the first day, speed matters more than polish. Stop the lot leaving, find all of it, and tell the customers who have it. The supplier’s instructions decide what happens next, but nothing from the lot should leave your warehouse while you wait for them.
- Move every carton of the lot to a separate location pickers never take from, and label it
- Unload it from the vans the same evening
- Count what you hold and compare it with the records
- Send each customer who received it the lot code and the quantity they bought
- Agree with the supplier how the goods go back and how you are credited
- Keep one log of every call, count and movement
TipGive one person charge of the recall log, so every question has one place to be answered.
Close the recall in the books
Goods coming back from customers should be received as returns against their invoices, with the lot recorded, into the same separate location. The customer is credited at what they paid, and the stock is never mistaken for saleable goods.
Goods sent back to the supplier go out on a debit note against the bill they were billed on, so what you owe falls by what you paid. Goods destroyed on site are written off with an adjustment. Either way the lot ends at zero, and the log records why.
Checklist: Recall-ready checklist
- Choose which items are tracked by lot or serial
- Set the tracking before the first receipt
- Record the supplier’s lot code exactly as printed
- Keep the delivery note with every receipt
- Make sure every movement out carries its lot
- Run a recall drill every quarter
- Keep a separate location pickers never take from
- Name one person to own the recall log