Particularly in the food and pharmaceutical industry, it is vital that you adhere to legal requirements regarding the best before dates of your products. For example, you must ensure that your products are used up or sold in time before the best before date expires. This task can be complicated, especially if you are dealing with a large product range.
Xentral makes it easy for you to register best before dates while processing sales orders, when booking incoming items for purchase orders and later in the dispatch center. You can also track best before date information during all important tasks, up to the actual shipment process to your end customers. This way, you are not only able to keep track of the best before dates of the products that are currently in stock, but you can also take proactive steps to e.g. avoid the expiration of best before dates and your products becoming unsellable as a consequence.
In this article, you’ll learn everything you need to know about working with best before dates and the possible settings in Xentral.
Tip
Video tutorial: Your head start on working with best before
Are you looking for a quick overview on working with best before dates and similar product information in Xentral? Then, our video tutorial is exactly right for you. Take a look right away!
Best before dates are typically registered in Xentral by scanning or (in rarer cases) manually entering the dates. Registering best before dates is possible within various workflows and modules, which are listed below:
Best before dates can only be registered and entered in Xentral during the workflows and modules listed above if you have activated the management of best before dates in the product master data beforehand.
Important
You have to carry out this step for each product that requires the registration and tracking of best before dates.
Proceed as described below to activate best before date management for your products in Xentral.
In individual cases, you can use the product master data stored in Xentral to check the best before dates for specific items.
Proceed as described in the example below to view the best before dates for specific products.
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Go to Sell > Products.
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Open a product for which you want to check the existing best before dates.
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Open the Best before and Batch tab.
An overview of all available best before dates for this product is displayed. The entries for expired best before dates are marked in red.
Tip
Are expired best before dates displayed in the table? In this case, make sure to remove those best before dates from your stock immediately so that they will not be included in any shipping processes and shipped to your customers.
Click on the Minus symbol in the Menu column to the right to remove the respective best before dates from your stock.
Do you want to keep track of best before dates that have already expired or will expire soon? You can easily do so by using the Best before warning module in Xentral. Not only does this module show you all best before dates that are available in your system, but you can also see warnings regarding expiring best before dates at a glance. Filters are available so that you can restrict and sort the information that is displayed.
You can also use a separate setting to determine how many days before the expiry of a best before date you would like to receive the corresponding notification in Xentral. Thus, the Best before warning module allows you to alert your employees to upcoming best before dates so that the respective products can be prioritized for customer shipments or the disposal of those products can be initiated.
Proceed as described below to use the Best before warning module.
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Use the Smart Search to open the Best before warning module.
You are now in the Warehouse tab of the module.
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Take a look at the list of products that is displayed as well as the respective entries in the Best before column. If required, use the filters only expired and only expired soon at the top left of the table.
Tip
Click on the column heading Best-before to sort the table entries by latest or earliest best before date.
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If you see any products whose best before dates is displayed in red in the table, click on the pencil icon on the right to directly access the Best before and Batch tab. There, you should immediately retrieve the respective best before dates from your stock. This way, you can make sure that those products are not shipped to customers or used in any other way.
In addition to the overview of upcoming or past best before dates described above, you can use the Best before warning module to view additional information regarding your best before dates.
By clicking on the individual tabs, you can obtain more specific information on the customers whose sales orders contain products with best before dates. You can also determine the point at time at which Xentral will notify you about upcoming best before dates.
The following table contains more detailed explanations on the different tabs and their functions.
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Tab |
Explanation |
|---|---|
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Customers |
This tab contains an overview of all customers (separated by sales order) whose sales orders contain products with best before dates. In addition to the customer number, the respective item numbers and delivery note numbers are displayed, among other things. TipThe information in this tab is particularly useful for you if there are problems with specific best before dates and you want to check which customers might be affected. |
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Warehouse |
This tab is opened by default as soon as you open the Best before warning module in Xentral. Here, you can see the warnings regarding expired best before dates and you can also open the corresponding product master with just one click. More information on how to use this tab is available in the previous chapter. |
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Production |
If you are using the Production module in Xentral, you can use this tab to access an overview of all products for which best before dates are available and that are currently used in a production. NoteMore information on productions in Xentral is available in the Produktion: Überblick article. |
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History |
If you want to gain very detailed insights into how products with best before dates are processed, this tab offers you a list of all processing steps that have taken place for products with best before dates in your Xentral system. |
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Settings |
This tab allows you to determine how many days before the best before date expires Xentral should notify you about upcoming best before dates. To do so, enter the number of days in the Notification number of days before expiry and then click on Save. |