Expiration Date Tracking – A QuickBooks Desktop 2023 Feature

by

Editor's Note: Intuit recently released its QuickBooks Desktop 2023 line-up. Murph has been evaluating various pre-release versions of these products for almost a year, spending hours communicating with Intuit personnel so we can help you learn about the new products. This is the ninth in our series of individual product articles intended to provide additional content to what can be found in our QuickBooks Desktop 2023 Product Summary.

About QuickBooks Enterprise (v23) Expiration Date Tracking

Many QuickBooks users ultimately migrate to QuickBooks Enterprise because of the sophisticated inventory controls offered by the 'Advanced Inventory' feature set. But despite the offering of Serial and Lot tracking capabilities of QuickBooks Enterprise with Advanced Inventory, the product previously has not been able to provide a viable way to track 'expiration dates.'

Until now, QuickBooks users have either relied upon third-party solutions to track the expiration dates of inventory products or attempted to use custom fields within QuickBooks for this purpose. While custom fields could be configured for a date, existing reports were not designed to track custom date fields chronologically, rendering them invaluable for expiration tracking.

New for 2023, an Expiration Date feature is available to some Enterprise subscribers who track lots or serialized products. With this new feature, they can view expiration dates on sales transactions and get expiration dates on related reporting1.

Using the new Expiration Date feature

The new Expiration Date feature is only available to subscribers within the US and Canada of QuickBooks Enterprise Platinum, Diamond and Enterprise Accountant.

Activating the Feature

To activate the new Expiration Date feature:

  1. Log in to your QuickBooks Company file as the Admin user in Single-user mode
  2. From the Edit menu, select Preferences
  3. In the Preferences, choose Items & Inventory
  4. Open the Company Preferences and click Advanced Inventory Settings (shown below)
  5. Open the Lot/Serial Numbers & Expiration Dates tab
  6. Check-mark the Activate Expiration Date preference
  7. Choose how you wish to Show expiration dates for each option
  8. Choose how you wish to be notified about Expiration Dates in Sales Transactions

Note: If you use site/bin tracking, "do not" activate Expiration Date tracking, the feature currently is not working in the initial release.

Creating Purchase Transactions with Expiration Dates

Obviously, the next step in your workflow of tracking expiration dates is to add expiration dates to inventory items with serial or lot numbers during receiving/purchase. You will not know expiration dates in most cases until you receive products into your stock.

So I'm going to take you through those steps:

  1. From the Receiving Inventory drop-down, select Receive Inventory (with/without a Bill, as appropriate); we assume this is without a Bill.
  2. On the Item Receipt, select the Vendor from the drop-down.
  3. Select YES to receive against an open Purchase Order.
  4. Choose the correct Purchase Order, then select OK.
  5. The Line Items will populate from the Purchase Order; review them line by line against the receiving information. In our case, we are recording Serial Numbers for each quantity received.
  6. Click on the Serial Number drop-down to enter the Serial Numbers numbers; notice the new Expiration Date field adjoining the Serial Number field (shown below).
  7. Enter the Serial Numbers for each of the receiving quantities of the Item.
  8. Enter the Expiration Date corresponding to each Serial Number.
  9. Click OK when you have entered all Serial Numbers and Expiration Dates (the count must equal your line item quantity).
  10. Repeat for each line item in your Item Receipt with Serial Numbers and Expiration Dates (if an item does not have expiration dates, the expiration date column will not be active in the serial number window).
  11. When you have finished recording all line items, be sure to Save & Close the Item Receipt.

Note: If you are using Lot tracking rather than Serial-number tracking, the process almost is identical, except you will enter a single expiration date corresponding to each entire lot you receive. Every lot can have different expiration dates, but no single lot can have multiple expiration dates.

Checking Expiration Dates Of Sales Items

The third use of the new expiration date feature is to check or view the expiration date of serial or lot numbers for items during sales transactions.

Below is an example of how I used an item with an Expiration Date in the distant future in a Sales Receipt, and everything worked just fine:

But you really need the ability to verify you are never selling something outside the expiration date. Does the new feature really work for that? "Not yet, in my opinion." —Murph   

I tried another Sales Receipt example in which I intentionally set an item with an expiration date the day before the date I knew I would be trying to sell it. Again, the Sales Receipt processed normally despite the expiration date being exceeded, and QuickBooks picked this serial number because I had chosen the autofill option. This is a problem.

One reason it is a problem is because there is not a warning. There needs to be a 'Pop-up' that says Expiration Date Exceeded (or something like that).

This is especially true if you use the option to autofill from existing inventory when selecting Serial (or Lot) Numbers because the expiration dates default automatically.

The second reason it is a problem is that QuickBooks should make you select an alternative Serial (or Lot) number with an Expiration Date that is not expired. Furthermore, if you are using autofill, then QuickBooks should select a Serial (or Lot) number with a valid Expiration Date and skip any/all expired serial (lot) numbers.

While the new Expiration Date tracking feature within QuickBooks Enterprise v23 has a few bugs in this early release, it is a great new functionality that's been needed to bolster the inventory capabilities of Enterprise for the mid-market. 

 I am confident that the Advanced Inventory Team working on this feature can resolve these minor issues quickly, and also provide the additional reporting users need to offer Expiration Date quality controls within the upcoming maintenance release cycles. (Murph)

I believe the Advanced Inventory Team working on this new feature understands the importance of Expiration Dates. I am confident that these are issues that can be easily resolved and will be forthcoming in a future maintenance (R) release.

Reporting on Expiration Dates of Serial/Lot Numbers for Inventory Items

Below is an example of a Serial Numbers in Stock Report with Serial Numbers included on the Report. Unfortunately, the only way you can currently view the expiration dates is to click on the Item's Serial Numbers while viewing the Report to open the Quick View window, which will provide the Expiration Dates (as highlighted in the example).

I am aware that the team working on this functionality understands the need for additional reports using this new Expiration Date feature, including a specific Expiring Products Report, and will be working to make other feature-related reports available in upcoming maintenance (R) releases (See footnote1 below).

To learn more about this QuickBooks 2023 Desktop feature:

Please attend our September QB Talks webinar, scheduled for 2 p.m. (EST) on Sept. 21, 2022.  Laura Madeira will bring you "A First Look at QuickBooks Desktop 2023." Laura develops this year's QuickBooks Desktop training content and exam materials for Intuit, so nobody is more knowledgeable about the new features. You can REGISTER HERE for the webinar.

Footnotes and Disclosures

1 - As with many new features, reporting tends to lag. Right now, a very limited number of reports provide access to the expiration dates of your inventory products, and you are limited to viewing them from the reports window by clicking on the Quick View access from the Serial Numbers displayed in the reports.

Materials within this feature, including graphic illustrations, were developed from various pre-release versions of QuickBooks Desktop 2023. Therefore, the final product version you may acquire may appear, act, or be functionally different from that illustrated or described herein.

Portions of this feature were adapted from Intuit QuickBooks Desktop 2023-related content. All such source materials were adapted by Insightful Accountant solely for educational purposes.

As used herein, QuickBooks, QuickBooks ProAdvisor, QuickBooks Payroll, QuickBooks Payments, and QuickBooks Desktop (products) refer to one or more registered trademarks of Intuit Inc.; a NASDAQ publicly traded "INTU" corporation, headquartered in Mountain View, California (USA).

Any or all other trade names used herein, including any other vendor (app/software) products discussed within this article, may be registered, trademarked, or otherwise held by their respective owners and are hereby acknowledged. They are referenced for informational and educational purposes only.

This is an editorial feature, not sponsored content. None of the vendors within this article have paid Insightful Accountant or the Author any form of remuneration to be included within this feature. This article is provided solely for informational and educational purposes.

The publication of this article does not represent any form of endorsement by either the Author or Insightful Accountant.

Note: Both Registered Trademark ® and Copyright © symbols have been eliminated from the articles within this publication for brevity due to the frequency or abundance with which they might otherwise appear or be repeated. Every attempt is made to credit such trademarked products or copyrighted materials within our respective article footnotes and disclosures.

Like what you're reading?

Subscribe to our FREE newsletter and we'll deliver content like this directly to your inbox.

SIGN UP TODAY