Recording import batches and arrival dates in the stock table

A Bluetooth earbud arrives in three shipments. The first cost 4.20 dollars a piece, the second 4.55, and the quality of one of them is not quite steady. Yet the stock table has a single row: "Bluetooth earbuds, 1,300 pieces". The count is 10 short. Which shipment? At which price is the gap valued? Without batch information these can only be guessed. A batch number on every imported shipment is the cheapest remedy.

What a batch number is

A batch number identifies one SKU within one delivery. It answers: when did this lot arrive, in which container, from which supplier? If a container holds five SKUs, there are five batches, each with its own number.

Keep the code simple and readable, for example IM2510-02: IM for import, 2510 for October 2025, and 02 for the second shipment that month. The batch number carries no product information, because the SKU column does that, and a used number is never reused.

Fields in the stock table

In the stock table each SKU in each batch gets one row, with at least:

• batch number and SKU
• supplier
• container or waybill number
• arrival date at your warehouse, meaning the day it was actually received
• packing-list quantity and received quantity
• landed cost per unit and the currency
• status: normal, awaiting inspection, defective

Keep packing-list quantity and received quantity as two columns. Any gap between them is the clue to a short shipment later.

The table follows the same long layout as the item table: one row per SKU and batch, so a new batch is just a new row and the structure never changes. If the carton label carries the batch number, operators can scan and count by batch during the count, and the results are combined by SKU afterwards.

Writing dates

An imported lot involves at least two dates: arrival at the port and arrival at your warehouse. Counting and first-in-first-out use the second, the day the goods were really received and checked in.

Use one date format throughout; year-month-day, such as 2025-10-15, is best. Documents from Chinese suppliers often use year/month/day, local documents often use day.month.year, and if both end up in one column, nobody can say whether 05.10 means 5 October or 10 May. Keep the column all real dates or all text, never a mixture, or sorting and filtering will fail.

A worked example

SKU B-0360, Bluetooth earbuds, 10 pieces per carton, in two batches:

• IM2509-01: received 2025-09-05, 500 pieces, cost 4.20 dollars each.
• IM2510-02: received 2025-10-02, 800 pieces on the packing list, cost 4.55 dollars each.

The books total 1,300 and the count finds 1,290.

Without batches, all you know is that 10 are short, valued roughly at the average cost of about 4.42 dollars. Counted by batch, IM2509-01 shows 500 and is fine, while IM2510-02 shows only 790. The missing 10 are exactly one carton, and they sit in the most recent batch. The receiving record shows the packing list said 800 pieces (80 cartons) and the goods were booked in on that basis, but only 79 cartons were actually counted. The origin is clear at once: a carton was missed at receiving, not lost in the warehouse, so the matter belongs with the carrier or supplier.

First in, first out, and tracing quality

With an arrival date and a batch, first-in-first-out becomes real: older batches go out first. For goods with a shelf life, add an expiry column and ship the earliest expiry first.

If a batch later proves to have a quality problem, tracing is quick: who received it and how much is still in stock. Without batches, all your inventory is suspect.

Where it goes wrong

• A container received in several parts needs each part's arrival date recorded, and if necessary split into separate batches.
• Two batches in one bin with no label to tell them apart cannot be separated at count time.
• If the system merges batches into one balance per SKU, the batch information is lost, so keep the batch column in a separate table.
• When batches differ in currency or exchange rate, write the currency beside the cost.

A batch number is simple. The difficulty is recording it at every receipt. InventoryHub builds the code mapping table with you and labels items that have no code; batch numbers can be written into that labelling scheme, and later counts and reconciliations carry on with it, with results arranged by SKU in a table you can filter in Excel.