FEFO stands for first expired, first out, and it describes a picking rule: when several batches of the same item are in stock, the one with the earliest expiry date is issued first. It sits alongside FIFO, first in first out, which issues the oldest delivery first. The two are frequently treated as interchangeable, and in a business handling dated stock they are not.
Why the distinction matters
FIFO assumes that the order in which stock arrived matches the order in which it will expire. That assumption holds for a great deal of manufacturing and breaks immediately for anything with a shelf life. A delivery received in March with a six month life expires before a delivery received in January with a twelve month life. Picking strictly by arrival date in that situation will send the longer-dated stock out first and leave the short-dated stock sitting on the shelf until it becomes waste.
| Batch | Received | Expires | FIFO picks | FEFO picks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 12 January | 20 November | first | third |
| B | 03 March | 15 August | second | first |
| C | 28 March | 02 September | third | second |
In the table above, FIFO leaves batch B on the shelf until it is a fortnight from expiry, despite it being the most urgent stock in the building. The cost of that is not only the eventual write-off; it is also the short-dated product that reaches a customer who then has to use it immediately or return it.
What it takes to run FEFO properly
FEFO requires three things, and businesses usually have the first without the other two. You need expiry captured per batch at goods-in, not per product as a general rule of thumb. You need the picking process to surface the correct batch at the moment of picking, because a rule that lives in a procedure document will be followed inconsistently under time pressure. And you need visibility of what is approaching expiry while there is still time to act, which means a register somebody actually looks at rather than a report somebody could run.
The third point is where most of the recoverable money sits. Stock that is discovered to be near date with two months remaining can usually be sold, used or discounted. The same stock discovered on the day it expires is waste, and the difference between those two outcomes is a notification rather than a warehouse process.
The common failure
The most frequent problem is not that the rule is wrong but that expiry is recorded against the product rather than the delivery. Once that happens, the system knows that an item has a six month shelf life but not when this particular pallet of it runs out, and FEFO becomes impossible to enforce however clearly it is documented.
Brytebuild captures shelf life at goods-in against the specific batch, suggests the earliest-expiring stock during picking, and maintains an expiry register with daily notifications for stock approaching its date. Expired lots can be quarantined into the hold workflow in one step rather than being manually written off. There is more detail on the food and drink production page.