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Linking every customer shipment to one or more finished lots is what makes traceability real and recall response fast. Without this connection, you know what you made — but not who received it or which input ingredients went into those specific units. In Batchlane, every shipment record permanently ties the customer, the ship date, and the finished lots together, giving you a complete forward trace (which customers received which lots) and a complete reverse trace (which ingredients went into those lots) from a single record.

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Creating a shipment

1

Navigate to Shipments > New Shipment

Open Shipments from the left navigation and click New Shipment. This opens a blank shipment form.
2

Select or enter the customer

Search for the customer by name. If the customer already exists in Batchlane (synced from QuickBooks or added manually), select them from the dropdown. If this is a new customer, type their name and click Add New Customer — you can fill in additional details later from the Customers page.
3

Add line items linked to finished lots

Click Add Line Item for each finished lot you are shipping. Each line item requires you to select a specific finished lot from inventory. Batchlane displays the lot code, production date, available quantity, and any allocation status so you can confirm you are shipping the right lot.
4

Enter the quantity shipped per lot

For each line item, enter the quantity you are shipping from that lot. The quantity must not exceed the available (unallocated, unshipped) balance on the lot. Batchlane validates this and will flag an error if you try to ship more than is available.
5

Assign a ship date

Enter the date the shipment leaves your facility. Batchlane uses the ship date for traceability reporting, regulatory export timestamps, and customer-facing records. Use the actual ship date, not the order date or invoice date.
6

Save and confirm the shipment

Review the shipment summary — customer, line items, lots, quantities, and ship date — then click Confirm Shipment. The shipment record is saved, inventory is reduced by the shipped quantities, and the lots are marked with a Shipped status for the quantities consumed.

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Lot allocation

Before finalizing a shipment, you can pre-allocate specific lots to a customer order directly from the inventory ledger. Navigate to Inventory, find the finished lot, and click Allocate. Enter the customer name, the order reference, and the quantity to hold. Allocated quantities show as Allocated status on the lot, distinguishing them from available (free) inventory. This prevents the same stock from being consumed by a separate production run or shipment while it is being held for a specific order. When you create the shipment, allocated lots are automatically pre-populated on the relevant line items.

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Partial shipments

If you ship only part of a lot, Batchlane deducts only the quantity you shipped. The remaining quantity stays in inventory with Available status and can be shipped on a future shipment or allocated to another order. You can ship from the same lot across multiple shipments until the balance reaches zero, at which point the lot is automatically marked Depleted.

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Shipment records and traceability

Every confirmed shipment creates a permanent, timestamped record that captures:
  • Customer — the recipient of the shipment
  • Ship date — when the goods left your facility
  • Finished lots — the specific lot codes shipped, with quantities
  • Traceability chain — from any shipment, Batchlane can trace back through the finished lot to the batch record, and from the batch record to every input lot consumed
To run a traceability trace, open the shipment record and click Trace Inputs. Batchlane displays the full ingredient lot chain for every finished lot in that shipment. You can also run traces in reverse: starting from a raw ingredient lot, find every production run and shipment it contributed to.

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Exporting shipment records

To export shipment data for a customer audit, regulatory submission, or internal review, navigate to Shipments, apply filters (by customer, date range, or lot code), and click Export CSV. The export includes all shipment fields plus lot codes and production dates for each line item, formatted for easy sharing with customers or regulators.
Use consistent, standardized customer names every time you create or select a customer — for example, always use “Whole Foods Market – Northeast” rather than a mix of “Whole Foods NE,” “WFM Northeast,” and “Whole Foods.” The traceability lookup by customer searches on exact name matches, so inconsistent naming splits a single customer’s history across multiple records and makes audit responses slower.