Before it goes off

September 3, 2026

The app can now tell you what is coming up to its best before date, and a batch of something can carry a label of its own — so four cartons of the same milk with four different dates stop being four things you cannot tell apart.

Open a line to read the whole story behind it.

• New An email can tell you what is coming up to its best before date, instead of a page you have to remember to open.

  The Best before dates report has always known what is going off, when, and which shelf it is on — but only once somebody opened it. Now you can switch a message on for a place, from Reminders in your profile, and say how far ahead you want to hear about it: a week, a month, three months or a year. One email covers everything that is due at that place, never one per tin, and it arrives when something new reaches the window rather than every morning. It points you at the report; nothing about your stock is changed for you.

• New A batch of something can carry its own label, so you can tell two of the same thing apart by scanning one.

  A best before date belongs to the goods rather than to the product, so two cartons of the same milk bought a week apart are one product and two answers. Until now the app knew both dates and you had no way to point at one of them. Every dated batch now has a page of its own and a label you can print or write to a tag; scanning it opens that page and says what it is, when it goes off and how much of it is left where. The label keeps working when you move the goods, and it keeps working afterwards even if the batch is used up.

• Improved A list of serial numbers now shows each one’s best before date beside it.

  Each individually numbered thing has always been able to carry its own best before date, and its own page showed it — but a list of them showed only the number and whether it was in stock. So four numbered cartons on one shelf looked identical when the app knew all four dates. The date now sits beside the number, with the same colour the report uses, wherever units are listed.

• Improved Every place holding a best before date now shows it on the forms that take stock out.

  These forms open on a single figure — how much is here now. On a shelf holding two cartons of the same milk with two different dates, that number told you nothing about which carton you were about to give away. The dates are now listed underneath it, soonest first, each with how many carry it and a link to that batch, and anything on the shelf with no date on it is named too rather than left to be worked out by subtraction. Where a place holds just the one date, that is all it says. Serial numbered things are unaffected, because their lists already show each date beside its number.

• Improved When a place holds more than one best before date, correcting, moving and picking now ask about each date instead of one total.

  Say the fridge holds two cartons of the same milk, one dated the 10th and one the 11th, and you drop the later one. Counting the total down to one left the app taking the earlier carton away — so it thought you had the 11th while the carton actually in the fridge was printed the 10th, label and all. Carrying the later carton to the freezer went wrong the same way, and so did reaching past the front carton for the one behind it. All three now give you a box per date: correcting asks how many of each are there, moving and picking ask how many of each you are taking. One date, or none, still gets the single box it always had and the soonest is still used first — the app only asks where there is genuinely something to tell apart.

• Fixed The list of stock movements opens on the newest one again, so what you have just received, moved or picked is at the top of the first page.
• Improved A place and a product both open a row onto its best before dates, the way a serial row opens onto its units, so a figure of three no longer hides three different dates.
• New A best-before date on a shelf now has a Print label beside it, and a button to print the sticker for every date on that shelf at once.
• Improved Sub-locations sit beside the stock as a menu now, so the next shelf is one press away, and the stock card says in one line what is here and what is on every shelf below.
• Fixed Every Print label button now follows your printing setting: with direct printing on, a serial row, a unit page and a dated group send the label to the printer instead of opening the print page.