Traceability in Apicbase: Overview and End-to-End Workflow

1. What is Traceability?

Food traceability is the ability to track raw materials and (semi-)finished products through every stage of production, processing, and distribution. In practice, this means you can follow any ingredient forward to find out which products it ended up in and which customers received it — or trace any finished product backward to identify the exact supplier batch it came from.

Apicbase's Traceability module makes this possible through a system of linked lot numbers. Every time an ingredient or preparation is given a label, that label carries a unique lot number that connects it to a chain of events: who supplied it, when it was delivered, how it was processed, and where it was sent.

2. Why Does Traceability Matter?

Food businesses face three core challenges that traceability directly addresses:

Product recalls When a safety issue is identified — a contaminated batch, a mislabelled allergen, a supplier alert — you need to act fast. With Traceability, you can immediately identify every product that contains the affected ingredient, which outlets received it, and when. What could take days of manual investigation takes minutes.

Regulatory audits Food safety regulations (including EU Regulation EC 178/2002) require food businesses to be able to demonstrate the movement of ingredients one step back and one step forward in the supply chain at any point. Apicbase creates a verifiable, timestamped record of every lot, automatically.

Ingredient tracking across complex operations In central production kitchens and multi-site operations, ingredients pass through multiple hands and transformations before reaching the end customer. Apicbase tracks every step — including when a raw ingredient becomes a semi-finished product, and when that semi-finished product is incorporated into a final dish.

3. The Full Ingredient Journey

At the heart of Traceability is the concept of linked lot numbers. Here is how an ingredient moves through the system:

A delivery arrives from a supplier. A lot number is assigned to the batch — capturing the supplier, delivery date, and expiry date.
The ingredient enters the kitchen for preparation (mise en place). A new lot label is printed for the portioned or processed item, linking it back to the original supplier lot.
The preparation is used in a production batch. The finished product is labelled with its own lot number, which inherits the chain of linked lots from the ingredients it was made from.
The finished product leaves the kitchen — to an outlet, a delivery channel, or directly to a customer. That movement is recorded and linked to the product's lot.

At any point, scanning a product's label reveals its entire history: supplier, delivery date, expiry date, current stock quantity, the other products it was used in, and the customers or outlets it was delivered to.

4. The 4-Step Operational Flow

Traceability in Apicbase maps to four key moments in your daily operation. Labels are either printed (to create a new traceable unit) or scanned (to consume or move an existing one) at each stage.

Step 1 — Receive

What happens: A delivery arrives at your kitchen. You register the order in Apicbase and assign a lot number to each incoming ingredient batch.

Label action: 🖨️ Print A label is printed for each received batch. The label includes the ingredient name, supplier, delivery date, expiry date, and lot number. This label travels with the product into storage.

What this records: The origin of every ingredient — supplier identity, batch reference, and arrival date.

💡 Tip: For the most accurate traceability chain, always receive orders through Apicbase before the goods enter your storage or are used in production. See How can I receive orders in Apicbase? for step-by-step instructions.

Step 2 — Mise en Place

What happens: Ingredients are taken from storage and portioned, cleaned, or otherwise prepared. A semi-finished product (e.g. a sauce base, a trimmed cut, a pre-measured component) is created.

Label action: 📷 Scan The receiving label on the raw ingredient is scanned to confirm which lot is being consumed.

What this records: Which raw ingredient lots were used to create each preparation, and in what quantities.

❗ Important: Every time you split or transform an ingredient into a new container or preparation, print a new label. This keeps the traceability chain unbroken.

Step 3 — Production

What happens: Semi-finished preparations and raw ingredients are combined to produce finished dishes or packaged products. A production batch is logged in Apicbase.

Label action: 🖨️ Print Once the batch is complete, a new label is printed for the finished product. This label is linked to all of the lot numbers that were scanned during production.

What this records: The complete bill of ingredients — including all upstream lots — that make up every finished product batch. This is what enables full backward traceability from a finished product to its original supplier batches.

Step 4 — Sales / Distribution

What happens: Finished products are dispatched to an outlet, delivered to a customer, or handed over at the point of sale.

Label action: 📷 Scan The finished product label is scanned at the point of dispatch or delivery. Apicbase records which lot was sent, to whom, and when.

What this records: The complete forward trail — which customers or outlets received which product lots, and on which date.

💡 Tip: For customer-facing deliveries, the scanned dispatch record is your proof of delivery and the final link in the traceability chain.

Label & Scan Summary

Step	Action	Purpose
Receive	🖨️ Print	Record incoming lot from supplier
Mise en Place	📷 Scan	Consume raw lot
Production	🖨️ Print	Create finished product lot
Sales / Dispatch	📷 Scan	Record who received the finished product lot