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A food and beverage mock recall in Business Central
- 1
Receive with the supplier's lot
The receiving clerk records the vendor lot number and expiration date on the purchase receipt, or scans them, for every item set to require lot tracking.
- 2
Consume into a batch
A production order consumes those ingredient lots and outputs a finished-goods lot. So posting stores the link between flour lot and bread lot.
- 3
Ship to the customer
Warehouse shipments record which finished lots left for which customer and ship-to address.
- 4
Trace in either direction
The Item Tracing page starts from a suspect ingredient lot and shows every batch and customer it reached, or starts from a complaint and walks back to suppliers.
- 5
Hold what is left
Blocking the lot on its lot information card stops it being picked or shipped while you investigate.
Food and beverage recipes and yield in Business Central
Food recipes as Business Central BOMs
Ingredients, packaging and quantity per batch live on a production BOM, with scrap percentages for expected loss.
Recipe versions
BOM versions with start dates let a reformulated product go live on a set day while old orders finish on the old recipe.
Routings for lines and ovens
Routings with work and machine centers schedule mixing, baking, filling and packing, and capture run time for costing.
Kits and gift packs
Assembly orders build variety packs and holiday boxes from finished items without a full production order.
Premium license needed
In Business Central for food and beverage makers, production orders, BOMs and routings need Premium. By contrast, distributors who only buy and sell can run on Essentials.
Units of measure
Buy flour by the bag, issue it by the pound and sell finished goods by the case, with conversions set on each item.
Actual yield per batch
Posting real ingredient consumption and finished output against each production order shows the yield every batch achieved.
Output lots
Finished goods receive their own lot number at output, linked to the ingredient lots consumed, which is what lets tracing work in both directions.
Business Central for food and beverage: standard versus add-ons
Business Central for food and beverage distributors versus producers
A specialty food distributor buys, stores and resells. For them the valuable work is at the dock and in the aisles: capturing supplier lots at receipt, directed picking by expiration date, units of measure that convert cases to eaches, and dealing with the deductions large grocery chains take from payments. Most of that is standard Business Central for food and beverage distributors, on the Essentials license.
A producer or co-packer adds recipes, batch costing and yield. Standard manufacturing is discrete at heart, which suits bakeries, snack makers and beverage bottlers with fixed recipes. Dairies, meat processors and brewers who split one input into several outputs, or sell by actual weight, should plan on a process or food add-on from the start rather than bolting one on after go-live.
How we vet a Business Central food and beverage add-on
- ✓Who supports it in the United States, and how quickly they respond outside their home time zone.
- ✓Whether it has shipped updates for recent Business Central release waves without long gaps.
- ✓Whether it extends standard lot tracking or replaces it with its own tables, which makes reporting harder.
- ✓How it handles units of measure and costing, since both touch every transaction.
- ✓What happens to your data and processes if you later remove it.
- ✓Which of your own needs, such as catch weight, allergens or co-products, it covers as standard rather than through custom work.
Business Central for food and beverage: buyer questions
Will Business Central meet the FDA Food Traceability Rule?
Business Central stores the lot links the rule is concerned with, and Item Tracing can produce lot history quickly. Whether your records meet the rule depends on which foods you handle, which critical tracking events apply and what key data elements you capture at each one. Check your obligations with FDA guidance and your food safety adviser, then we configure the system to capture those fields.
Is Business Central certified for SQF or BRCGS audits?
Those schemes certify your facility and food safety system, not software. Business Central supplies records an auditor may ask to see, such as lot history, supplier information and mock recall results. Your food safety plan decides what is recorded and when.
Can we sell direct to consumers online as well?
Yes. The Shopify connector brings online orders into Business Central and sends stock levels back. Business Central assigns lot numbers at picking, so traceability covers web orders too.
We make only a few recipes. Do we still need an add-on?
Possibly not. A bakery, food or beverage company with fixed recipes, no by-products and fixed case weights can often run on standard Business Central Premium. Run a mock recall and a costing test during scoping before deciding. Buying an add-on you do not need adds license cost and update risk.
Talk to us about your project.
Tell us what you run today and what has to change. A senior consultant replies with a written next step.