Shelf life & automatic dating
Overview
A shelf life is how long a product stays good after it arrives — for example 21 days for yoghurt. Once a product has one, you rarely need to type an expiration date again: the plugin can date new stock for you, and you can set a date to “today + shelf life” in one click.
Setting a shelf life
Per product: open the product’s Expiration tab and fill in Shelf life (days).
Per category: under Products → Expirations → Settings → Rules, add a rule for the category and fill in its Shelf life (days) column. Every product in that category (and its subcategories) uses it.
A product’s own shelf life always wins over a category rule. Variations use their parent product’s shelf life.
Dating new stock automatically
Under Settings → General → Automatic dating, Date on restock (on by default) works like this:
- When you add stock to a product that has no date, or a date that has already passed, its expiration date becomes today + shelf life.
- A product with a valid future date keeps it. When old and new stock are mixed on the shelf, the earlier date is the only safe one to show.
- Stock that comes back from a refunded or cancelled order never re-dates a product.
- Batch-tracked products are dated per batch and are not affected.
Nothing happens on its own when a date passes — the shelf life is only used at the moment stock is added.
One-click dating
- In the product editor, a product with a shelf life gets an extra quick-set button next to the date — for example +21 days (shelf life) — alongside +1 week, +1 month, +6 months and +1 year.
- On the Overview, select products and choose Set to today + shelf life from Bulk actions. Products without a shelf life are skipped and listed in the result.