QuickBooks Lot Tracking: What QBO Supports and How to Add It

If you searched for QuickBooks lot tracking, here is the short answer: QuickBooks Online does not have it, on any plan. There is no lot number field, no expiry date, and no batch-level quantity anywhere in QBO. This guide covers exactly what QuickBooks Online does and does not support, why the usual spreadsheet workaround fails at the worst possible moment, and how Evenbatch adds full lot tracking on top of QuickBooks Online without replacing it.

What QuickBooks Online actually supports for lot tracking

The facts, stated plainly:

• QuickBooks Online does not include lot or batch tracking on any plan. Not Simple Start, not Plus, not Advanced.
• Lot and serial tracking exist only in QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise with Advanced Inventory. If you have seen lot numbers in QuickBooks before, that is where you saw them.
• QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced do track inventory quantities and cost, using FIFO. That gives you an on-hand number and a cost per item, but nothing below the item level. There is no lot number field, no expiry date field, and no way to know how much of a given batch remains.

A note on terminology: "quickbooks batch tracking" and "quickbooks lot tracking" are the same search for the same missing feature. Some industries say lot, some say batch. Either way, QuickBooks Online does not have it.

This gap matters more now than it used to. Intuit has stopped selling new subscriptions of most QuickBooks Desktop products to new US customers and retires older Desktop versions on an annual schedule. Many manufacturers who relied on Desktop Enterprise with Advanced Inventory are moving to QuickBooks Online and discovering that lot tracking does not come with them. If that is your situation, we wrote a separate guide on moving from QuickBooks Desktop to Online without losing inventory features.

Where the spreadsheet workaround breaks

The most common workaround is a lot log spreadsheet that lives next to QuickBooks Online. One tab for receiving, one for production, one for shipments. It works on day one. It breaks in three predictable places.

• Recalls. When a supplier calls about a bad lot, you need to trace that one lot through every production run it went into and every customer shipment that left the building. In a spreadsheet, that means cross-referencing multiple tabs by hand, under time pressure, while customers wait. One missed row is a shipment you cannot account for.
• Expiration dates. A spreadsheet does not warn you about anything. Nothing tells you a lot expires in two weeks, so expired product sits in QuickBooks Online looking perfectly sellable. If you searched for quickbooks expiration date tracking, this is why: QBO has no expiry field, and a date column in a spreadsheet only helps if someone remembers to look at it.
• FEFO picking. QuickBooks Online costs inventory FIFO, first-in-first-out. But perishable and dated goods need to ship first-expired-first-out, which is not the same order. A spreadsheet cannot enforce pick order at ship time. Whoever is packing the box picks whatever is closest, and your freshest stock leaves while the oldest lot quietly ages out on the shelf.

There is also a slower failure underneath all three: drift. Every receipt, build, and shipment has to be entered twice, once in QBO and once in the spreadsheet. Miss one entry on either side and the two quantities disagree. After a few months, nobody trusts either number.

How Evenbatch adds lot tracking on top of QuickBooks Online

Evenbatch is web-based inventory software built for small manufacturers, one to ten people, who run their books on QuickBooks Online. Lot tracking is included on every plan. It is not an add-on, not a higher tier, not an extra fee.

Here is the full lot lifecycle:

• Receiving. Purchase orders capture the lot number and expiry date at the moment goods arrive. No separate log to fill in later.
• On hand. Every lot carries its own remaining quantity, expiry date, and cost, so you always know how much of which batch is left and what it is worth.
• Production. Production orders explode your bill of materials, consume component lots FEFO, and produce output lots with the rolled-up cost. The finished lot knows exactly which input lots went into it.
• Shipping. Sales orders allocate stock FEFO automatically, so the lot expiring soonest is the one that ships.
• Alerts. Expiry alerts fire before stock goes bad, while you can still sell it, use it, or return it.
• Recalls. A one-click recall trace follows any lot forward through production runs to customer shipments, and you can export the whole trace as a CSV to hand to an auditor or a customer. We cover this end to end in our guide to recall traceability with QuickBooks.

Reports cover inventory value plus a lot report with remaining quantity, expiry, and cost per lot. Here is the difference at a glance:

How it posts back to QuickBooks honestly

Adding a tool on top of your accounting system raises a fair question: what is it going to do to my books? Here is exactly how the sync works.

Evenbatch connects to QuickBooks Online through Intuit's official API using OAuth 2.0. You authorize the connection on Intuit's side; Evenbatch never sees your QuickBooks password. Evenbatch pushes invoices, bills, and production journal entries to QuickBooks, and imports your items, customers, and vendors from QuickBooks so you are not retyping your catalog.

The sync is designed so you can always see what is happening:

• A preview mode shows every change before anything is written to QuickBooks.
• A full sync log records what was sent and when.
• Held changes wait for your explicit approval. Nothing is written silently.
• Item sync is create-only, so Evenbatch never overwrites an existing QuickBooks record.

The division of labor is simple. Your accountant keeps QuickBooks Online as the books of record, exactly as before. Evenbatch keeps the lot detail that QBO has no place to hold, and posts the financial results back where your accountant expects them.

What to check before you pick a lot tracking tool

Whatever tool you evaluate, including ours, these questions separate the honest options from the expensive surprises:

• Is lot tracking included in the base price, or a paid add-on or higher tier?
• Does the price scale per user, so it grows every time you hire?
• Can it capture expiry dates at receiving and enforce FEFO picking at shipping?
• Can you run a full recall trace, and export it when an auditor asks?
• Can you export all of your data anytime, in a format you can actually use?
• Does it write to QuickBooks silently, or show you every change first?

Evenbatch's answers, for the record: $49.99 per month flat, with unlimited users and every feature included. No add-ons, no per-user fees. Migration in is free, with CSV import of items, BOMs, lots, and stock levels from spreadsheets or exports of other tools. You can export all of your data as CSV anytime, and cancellation is self-serve. The trial runs 14 days with no credit card required to start.

And to be equally honest about scope: Evenbatch does not do production scheduling or capacity planning, warehouse bin locations or pick-pack, EDI, POS, or multi-currency. If you need those, you need a bigger system than ours. If you are a small manufacturer on QuickBooks Online who needs lot numbers, expiry dates, FEFO, and a recall trace that works, that is exactly what we built.

See something outdated or incorrect on this page? Email support@evenbatch.com and we will correct it within 48 hours. Last updated: July 16, 2026.