Trace a Lot for a Recall (Lot Recall and Trace Report)

Purpose: For QA, compliance, and operations staff who need to trace a lot code (batch code) forward to every product and customer it reached, and back to the raw materials it was made from. Use this report for a real recall or a mock-recall audit exercise.

Before you start:

• You'll need access to the Lot Recall and Trace Report, a Company-Level workbook in Flourish's analytics under the Company Admin folder. There is a shortcut to it on the analytics landing page.
• Have the lot number you need to trace ready.
• The report covers all of your company's licenses in one report, so you don't need to run it per facility.
• Data is refreshed nightly. For anything that changed today, use the Lot Live Inventory tab.

The four tabs

• Lot Manufacturing Trace: the traced lot and everything it went into (forward).
• Lot Trace Sales: every order that the lot's packages and the products made from them went out on.
• Lot Origin Trace: everything that went into the lot, back to the original raw material (backward).
• Lot Live Inventory: what is on the shelf right now.

Steps

1. Enter the lot number
   1. Type the lot number into the Lot Number control at the top of the report. Every tab updates for that lot.
2. Read the Lot Manufacturing Trace tab
   1. The Depth column shows how far each row is from the lot you entered:
      • Depth 0: the traced lot itself. Every package of the lot is listed once, at every license that holds it.
      • Depth 1: products of other lots made directly from this lot in a manufacturing run.
      • Depth 2 and beyond: products made from those products, and so on down the chain.
   2. The Edge Type column says how each package was created, and the Parent column says from what:
      • MANUFACTURING: produced in a manufacturing run. The parent lot is the input, with the quantity consumed and produced.
      • SPLIT / LAB_SAMPLE_SPLIT / CONVERSION: broken off, sampled from, or converted from the parent package.
      • TRANSFER: the same package (same tag) moved to another of your own licenses. It generally appears once per license.
      • PURCHASE_RECEIPT: received on a purchase order (including starting inventory loaded this way).
   3. The production row (Is Production Row = True) is listed first. Total Lot Qty Produced at the top of the tab is the quantity made.
   4. Note: results are intentionally over-inclusive. If the traced material entered a manufacturing run, every product from that run is listed, even if only part of the run contains it. This is deliberate for recalls (better to flag too much than miss something). Treat the list as "products to review," then confirm against your batch and production records.
3. See where it went on the Lot Trace Sales tab
   1. Each row is one order line for a traced package. The Disposition column groups them:
      • Shipped to Customer / Sold at Retail: left your company.
      • Lab Sample: sent to a lab for testing.
      • Moved Between Own Licenses: a transfer to another of your licenses. This is not a sale; those units still appear on the Manufacturing Trace tab at the receiving license.
      • Open Order (Not Yet Shipped): on an order that hasn't been marked shipped.
   2. Filter or group by Disposition to get totals. The Destination Name and Destination License Number show who received each shipment.
4. Trace back to the raw material on the Lot Origin Trace tab
   1. Depth counts backward here: 0 is the traced lot (the same rows as the Manufacturing Trace tab), -1 is what it was made from, -2 is what that was made from, and so on.
   2. Sorted by Depth, the tab reads oldest first: the original material at the top, your lot at the bottom.
   3. On each ancestor row, the Used in Package ID and Qty Used show what it went into and how much. Rows with Is Chain Root = True are where the history starts; for purchased or received material, the Purchase Order Id, Vendor Name, and Po Received Qty columns show where it came from.
5. Save a copy for your records or auditor
   1. Export any tab using the Export option (CSV, Excel, or PDF) to attach to your recall documentation.

Answering an auditor's questions

Here are common questions that could come up during an audit

Check that it adds up: produced = shipped + lab samples + open orders + in-house (at any of your licenses). Any gap is a product you can't yet account for.

Best Practices

• Use lot numbers for both cannabis and non-cannabis inventory.
• Use manufacturing runs and work orders to produce inventory.
• Run a mock recall on a routine schedule so you're audit-ready before you're asked.
• When you can, trace from the earliest (root) lot. This captures every downstream product into which it was processed or blended.
• Don't do conversions or create inventory directly in Metrc or BioTrack. Circumventing Flourish presents challenges in tracing the chain of custody.

Troubleshooting

• The report returns nothing: recheck the lot number for typos and confirm the lot exists in your inventory.
• A finished product you expected is missing: it appears only if its manufacturing run recorded the traced lot as an input. If a run wasn't logged with its inputs, its outputs won't show in the trace.
• The same package appears twice: it was moved between your own licenses. Each license holds its own record of the package (Edge Type TRANSFER on the receiving license). Both are real; one may be Shipped and the other still in stock.
• A package shows Shipped, but its order shows Allocated: the package has left inventory, but the order hasn't been marked shipped in Flourish yet. For a recall, count those units as out of the building, and update the order.
• In-house product isn't showing: Make sure the status filter includes Created and Assigned to Order, and use the Lot Live Inventory tab for anything that changed today.