Pick the right expiry plugin for your perishable food store

Perishable food is unforgiving online. A best-before date that slips by, a short-dated batch that sells after a fresher one, a clearance item that never gets marked down — each one is either a refund, a complaint, or money in the bin. Choosing the right WooCommerce plugin for perishable food expiry is less about feature counts and more about whether it covers the specific failure points of dated stock.

This is a criteria-based buyer’s guide. Below are the capabilities that actually matter for food and grocery stores, why each one matters, and how Sellinor’s Expiration Dates for WooCommerce meets it.

A date per product — and per variation

The baseline is an expiration date on every product. But food rarely ships in one size. A yogurt sold as a single tub and a six-pack can have different shelf lives, and a tea sold loose versus boxed will expire on different days.

So the real test is per-variation dates. Sellinor lets each variation carry its own expiration date, while variations without one inherit a default you set on the parent — useful when most sizes share a date and one or two differ. Crucially, a variable product is only hidden or set out of stock once every variation has expired; in-date sizes stay on sale. See setting expiration dates for how inheritance works.

Automatic action when the date hits

A date you have to act on manually isn’t protection. The plugin should take the product off sale by itself.

Look for a choice of actions and a lead time. Sellinor can hide the product from the catalog, set it to out of stock, or both, and you can fire that action a set number of days before expiry — so a product that’s three days out is pulled before it ever reaches the shelf-life line. The hide action applies immediately on catalog queries; out-of-stock is applied by an hourly check. Details are in expiry actions.

Cart and checkout protection

Pulling a product from the catalog isn’t enough if it’s already sitting in someone’s cart. A good plugin guards the purchase itself.

With an expiry action enabled, Sellinor blocks expired items from being added to the cart, and if a product expires while already in a cart it’s removed at checkout with a notice. That protection is immediate — it doesn’t wait for the hourly sweep — so no customer can complete a purchase of expired food.

FEFO batch rotation for multi-shipment stock

This is where generic expiry plugins fall short for food. You receive the same product in shipments with different dates, and you need the oldest stock to sell first. That’s FEFO — First Expired, First Out.

Sellinor’s Pro add-on tracks multiple batches per product, each with its own quantity, expiration date, and optional lot/batch reference. When an order comes in, stock is deducted from the earliest-expiring batch automatically, spilling into the next batch if the first runs short. If an order needs more units than your batches physically hold, the order is placed on hold with a note rather than overselling. Refunds and cancellations return stock to the correct batch. Read batch tracking for the full mechanics, and the FEFO guide for the wider concept.

Lot traceability

For food safety and recalls, you need to know which batch went on which order. Sellinor records a batch reference per lot and attaches the batch to the order (and optionally to the customer’s confirmation email), with every batch action written to an activity log. That gives you a per-product, per-order trail when you need to trace or recall a specific lot.

Automatic markdowns before expiry

Short-dated food sells if it’s cheaper. Doing that by hand across a catalog doesn’t scale.

Sellinor’s Pro add-on applies tiered percentage discounts by days until expiry — for example 10% off at 14 days, 25% at 7 days, 50% at 3 days — automatically, updating as the date approaches. An optional Expiring soon badge flags the deal on shop and product pages. Prices flow through cart and order totals like any sale. See automatic discounts, or the practical walkthrough in auto-discounting expiring products.

Visibility: reports, alerts, and a calendar

You can’t manage what you can’t see. The plugin should surface what’s expiring without you opening products one by one.

Sellinor includes a free Overview page with an expiration calendar, an “expiring soon” count, an “expired” count, and a value-at-risk figure showing the stock value tied up in soon-to-expire inventory. A sortable Expiration column on the Products list and a dashboard widget keep it in view. Pro adds a scheduled email digest (daily, weekly, or monthly) of products nearing expiry so you don’t have to check.

Bulk data tools

A real food catalog has hundreds of dated lines. Setting them one at a time isn’t viable.

Sellinor supports CSV import/export matched by SKU or ID, plus Quick Edit and Bulk Edit from the product list. With Pro, an expiration column is added to WooCommerce’s own native CSV importer and exporter, so dates ride along with your normal catalog workflow.

A free tier to start

Finally, you should be able to prove the fit before you pay. Sellinor’s free plugin covers per-product and per-variation dates, automatic actions, cart protection, frontend display, the Overview reports page, CSV tools, and the activity log. Batch tracking, FEFO, automatic discounts, and the email digest live in the Pro add-on at $79/year for one site (Agency $199/year), with a 14-day trial.

How to weigh it up

If you sell shelf-stable goods with a single date, the free tier likely covers you. If you handle multi-shipment perishables — fresh food, bakery, grocery — the batch tracking, FEFO rotation, and markdown tiers are the features that prevent waste and overselling. Match the plugin to how your stock actually arrives and expires. For a store-specific walkthrough, see the food and grocery expiry guide and WooCommerce batch tracking.