· 2 min read · FoodChainAPI editorial
FSMA 204 Shipping Records: Preserve Lots Across Split Orders
A shipping record should let you trace the food that left a location to the recipient of that food. Order totals alone cannot show which traceability lots were sent when an order contains several lots or ships in parts.
Record what shipped, not just what was ordered
Use FDA's shipping KDE requirements to define the applicable record. Connect the actual outbound event to the product, lot, quantity, location information, and reference documents. An order line is a commercial instruction; a shipment line describes an event.
For a distributor that only ships an existing lot, preserve the TLC. FDA's lot-code guidance says shipping is not an activity that establishes a new TLC. Keep your warehouse or shipment ID as an additional internal identifier instead of replacing the traceability code.
Handle a split order explicitly
Imagine a customer orders twenty cases and receives eight from lot A and twelve from lot B. Store two lot allocations tied to the shipment. If ten cases ship today and ten tomorrow, store the two outbound events too. This makes it possible to answer both 'which customers received lot A?' and 'which lots reached this customer?'.
Do not aggregate away the lot dimension when generating a customer-facing document. If your invoice system supports only one product line, provide linked lot-level information through a compatible record exchange. Agree the format with the recipient before the first shipment rather than discovering the mismatch during a recall.
- Reconcile shipped quantities to warehouse allocations.
- Preserve TLCs and source information through document generation.
- Represent split lots and split dates separately.
- Retain corrections and reference-document links.
Test a downstream handoff
Ask a recipient to reconstruct a shipment using only the information you sent. A successful export on your side does not prove their system can interpret units, source references, or lot strings. Include leading-zero codes and an order fulfilled from multiple lots.
FoodChainAPI helps identify potential FTL products for onboarding. It does not transmit shipment KDEs to customers. The integration must connect classification review to your existing record-generation workflow while keeping unresolved products visible.
Put the product review into practice
Start with a candidate category in the free FTL lookup. Check product form and exemptions against FDA sources, then save the evidence behind your decision.
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Sources and scope
FDA sources checked October 4, 2026. Workflow suggestions are implementation guidance; category matches do not establish exemption or compliance status. Check the current FDA requirements for your product and activities.