Overview
If you move milk, curd, paneer, cheese, butter, ghee, or ice cream, plain Core inventory is not enough. A paneer batch with 14 hours left and one with 48 hours both read as "1 day" in a normal stock list — and your staff can ship the wrong one. A 3-hour warm patch on a truck can spoil a lot you can't prove was ever cold. FSSAI wants a disposal record, a lot trail, and a recall path you can show an inspector. The Dairy Pack bolts all of that onto the Core spine you already run.
Paid Pack · locked
This article is part of the Dairy PackDairy Pack
You can read the guide. The actions it describes unlock when an owner adds this Pack in Billing & entitlements.
The Dairy Pack is a paid, opt-in vertical Pack — it does not turn on by itself. The Owner installs it from billing; installing it auto-switches on the cold-chain Capability it needs, and only then do the dairy screens and actions appear.
Where to find it
On the web admin, the dairy tools live under their own section. Open /dairy and you land on Cold Chain (the /dairy URL redirects straight to /dairy/cold-chain). The section nav carries six screens:
- Cold Chain —
/dairy/cold-chain - Quality Checks —
/dairy/quality-checks - Recalls —
/dairy/recalls - Disposal —
/dairy/disposal - FSSAI Alerts —
/dairy/fssai-alerts - Shelf-life —
/dairy/shelf-life
This is a web-only section. The whole /dairy route group is Owner-only today — no other role sees it in the sidebar or can open the pages.
Key concepts
Cold-chain log — every temperature reading for a dairy batch, across manufacture, warehouse, dispatch, transit, and delivery. Warehouse readings mirror in from your cold-chain sensors; the Pack also logs the transit vehicle (which truck carried which lot at what temperature) that Core never tracked.
Cold-chain excursion — a reading outside the product's storage envelope (chilled, say 0–4°C, or frozen -25 to -18°C). An out-of-range reading flags the log and fires an alert.
Hour-precision FEFO — First-Expiry-First-Out at the hour, not the day. Curd ~72 hours, paneer ~7 days, fresh cheese ~10 days. The dairy pick-list sorts on hours-to-expiry so the nearest-expiry lot goes first.
Shelf-life alert — automatic warnings at three tiers as a batch nears expiry: 24h warning, 12h warning, 6h critical.
FSSAI lot trail — the regulator-facing record keyed on the lot code printed on the carton: source, processing, batches, cold-chain summary, who it went to, and how leftovers were disposed.
Dual-witness disposal — FSSAI wants spoiled or expired stock destroyed with a witness who is a different person from the one recording it. The Pack blocks a disposal where the witness and the recorder are the same user.
Common workflows
Go to Quality Checks and record a check against the incoming batch — visual, smell, optional taste and arrival temperature. The Pack sets a pass/fail from those inputs. A failed receipt check quarantines the batch so it can't be shipped.
Cold Chain lists temperature readings per batch, vehicle, or warehouse; an out-of-range reading shows as an excursion. Shelf-life shows what is hitting the 24h / 12h / 6h tiers so you move it or pull it before it expires.
On Disposal, log the quantity, method, and reason for spoiled or expired stock, and name a witness. The disposal writes off that quantity from the batch's stock.
From Recalls, start a recall on an FSSAI lot code. The Pack quarantines the affected batches, then on Notify it works out which customers got that lot and sends them word. Record what comes back per customer, upload the FSSAI closure report, and close the recall.
Role notes
The entire dairy section is Owner-only right now. The Owner sees the six screens and runs every dairy action — cold-chain, quality checks, shelf-life, disposal, FSSAI alerts, and the full recall lifecycle. No other role (Manager, Operator, Warehouse, Accountant, Sales, Delivery) can open /dairy or touch a dairy record.
Two things even the Owner cannot do:
- Use dairy features before the Pack is installed. Dairy powers are not part of the Owner's default rights. They attach to the Owner only when the Pack is installed; until then every dairy screen and procedure is gated off.
- Leave the business with no Owner. You can't unassign the last Owner — the guard blocks removing the final one.
Finer per-screen permission keys exist in the system for a future where Managers or Warehouse staff get scoped dairy access, but on the web admin today the gate is simply Owner-only.
Tips & time-savers
Set each dairy product's category and shelf-life hours once, and the shelf-life tiers and FEFO ordering follow automatically — no per-batch fiddling.
Gotchas
One more thing on data: dairy records are kept for at least five years (60 months) to meet FSSAI rules, and the floor is a minimum you can extend, never shorten. Dairy compliance data is never purged.