Product batch traceability: what to record and why

What a batch number is for

Manufacturers print a lot or batch code so a faulty or contaminated run can be found. If a client reacts, you — and sometimes the supplier, the insurer or a regulator — need to know which run touched them. If three clients react in a week, you need to know whether they share a lot. If you cannot answer that, you are guessing with people's skin.

COSHH and product-liability habits in UK salons all assume you can identify what was used. Injectables sit under a much tighter expectation of traceability. Tattoo inks and jewellery are asked about at inspection. Lash adhesive is asked about at claim time.

This is a working explanation for people who do the job, not legal, insurance or medical advice. Read your own policy, your local authority, and the current wording from the bodies named. Glow records what you set. It does not decide the rule and it does not claim a salon is compliant.

What to write down, every time

Product name, brand, batch or lot, expiry if printed, date opened if that is how you run the bottle, and the appointment it was used on. Who used it. For two products on one visit (adhesive and primer, colour and toner, ink and stencil fluid), both. For piercing, jewellery lot and needle lot. For aesthetics, the vial that left the fridge for that client.

A photo of the box in a camera roll is not attached to the client. A number in the appointment is.

Lashes, tint, PMU

Adhesive batches move often. Techs open a new bottle and forget to write it. The test you did in March on lot A does not describe lot B in April if you have changed bottle — and some insurers treat a new adhesive as a reason to retest. Put the batch on the test and on the set.

Tint and pigment are the same habit. See how long a patch test is valid.

Hair colour

The mix is the product: brand, shade numbers, developer, batch codes from the tubes you squeezed. If you cannot reconstruct the formula and the lots, a reaction file is already thin. The allergy alert test should name what was tested. The colour appointment should name what was applied. They should match or the difference should be written down.

CTPA and manufacturer materials assume you are using the product as directed, which includes being able to say which product.

Tattoo and piercing

Ink lot, needle lot, and for piercing the jewellery lot, on that sitting. Environmental Health can ask. A claim will ask. A studio that buys nice ink and writes nothing down has a cupboard, not a record.

See tattoo and piercing consent.

Aesthetics

For injectables, batch traceability is not a nice-to-have. Vial, lot, expiry, who it was administered to, when. Practitioners already know this. The failure is usually that the batch lives in a clinic book and the booking lives in a different app. Put them on the same visit.

Glow is not your CDSS, your prescriber, or your MHRA process. It is the booking the batch can sit on. See Glow for aesthetics.

Opened bottles, shared trays, and the lie of 'the usual'

A tray with three adhesives and a 'we always use the middle one' is how batches go missing. Name the bottle on the visit. If two artists share stock, the lot still has to land on the sitting, not in a kitchen notebook.

Opened-on dates matter for adhesives and for some inks. If you discard at four weeks, write the open date so the next person does not keep using a dead bottle. Expiry on the box and opened-on in the salon are different clocks.

When a supplier recalls a lot, the only useful question is 'who had this?'. If the answer takes you a weekend of scrolling photos, you do not have traceability. You have a cupboard. The recall will not wait for your weekend.

How Glow stores batches

On the appointment, next to the consent and the test. You can pull an evidence pack without opening a second system. Pricing is £19 a month. Glow will not file a vigilance report for you.

A supplier who will not print a lot code, or a bottle that arrived with the label scrubbed, is a product you should think hard about putting on skin. Traceability starts at the order, not at the appointment screen. Write the delivery date on the box if you have to.

Share the habit with everyone who opens a bottle. A junior who 'just grabbed the adhesive' without writing the lot has created the same hole as no software at all. The field on the booking is only useful if someone types the number that is on the bottle in their hand.

Do not reuse a batch field from the last client because the bottle 'probably' did not change. Look. Type. If it is the same lot, that is a useful fact. If you assumed, that is not a fact.

Keep empty bottles until the lot is written, or photograph the code before the bin. The number is printed small on purpose. That is not an excuse. If two bottles of the same shade have different lots on the same day, write both if both were used. Mixed lots on one head are still two numbers, not 'the brown one'. If you decant into a ring cup, the lot is still the bottle it came from. Decanting does not erase the code. Photograph the bottle before the bin if you have to. If the photo is not on the client, it is still just a camera roll. Attach it or type the code. A box in the cupboard with no sitting attached is stock, not a record. The sitting is what you will be asked to open. Stocktake is a different book. Do not mix the two and call it done. A sitting without a lot is an open question you already lost last week, not some time later.