I work at a big retail chain and we have to check expired medications every month, 3 months out. As in pulling April, May, and June this month. We are a high volume store and have a lot of medications. We get drugs delivered every week day, lots of them.

Every month we have to check every single bottle and box that comes in and it's a big annoyance/hindrance to our day to day work. We usually only finish this when there is like 3-4 days left in the month and then it all starts over again.

I've been brainstorming ways we can make this task easier/faster but still complete.

I've been curious what you all do at your pharmacies to make this job easier and less time consuming.

I was thinking something like color coded stickers on the top of caps that are quick to identify without even having to pick up each bottle. Something like assigning a color to 2 years out, 1 year out to at least take some of the time away in that we'd only have to check unstickered items. But the issue then becomes having to put stickers on the hundreds of items we get in each weekday as we are putting it up.

I think this is less time consuming on a grand scheme, but more time consuming on another mundane task that is done daily.

Whatcha got?