---
title: "Material expiration after container opening"
slug: "material-expiration-after-container-opening"
description: "Manage expiration dates and Period After Opening controls for sensitive pharmaceuticals to support product safety and compliance."
updated: 2026-06-25T10:24:07Z
published: 2026-06-25T10:24:07Z
canonical: "docs.staedean.com/material-expiration-after-container-opening"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.staedean.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Material expiration after container opening

Pharmaceutical companies must store material in containers intended to preserve products from contamination, hinder microbial growth, and ensure product safety during the container’s shelf life. When the container is opened to pick the required quantity of components, the content is directly exposed to the environment. For products that are sensitive to environmental contamination after container opening, the expiration date must be updated to an earlier date to ensure that the component’s quality, efficacy, and safeness are compliant with the standard for the whole shelf life.

### Period after opening

Life Sciences Supply Chain Management allows users to define a **Period after opening in days** at the item level. This information can be defined in the **Manage inventory** FastTab of the **Released products** form (**Product information management > Products > Released products**). Since the expiration date must be updated to an earlier date for these particularly sensitive products, the system prevents users from setting a **Period after opening** in days longer than the **Shelf life period in days**.

If the **Expiration date after opening** parameter is enabled in the **Production control parameters** form (**Production control > Setup > Production control parameters > Production consumption Tab**), and the **Disable automatic expiration date update** parameter is disabled at the item level, the **Expiration date** is automatically recalculated and updated after sub-batches opening during production consumption as *Consumption date + Period after opening in days.*

The **Container opening date** field in the **Sub batches** form (**Inventory management > Inquiries and reports > Tracking dimensions > Sub batches**) is updated according to the consumption date, and the **Opened** field is automatically set to **Yes**.

When a sub-batch has the **Opened** field set to **No**, it is possible to manually update its expiration date based on the container opening date by clicking the **Reset > Update expiration date** button in the **Sub batches** form.

### **Print new expiry information on inventory labels**

Life Sciences Supply Chain Management adds a new **Expiry after opening** field in the **Released products** form (**Product information management > Products > Released product**) that can be used to determine the expiry information that will be printed on the sub-batch label after the reopening.

Users can choose among the following options:

- **Not for reuse**: a fixed, configurable text can be printed on the material label. The text is fixed for all the items with this configuration in the system, and can be defined in the **Not for reuse after container opening** field in the **Warehouse management parameters** form (**Warehouse management > Setup > Warehouse management parameters> Print management**).
- **Use expiration date**: the **Expiration date** of the sub-batch is printed on the material label.
- **Use period after opening in days**: the **Period after opening in days** of the item is printed on the material label.

Add the **Expiry after opening** field to the [document routing layout](/life-sciences/docs/label-print-setup) to allow printing the expiry information above on identity labels.

## Related

- [Label print setup](/label-print-setup.md)