Lot Number Next Available Finder

Find earliest unused lot in a declared accession year from actual strict item identifiers, allowing multiple items per lot; does not allocate or reserve a concurrent database identity.

Description

An accession lot may contain multiple numbered items.

An accession lot may contain multiple numbered items. Finding an unused lot requires deduplicating lot numbers within one year.

Find earliest unused lot in a declared accession year from actual strict item identifiers, allowing multiple items per lot; does not allocate or reserve a concurrent database identity.

When to use Lot Number Next Available Finder

Use this tool to find earliest unused lot in a declared accession year from actual strict item identifiers, allowing multiple items per lot; does not allocate or reserve a concurrent database identity.

Prepare the collection, exposure, scheduling or financial records required for this calculation. Keep row order and the declared units consistent.

How to use Lot Number Next Available Finder and understand its results

Prepare the collection, exposure, scheduling or financial records required for this calculation. Keep row order and the declared units consistent.
Enter existingAccessionIdentifiers, accessionYear, minimumLotNumber using the field table and calculation rules, then run the tool.
Read nextUnoccupiedLotNumber, usedLotsInYear. The explanation below defines the units, signs, ordering and any flags or placeholder values.
If the tool reports an input issue, correct the values and run it again. Apply the stated assumptions when interpreting a successfully returned result.

Input field	Meaning	Value type; see rules below	Requirement
existingAccessionIdentifiers	Existing accession identifiers	string	Required
accessionYear	Accession year	integer	Required
minimumLotNumber	Minimum lot number	integer	Required

Use year 1000–9999, minimum lot 1–999999999 and up to 1000 strict newline-separated YYYY.lot.item identifiers, or an empty list. Sort unique matching-year lots and find the earliest free lot within the same limit.^[1]

next lot = first integer at or above minimum absent from used lots in that year

Units, indexing, boundary conditions and exceptional cases are defined in the calculation rules above.

Output field	Meaning	Value type
nextUnoccupiedLotNumber	Next unoccupied lot number	number
usedLotsInYear	Used lots in year	list of number

json

{
  "input": {
    "existingAccessionIdentifiers": "2025.1.1\n2026.1.1\n2026.3.2",
    "accessionYear": 2026,
    "minimumLotNumber": 1
  },
  "output": {
    "nextUnoccupiedLotNumber": 2,
    "usedLotsInYear": [
      1,
      3
    ]
  }
}

Limitations and assumptions

No database identity is reserved; concurrent allocation still requires coordination.

Numbers and computed results must be finite; overflow produces an error. Extremely large text inputs are rejected. Missing required fields, extra fields, wrong value types and violations of the calculation rules are input errors.

Alternative or Complementary methods

Use Accession Number Format Validator (year.lot.item): Validate exact ASCII YYYY.lot.item with year 1000–9999, positive no-leading-zero lot/item up to nine digits; reports malformed nonempty identifier as invalid without inventing corrected identity. For a complementary task, use Duplicate Accession Conflict Detector: Detect exact strict accession identity conflicts across source rows without silently normalizing malformed identifiers; no conflict resolution or ownership decision.

References

Lot Number Next Available Finder — tool.io

Similar or alternative tools

Accession Number Format Validator (year.lot.item)
Validate exact ASCII YYYY.lot.item with year 1000–9999, positive no-leading-zero lot/item up to nine digits; reports malformed nonempty identifier as invalid without inventing corrected identity.
Duplicate Accession Conflict Detector
Detect exact strict accession identity conflicts across source rows without silently normalizing malformed identifiers; no conflict resolution or ownership decision.