Inventory analytics See the stock that eats your margin before it turns into a write-off.
Most catalogues carry a long tail: a fifth of SKUs makes most of the revenue, while hundreds of items sell rarely or have stopped. We measure days of supply per SKU, flag what has gone quiet and show the cash tied up in it.
What usually goes wrong
Cash frozen on the shelf
Slow items keep their purchase cost on the books until someone notices. By then the choice is a deep discount or a write-off.
Stock-outs on the items that sell
Reorder points set once and never revisited: bestsellers run out while slow items are restocked out of habit.
Supplier decisions by feel
Which supplier is cheaper once delivery times, minimum orders and returns are counted is rarely in one table.
No early warning
An item that stopped selling three months ago looks the same in the stock report as one that sold yesterday.
The numbers we put on your dashboard
| Metric | Formula | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Days of supply | units on hand ÷ average daily units sold | How long current stock lasts at the current pace. |
| Days since last sale | today − date of last sale | The simplest dead-stock alarm. |
| ABC class | cumulative revenue share: A to 80%, B to 95%, C the rest | Where to spend attention and safety stock. |
| Stock turnover | cost of goods sold ÷ average inventory at cost | How hard the cash in stock is working. |
Mini dashboard · public data
What this looks like on a real catalogue
Built on 541,910 real transactions of a UK online retailer (UCI Online Retail II, 2010-12 to 2011-12). Your dashboard uses your data.
Source: UCI Online Retail II (Chen, 2019), sheet Year 2010-2011, CC BY 4.0; our calculation
Source: UCI Online Retail II (Chen, 2019), sheet Year 2010-2011, CC BY 4.0; our calculation
Case study
Running retail on numbers: 12 years of pricing, purchasing and stock
Our co-founder ran a tire retail and service business from 2012 to 2024: pricing, purchasing, stock and payroll were his daily numbers.
From the blog
Days of supply: how to spot dead stock before it eats your margin
Days of supply tells you how long current stock lasts at the current pace. Here is the formula, a table of starting thresholds, and what a real catalogue of 3,803 SKUs looks like through this lens.
Services that fit
Data health check
from $1,500
Stock, sales and purchase data reconciled, one SKU master.
Dashboard build
from $2,500
Days of supply, dead-stock list and ABC classes, refreshed automatically.
Analytics retainer
from $2,000 / month
Monthly stock review before each purchasing cycle.
Prices are starting points; scope and price are fixed in a written quote. All prices →
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