You could have thousands of dollars of stock sitting on your shelves taking up space. If stock is not selling, it’s costing you. Once you have identified stock that is not selling you can begin to quit this stock, by putting the stock on clearance and continually reducing pricing until it’s sold out. Even if this means selling it below cost, it will save you money in the long run.

You can work out how much your shop space is worth by dividing the rent by how many square meters of space you have

To effectively use this advice, you need accurate quantity-on-hand figures. Poor stock management will lead to inaccurate results. Learn about stocktaking HERE.

Video Guide

Training video on setting up Dead stock

The Insights Dashboard, What's Not Selling page can also be used to identify Dead Stock

Finding Dead Stock

Use the ranked sales report with the following settings to work out what isn't selling and put that stock on clearance.

The Insights dashboard is also a good tool to identify stock that is old and not selling. For more information on that, click HERE.

  1. On the top menu bar of Retailer, click on Reports > Sales Reports > Ranked Sales Report.
  2. Set your Start Date and End Date.
    A 6-month period will normally give you a good representation of sales.
  3. Tick the following options: Include All Stock Items, Only Include Stock with a Quantity on Hand great than 0 and Only Include Stock that has not been Sold.
  4. Make sure the report orientation is in Landscape
  5. Click Print or Preview
    • Here you can see when the last time an item was sold (if at all) and the last time it was arrived.
      Note: New items that have only recently been arrived (and have not been sold yet) will still appear on the report. Only focus on stock items that haven’t sold in 4 to 5 months.
    • The bottom of the report will give you a total cost value of stock on-hand. Consider this figure the value of dead stock in your store. The goal is to reduce this value as much as possible.
  6. Print out the report and use it as a reference.

Ways to Clear Dead Stock

Set up a clearance table or bin somewhere in store and put products there with a clearance price. Advertise the area as Clearance Stock, Prices as Marked etc.

Keep discounting the product until it sells. Set a goal to get rid of the stock within two weeks and if stock is still there after one week, discount it further.

You can then start filling that empty space with stock that is selling well. Use the Ranked Sales Report to show you top selling items and begin to build up those lines.
Click HERE for more information on the Ranked Sales Report.